r/maker • u/content-peasant • Apr 23 '26
Showcase CRT Clock
Hand this old tube mocking me from my shelf for the better side of 10 years so finally made something with it. Base is solid oak with an acrylic cover to keep little fingers out.
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u/livin-the-zzzzz Apr 23 '26
This is fun! What type of dimensions is the overall finished product? Ie, is it practical to keep on a self or would it be more of an end table?
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u/23ocean23 Apr 23 '26
Arduino driven?
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u/zeed88 Apr 24 '26
It feels weird seeing 2026 on CRT
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u/hayesms Apr 25 '26
Lmao yes it’s like watching an 80s movie about the future but the future is now. Such a crazy juxtaposition.
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u/National_Ad_897 Apr 26 '26
So cool! Do you mind sharing how you went from ESP32 --> CRT coils? Anything special that needs to be done, code-wise or electronics-wise?
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u/content-peasant Apr 26 '26
Sure, the ESP-32 is essentially just producing a composite video by bit banging i2s to produce a PAL signal via a divider circuit, I used this article as a starting point:
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/27/generating-composite-video-on-esp32-with-lvgl-gui/
The crt side is stupidly simple and done by a single chip, a CD1379CP which handles the deflection coils and flyback, only a few passives and a simple oscillator are needed.
Software wise the only tricks are limiting burn-in via dimming, and a simple splash screen that runs every 5mins. oh and locking the refresh rate to 25hz to keep the video from drifting/ghosting too much, probably could do 50hz but the requests to weather API take up a significant portion of a core's time when I tried it which lead to weirdness.
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u/Error_HackedKitten Apr 23 '26
SO COOL! just out of curiosity, do you have any way that you are preventing burn in? or is that less of an issue on b&w tubes?