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Our friend John from Australia has created an awesome enclosure for his IV-17 VFD Modular Clock. The case is built around parts taken from an old decomissioned anaesthetic machine on top of a cigar box base in steampunk style.

Have a look at the video of the "Dräger-Punk Sorba-Clock:"

The clock itself runs the latest firmware, which John has helped test extensively. (Available on github)

The four letter word functionality is running using a small EEPROM addon board with the word database on it. You can also see the new date scrolling functionality in the video. Time is updated automatically via GPS.

On the hardware side there are a bunch of mods and enhancements. There is a custom-built RGB light-bar to add mood lightning. Instead of the normal tactile switches on the backside of the clock, the cigar box base houses nice big brass buttons.

Instead of connecting the GPS module directly to the UART, John has connected his GPS module to a low-cost 433MHz transmitter module set up so that it simply transmits all the NMEA sentences from the GPS module. Then there are receivers connected to the VFD Modular Clock as well as other clocks in his collection (that also support GPS).

This way, only one GPS module is required. The 433MHz transmission is noisy and the receivers will pick up a great deal of garbage data. This is filtered out by the error correction in the firmware, so the clock still syncs just fine.

Here is a picture of the backside:

And the inside of the cigar box where all the extra wiring is neatly arranged.