Digital Clock with Arduino and DS1307

ds1307 ICIn this article you will learn how to make a digital clock using Arduino and the DS1307 RTC IC. What is DS1307 IC actually? Well, it is a Real Time Clock (RTC) IC that is simple to use, low cost and easy available. The IC basically is able to count the date and time accurately and it will continue its counting if the backup battery – coin cell battery is there although the mainsupply to the IC is cut off.




Part 1 : Demo Video




This video basically just show on a basic role of a digital clock that can display date, time and day of the week.

Part 2 : Hardware

In this part, I will roughly explain about how you can get started to have your own DIY digital clock!

Step 1

The hardware that you need for this are :

DS 1307 RTC IC x 1 – datasheet
32.768kHz Quartz Crystal X 1
Coin cell CR2032 & the holder
10k resistor x 2
LCD board x 1
Arduino x 1
This is the backup battery(CR2032) and its holder. Easily available in any electronic store.


cr2032 holder

Step 2

Ok, let’s get started. First of all, connect the DS1307 circuit as below:


ds1307 circuit diagram

So, it is not necessary to use coin cell battery as the backup battery. You can use any type of battery with volatge range from 2.0V to 3.5V as shown above. However, we choose to use coin cell battery as it is small and easy to carry/install.

Warning!
Remember not to connect supply voltage of more than 5.5V or else you will get the chip burnt.

Two 10k pull up resistor s are at the SDA and SCL pins. This is due to the reason that DS1307 communicates through I2C interface.

SDA – Arduino pin A4
SCL – Arduino pin A5
Next, wire up the LCD according to the schematic below:

arduino digital clock lcd


The R3 value normally to be 220 ohm/330 ohm as a current limiting resistor.

Part 3: Software

The software required: Arduino IDE

There is a pretty easy to use library for this purpose. The name of the library is RTClib which you can download it here: RTClib

This library is easy to use and able to get the date, time and day of the week accurately. I bet you will like it when you try it :)

After that, I uploaded the below coding to my arduino UNO. What this code do is basically just set the time and date according to when the sketch is compiled. It might have some slight delay. Then the set date, time and day of the week will be displayed on a LCD screen. In my case, I am using a 20 x 4 LCD screen.

digital clock Arduino sketch
digital clock sketch


Part 4: Pictures
  

 digital-clock-photo diy-ds1307-arduino-module ds1307-pcb
Part 5: Problems Encountered

Problem 1

When I first trying the new library, the example given only can display date and time and it does not mention about how to display the day of the week. So I started to search on the web and ask in arduino forum about this. You can refer to my thread for more discussions.

So, after some research done in the net, I have finally come to a conclusion. To display day of the week, you can use the below syntax:

int dayofweek = now.dayOfWeek();
   switch(dayofweek){
     case 1:
     lcd.print("Monday");
     break;
     case 2:
     lcd.print("Tuesday");
     break;
     case 3:
     lcd.print("Wednesday");
     break;
     case 4:
     lcd.print("Thursday");
     break;
     case 5:
     lcd.print("Friday");
     break;
     case 6:
     lcd.print("Saturday");
     break;
     case 0:
     lcd.print("Sunday");
     break;
The syntax ‘ now.dayOfWeek();’ will give the day of the week in number form, like 0 for sunday, 1 for monday, 2 for tuesday and so on. So, by having the above coding, you can actually convert the output number to string of character for the day of the week. For example when the output number of ‘ now.dayOfWeek();’ = 0, it will display Sunday on the LCD. So as you can see, Sunday is the first day of each particular week.

Problem 2:

Besides, when you first power up the DS1307, the default date and time will be 1/1/2000 0:00 which is not right. So to set the DS1307 to the current time, simply add the line RTC.adjust(DateTime(__DATE__, __TIME__)); to your code as shown in the sample code as attached. Once you have set the time, then comment out this line and upload again. Why? Below example will explain about it:

Lets say you upload and set the time at 2pm. Then u still keep that particular line of code. Then you power on the arduino again at 4pm. But the arduino start the code by adjusting the time to 2pm again. So once u set already, comment that line out and upload again.

Eagle file for schematic & layout (DS1307 RTC Module V1.0)
Hope you are clear about my simple explore about DS1307.

Thanks for reading and hope you enjoy! Do comment if you have any doubt. You can reach me in my facebook, facebook page, website or email.
Thank you :)