I’ve always been a fan of electrically-driven displays of all kinds. LCD, vacuum fluorescent, OLED, flip-dot, magic eye, plasma displays, Nixie tubes… just about anything that can be controlled electronically and able to display information has fascinated me. So when I see large, 14-segment alphanumeric displays like these I get excited! This particular specimen is the S14Clock from Store139 in Canada.
It’s available in both 12- and 24-character versions and does require assembly as it is supplied in kit form. An ESP32 powers the displays and gets the time from NTP servers, so the displayed clock is always correct. The web interface also allows you to display other messages, with up to 8 presets available. It can be configured to display stock prices, point of sale information, weather info, and just about anything you can pull from the internet.
Drawing about 500mA over USB-C when in use, the displays are bright enough for indoor use. Because the multiplexing frequency is the same on both units, the 24-character version gets half the current per LED compared to the 12-character one, so keep this in mind when thinking about use cases. The software is completely open-source and available on GitHub, so you can easily modify it to fit whatever use case you have in mind! If you need a dynamic, easy-to-configure display, then consider the S14Clock for your next project.