The idea is quite simple - spin a column of lights round in a circle fast enough, and you can scan out messages, rather like the scan on a television screen. With eight LEDs, a PIC and very few other components, you can create a simple display. The obvious choice for the message is the time, and so the Spinning PIC Clock is born.

I can't remember where I first saw this, but I liked the idea, and it seemed to be a good start to experiment with PICs. My design is very basic indeed, but it works, which was all I wanted. For the moment, here's a couple of pictures. Links to the circuit diagram and so on will come later (when I've made the source code look nice).

<== This is the whole device.. made out of Lego bricks and the occasional bit of blue-tac. All it does is spin the circuit board around past the magnet which sets off the display.

And below, there's a picture of the clock showing the time - not a particularly good picture I'm afraid, because the camera's persistance of vision is not as high as mine. (I mean - it looks better in real life, honest). Note that as is traditional with pictures of clocks, it has only actually been switched on for a few minutes to take the picture.