Alarm clock with DS1302 RTC

DS1302 is a timekeeping chip with battery backup and general purpose RAM. It has been replaced by newer variants like DS1307 or DS3231 which have improved accuracy. The newer ones have I²C interface, but DS1302 does not. It communicates with the host using a serial protocol that resembles SPI. Since I had a module with this chip, I decided to build and test an alarm clock. I added an Arduino, the alphanumeric LCD, an active buzzer and some buttons.

There are some great advantages when using an RTC (real time clock) module in your project. You don't have to do timekeeping in your code (if you read my previous post, you can see it's not quite easy) and, very important, time keeping is performed from backup battery when your development board is not powered. This means you don't have to set date everytime you plug in the Arduino. The advantage is obvious for projects that depend on accurate time to operate correctly.

Counting time with Arduino (without RTC)

When it comes to counting time using an Arduino or other MCU platform, the use of a RTC (real time clock) circuit is highly recommended. These devices are cheap, have good accuracy and keep counting time even when the main MCU is not powered. They run from a small battery and draw low current. There are quite a lot of Arduino libraries that deal with time and make the interaction with a time source easy. One of these is the Time library by Paul Stoffregen. It is a well written library with internal time based on standard Unix time time_t (number of seconds passed since Jan 1, 1970).

But I wanted something even more basic. I wrote a 50 lines of code function that increments seconds variable each time it is called. When seconds overflow (reach 60), it increments minutes variable and resets seconds. And so on. Only when a time variable changes, it is printed on the output device (16x2 LCD in this case). Around this function I added code that turns the Arduino into a common clock. As a prototype as used the LCD and keypad shield fitted to an Arduino Uno compatible board. The code should compile on any other development board because it doesn't use specific functions or libraries. You will have to adjust LCD pin configuration and keypad buttons (require modification if using buttons connected to digital input pins instead of the analog keypad).