Bit Clock

I'm sure you've seen analog clocks, digital clocks and maybe even binary clocks! Traditionally, analog clocks (or watches) display time by a continuous motion of two (hour, minute) or three (second) rotating pointers pointing to numbers arrayed on a circular dial.

A digital clock displays time as a series of digits, e.g. "15:27".

A binary clock could display number in a binary base, where 5 would be "101".

Have you ever seen a bit clock?

A bit clock could be pictured as a series of led lights where 6 lights would be enough to represent up to 60 states for 60 seconds in a minute. 3 rows of lights would be used for hour, minute and second.

How Does a Bit Clock Work?

Here's how to represent a value of, for example, 17 seconds:

X O O O X O O

X represents the bit flag which is ON, O represents the bit flag which is OFF.

In decimal base, the 6 states are:

1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32

Therefore 17 would be represented as 16 + 1, meaning first and fifth bits are ON.

"Bit Clock" was submitted by Dave Sonsalla.

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