{"id":13187,"date":"2017-02-08T15:26:52","date_gmt":"2017-02-08T20:26:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/embedded-lab.com\/blog\/?p=13187"},"modified":"2023-04-11T22:16:12","modified_gmt":"2023-04-12T02:16:12","slug":"tutorial-8-esp8266-internet-clock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/embedded-lab.com\/blog\/tutorial-8-esp8266-internet-clock\/","title":{"rendered":"Tutorial 8: ESP8266 Internet clock"},"content":{"rendered":"

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) provides official time in the United States. NIST disseminates the time using several methods, including\u00a0radio broadcasting over short-wave and long-wave frequencies, telephone dial-in services (ACTS), and Network Time Service (NTS) over the internet. This tutorial\u00a0describes how to build an ESP8266-based internet clock that uses NIST\u2019s NTS service to retrieve accurate time information. The time is displayed on a colorful TFT LCD (ILI9341 driven) in both\u00a0analog clock dial and digital formats. The time is synchronized to the NIST server in every 2-minute interval.<\/p>\n

\"ESP8266<\/a>

ESP8266 Internet Clock<\/p><\/div>\n

Hardware<\/h4>\n

This project uses an ESP8266 module to connect to the NIST time server through a local home\/office WiFi. I am using EasyESP-1<\/a><\/strong> board for illustration. The time will be displayed on a 2.2″ ILI9341-driven TFT LCD. Please read Tutorial 7<\/a><\/strong> for more details on how to interface the TFT LCD to EasyESP-1. The hardware setup for this project is same as for Tutorial 7<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"Complete<\/a>

Complete setup of LCD on the EasyESP-1 breadboard for Internet Clock<\/p><\/div>\n

Software<\/h4>\n

As\u00a0discussed in Tutorial 7<\/a><\/strong>, we will use the same TFT ILI9341 ESP<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>library by Bodmer<\/a>\u00a0in this project too.\u00a0The library comes with some really cool demo examples. This tutorial actually incorporates their\u00a0TFT_Clock<\/strong> example for displaying time in an analog clock dial format. There are several examples available online showing how to implement\u00a0Network Time Protocol (NTP) in Arduino to fetch time from NIST server. NIST operates several time servers for its Internet Time Service (ITS). The list of these\u00a0time servers and their IP addresses can be found here<\/a><\/strong>. Note that NIST does not allow\u00a0queries to any of their servers more frequently than once every 4 seconds. In this project, the queries are made once every two minutes. In between the queries, which is a 2-minute interval, the time is\u00a0kept running locally using the delay()<\/strong> routine. You can download the complete ESP8266 Firmware for this project from the following link.<\/p>\n

Download Internet Clock ILI9341 code<\/a><\/p>\n

Important notes:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n