Display the system time on a four digit seven segment display.
# SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2019 Mikey Sklar for Adafruit Industries
#
# SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT
import time
import datetime
from adafruit_ht16k33 import segments
import board
import busio
# Create the I2C interface.
i2c = busio.I2C(board.SCL, board.SDA)
# Create the LED segment class.
# This creates a 7 segment 4 character display:
display = segments.Seg7x4(i2c)
# clear display
display.fill(0)
while True:
# get system time
now = datetime.datetime.now()
hour = now.hour
minute = now.minute
second = now.second
# setup HH:MM for display and print it
clock = '%02d%02d' % (hour,minute) # concat hour + minute, add leading zeros
display.print(clock)
# Toggle colon when displaying time
if second % 2:
display.print(':') # Enable colon every other second
else:
display.print(';') # Turn off colon
time.sleep(0.5)
We can easily copy this code onto our Pi's home directory using the 'wget' command and then run it using the following commands.
cd wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/adafruit/Adafruit_Learning_System_Guides/master/Matrix_7-Segment_LED_Backpack_Raspberry_Pi/sevensegment_clock.py python3 ./sevensegment_clock.py
You should see the time appear on your 7-segment display in 24-hour format with a slow blinking colon. It should look like this:
Page last edited January 22, 2025
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