Notices

Instead of morse code you could change the brightness/color of the led depending of the time. In the evening the led could start to turn darker and in early morning it could start turning brighter again.
Usually you don't need to know exact time when you wake upp in the middle of the night, therefore an approximate time would suffice.

You could even add some gimmicks, when full moon the led could blink yellow from time to time or maybe it could blink according to the weather?

if you do not want to take the signals.
You can use different colors.

10 - long signals
5 - red light
2 - violet light
[white color] - separate hours and minutes

17:25 = 17:30 (long signals+ red light + violet light) is the hour [white color] (violet light + 1signal) minutes
19:37 = 19:40 (long signals+ red light + violet light+ violet light) is the hour + [white color] (violet light +violet light )minutes

pause between displaying the time 5 seconds (indicates charge level. yellow or green Color)

[Edit:] Dang, I thought I read the thread, but I didn't notice there was similar proposals all ready! [Edit2:] No, on second glance, the similar ideas appeared while I was slowly typing my first idea[/Edit2][/Edit]

Using 4 coulours and three blinks to convey the time at an accuracy of 15 minutes just popped into my head:

The first blink of one of four colours could represent a quadrant of the clock, a second blink of one of three the hour in that quadrant and a third blink could represent 0,15,30 or 45 minutes...

(First I had an other idea, that is not as straightforward, but I'll paste it below, just because I had all ready typed it: If this app will evolve to have loads of different options, one novel idea could be the "Colorful compass clock concept":

With 4 distinct colours, representing North, East, South and West, one could have the blinks indicating what time it is.

One "North" blink would be around 12 o'clock. Two blinks, for example North-East would be about 1:30. East-North-East would be ... around 2:15 (?). With four blinks, one would get an accuracy of 22.5 minutes, with 5 blinks, half that...

This would of course only ever require 2 colours at a time... )

So. one more idea for the pot. Roman LED

I=red=1
V=Yellow=5
X=Blue=10
L=White=50

all short blips

1 long blip White= hour/minute separator ( : )

example 4:56am
Roman IV:LVI

LED red,yellow,Long White,white,yellow,red.

It would be nice to switch it on and off from the settings menu

Why make it so complicated to read the hours?
Think, you will be sleepy. So I think it's better just flash it that many times as hours in one color, then tens of minutes in other, then units of minutes in other. Like red-red-red-red blue-blue-blue yellow-yellow-yellow-yellow-yellow would be 4:35. Easy to read.

Also consider backporting to N810. It had a WAY cooler led than the N900 (and also multicolour).

Possibly, because we can, on a practical level this project is utterly useless to me personally, if i wake up in the middle of the night the amount of light coming through the window will allow me to approximate the time, if Ineed to get up for a particular time I will set an alarm.


This project raises some interesting questions though,

What is the most efficient way to display the time using only one multicolour LED?

What is the easiest way to understand the time using only a single LED?

If I was deaf. how could I set an alarm.

If I was blind, how could I tell the time. Etc Etc.

The concept of what you propose is easy for anyone to understand and could perhaps be easy to read for many people, but I'm sure I'd have a hard time concentrating on the number of flashes.

I'd still go with my three color coded flashes, even though the learning curve of reading them would be steeper.

Anyway, I'm sure customizing any kind of ... "protocol" for the led will be made relatively easy and everyone can have whatever they want.

What other useful information could the flashing and colour of the led be used for?

i am very familiar with resistors color codes ( electric )
so only four pulses are needed for showing the clock.
we have only 2 engines available for front led
the third engine is mapped to keyboard leds

but

when keyboard is closed we can remap third engine . theoretically possible.

resistor codes
black =0
brown=1
red=2
orange=3
yellow=4
green=5
blue=6
purple=7
gray=8
white=9

the code have some problems like brown, black and gray.
I thought to replace black with white short pulse and gray with double white short pulse.
brown ? hard to say
another combination . black double pulse( like " " ) , brown 1 short pulse , gray triple short pulse

ex:
23:44 >> red orange yellow yellow
18:52 >> (brown?), double pulse white, green, red
00:26 >> short pulse white , short pulse white , red , blue
( double white, double white , red, blue )

no need for hour - minute separator