12 July 2026
Two clocks: binary dots and Dutch words
I built multiple clocks using Python. Two of them are a binary clock in PyQt5 for a round 800×800 Raspberry Pi display, and a QLOCKTWO-style Dutch word clock just to fool around with curses.
As an example both run live on this page. The original Python sources are at the end of the post.
Binary clock
Dutch Word Clock
The whole text is always on screen, seven fixed lines. The words that spell the current time — rounded down to the last five-minute mark — light up in red. Dutch tells time relative to the half hour, so 18:40 reads HET IS TIEN MINUTEN OVER HALF ZEVEN: from twenty past onward the clock already talks toward the next hour.
The Originals
These web versions above are line-for-line ports of the original programs. The files can be found by clicking clock time.