Ping “Clock” Display

from hackster.io

In our era of videoconferencing and other such connections-over-distance, there may come a point in the conversation where your counterpart stops responding due to a connection glitch. The question then becomes whether or not this glitch was on your end, or the other person’s. To help diagnose this issue, Charl Linssen (AKA TuringBirds) built the Ping Clock that displays your connection speed constantly on a clock-like dial.

The longer hand on this device indicates the ping time, showing at a glance the connection latency. The shorter hand spins to indicate the recent maximum number of pings sent off, which can indicate an intermittent connection if too high.

Two ESP32 boards are used for this build — one acts as the central controller and takes care of performing the actual ping testing, while a second receives signals from the first and is used solely to control the brushless DC (BLDC) motors. These turn the hands to their correct positions with the help of a hub assembly. An ePaper screen is also available under control of the central ESP32 for additional data display.

Project code, parts list, and other details are available in Linssen's write-up.