I love the five-ten egg. It’s a hard-boiled egg that leaves the yolk just a bit soft and the outside done. Simply boil water, drop your egg, and watch your time. At 5 minutes, ten seconds, pull and ice bath the egg to stop cooking. Peel, enjoy.

I have been relearning my Arduino chops, and one of the ways that I’ve done this is by recreating the Arduino starter kit projects, including one for a digital hourglass.

I decided to repurpose the digital hourglass to light an LED each minute through five minutes, then blink the last LED for ten seconds. Here is the circuit:

Here is the code:

/*
Arduino Starter Kit example
Project 8 – Digital Hourglass, modified to a Five-Ten egg timer.

This sketch is written to accompany Project 8 in the
Arduino Starter Kit

Parts required:
10 kilohm resistor
six 220 ohm resistors
six LEDs
tilt switch

Created 13 September 2012
by Scott Fitzgerald

Modified 13 August 2014
by John LeMasney

Arduino Starter Kit Multi-Language

This example code is part of the public domain
*/

// named constant for the switch pin
const int switchPin = 8;

unsigned long previousTime = 0; // store the last time an LED was updated
int switchState = 0; // the current switch state
int prevSwitchState = 0; // the previous switch state
int led = 2; // a variable to refer to the LEDs

// 60000 = 1 minutes in milliseconds
long interval = 60000; // interval at which to light the next LED

void setup() {
// set all of the LED pins as outputs
for(int x = 2;x<8;x++){
pinMode(x, OUTPUT);
}
// set the tilt switch pin as input
pinMode(switchPin, INPUT);
}

void loop(){
// store the time since the Arduino started running in a variable
unsigned long currentTime = millis();

// compare the current time to the previous time an LED turned on
// if it is greater than your interval, run the if statement
if(currentTime – previousTime > interval) {
// save the current time as the last time you changed an LED
previousTime = currentTime;
// Turn the LED on
digitalWrite(led, HIGH);
// increment the led variable
// in 1 minute the next LED will light up
led++;

if(led == 6){
// the 5 minutes is up, light up fifth LED, then blink last LED for ten seconds, then leave solid.
digitalWrite(6,HIGH);
for(int b = 1;b<6;b++){
digitalWrite(7,HIGH);
delay(1000);
digitalWrite(7,LOW);
delay(1000);
}
digitalWrite(7,HIGH);
}
}

// read the switch value
switchState = digitalRead(switchPin);

// if the switch has changed
if(switchState != prevSwitchState){
// turn all the LEDs low
for(int x = 2;x<8;x++){
digitalWrite(x, LOW);
}

// reset the LED variable to the first one
led = 2;

//reset the timer
previousTime = currentTime;
}
// set the previous switch state to the current state
prevSwitchState = switchState;
}

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