Kitchen timer is necessary gadget in a kitchen. Some dishes require precise timing to cook so best option is to set timer and wait for signal to finish what you started. Most kitchen timers are mechanical that have bell sound or electronic with beep alarm. What if you want something different like duck quack?

Tom took MSP430 launchpad and build his own kitchen timer with four seven segment LED displays. He multiplexed display LEDs with 74HC164 shift register in order to have few pins left for buttons and alarm trigger. Probably the most catching thing in this project is alarm – its been made of quacking duck head which comes with separate batteries – launchpad only has to send triggering signal when alarm needs to be sounded. Quack quack and you’re done.