Im a bit of an electronic clock kit collector and this is now one of my favourite clocks in my collection.

Very easy to assemble and the documentation of how to set it up is pretty good. The only flaw is the TimeZone setting will not take the suggested time zone string as it appears the string length is too long for the variable in my case and it gets truncated. Not a hard thing to work around but a little annoying.

It is now my primary time piece for my "cave" and has owkred flawlessly since I first set it up.

I purchased this for my home office that I'm outfitting with a "control center" sort of motif. I like the red LED motif, but I would see a few occasions where a "green" or "amber" one might be fun as well. I have 3d printed a "friction fit" enclosure for it that makes the display cover flush the the opening in the enclosure, and an appropriate hole for the USB-C plug, and 3d printed a "stand" that tilts it up slightly for close viewing. I added some "vents" to the rear of the enclosure, although I really don't feel any substantial radiated heat from the unit.

The designer of this went to great troubles to eliminate a surface-mount component to make the unit easier to assemble. The downside is that nearly every IO on the ESP device is utilized -- there may or may not be one that is available. I was thinking of tying to WS2812b style LEDs on my stand for alerts. I haven't had time to investigate if that is possible. The other downside is that the brightness of the display is limited due to the mutiplexing and charlie-plexing going on. In a perfect world, I'd like 25-50% more brightness.

All that said, this is a great device, and I plan on ordering a couple more.

Such a cool project. Soldiering was easy, instructions were straightforward. I plugged it in and it literally worked as expected. I didn't even have to adjust my timezone. The custom messages look great with the animations. A very well executed product that I'm really enjoying!

Easy to solder (I shake, but managed with surface mount, I used 0.3mm solder)
Worked straight away
Easy to follow instructions
It's awesome being able to show the time in many formats and also display and send messages from the phone via IP address
Good quality and well considered placement of parts

The transition effects are so satisfying to watch!

Kit arrived well packaged and only took a couple of weeks to reach me in the UK (no customs delay either, unlike many of my purchases from the USA).

I was a bit concerned about soldering the demultiplexer but I played with a cheap SMD practice kit from Aliexpress in advance and with the right tools, it was a breeze. The rest of the kit was very quick to assemble, simple through-hole soldering and a bit of bolting together. I had to re-flash the code, due to the Wi-Fi problem described on the Github page but otherwise it powered up like a charm. The product description mentions that the 24-char display is dimmer than the smaller 12-char model but I can confirm that even in bright sunlight, the bigger unit is perfectly readable.

I have similar display called the WOPR by Unexpected Maker and it's interesting comparing the two. The WOPR feels more sophisticated, with the 3D housing, darker faceplate and front facing buttons but I do like the retro feel of the S14-24 and it's hard to fault the elegance of the design; one demux and a microcontroller in a very compact package. The web interface is also excellent.

The only slight criticism I have of the physical design (also true of the WOPR) is that for an otherwise slim unit, the plug-in microcontroller sticks out quite a bit from the PCB and is clearly visible from above or from the side. A lower profile header or even soldering the controller directly to the PCB would vastly improve the look.

Concerning the software, a useful feature that I think could be added is the ability to enter the time zone as a location, e.g. Europe/London and have the unit adjust for daylight saving automatically. As it is, I had to enter +1 for British Summer Time and I suppose that I'll have to change that parameter back to zero when we revert to GMT in the autumn.

Those minor comments aside, I absolutely love the S14-24. It's old-school tech with a modern twist-superb!