MDIAG! bought the R/C Moon Phase light from ThinkGeek about a year back, and although we loved the nice glow and surface detail, we wished it represented the current phase of the moon rather than its out-of-the-box timed cycle. Well, so did the folks at imagitronics.org, which has detailed instructions on what it takes (and costs) to make this mod yourself.

I decided that it would be more interesting if the model moon actually reflected the current phase of the moon based on the current date. Using an arduino and a DS1307 realtime clock module from Sparkfun, I was able to make that it do just that. The DS1307 module contains a coin cell battery backup that enables the internal clock to maintain the proper time, even without power, for up to 17 years!

Click the link below for your next project.

Source: Hack the ThinkGeek R/C Moon to display realtime phase changes