LED Clock Project

For a long time I have wanted a bedside clock that would keep accurate time via some external mechanism, and would take care of daylight savings automatically. I eventually decided that the best approach would be to use a wifi enabled device and use the NTP protocol for keeping the time accurate.
After wasting several months hacking away on an Olimex IMX 233 that never worked reliably, I decided to change platform to the Beaglebone Black (BBB).
Along the way I realised there were a few other features I needed:

• LEDs should dim with the ambient light so the clock doesn’t light up the whole bedroom
• The display needs to be big enough for me to read from across the bedroom without my glasses on.
  To make them dimmable I decided to get a pair of
  I also needed a power supply that could give 12v for the LED drivers but 5v for the BBB. I found a nice little board on ebay for a few bucks that seems to do the trick. Its called the Benq 12v-5v-3.3v
  I hooked that up tonight so now I only need the one power supply to run the LEDs and the BBB.