The dot matrix clock was built without the use of a regular Arduino board but uses the ATmega168 with Arduino bootloader and assembled on a breadboard.
The project shows how a simple USB device was used to create the PIC18F firmware as well as the Windows interface that allows a LED to be controlled from the PC while the pushbutton state from the device is read.
The project utilizes 7400 series TTL chips in order to develop a custom and homebuilt CPU known as Magic-1, with without using an off-the-shelf microprocessor.