Led Clock Saga

Having moved into my apartment a while back one thing remained missing for a long time; a clock. It sounds simple but I wanted a rather large and eye-catching clock. Those turned out not to be cheap nor very innovative. This is the story of the quest for changing that, by making my own clock with the help of Wouter Jansen and Bart Bilos.

As everyone probably knows, LEDs make things better. These days they are more accessible, easy to use and program than ever and thus the idea was born to make a clock out of a string of 2 meters of addressable LED strip. As if the chinese manufacturer knew, these strips feature 60 LEDs per meter, which is quite an easy coincidence when trying to build a clock.

With the help of Wouter, a design was made to create a frame and plexiglass rim using a laser cutter. It would mean having to glue a lot of stuff together, and even more challenging – doing a decent paint job on it, but we accepted that challenge since it was the only way of creating the 2M circumference circle we wanted.

It took a lot of time putting it all together but the result was simply stunning. The software is running on an Arduino and the clock is not limited to just showing the time but can show you everything that you’d want to display on it, such as a VU or spectrum meter (which works awesome at a housewarming or any other party).

[su_youtube url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-kzLQ0qZkk”]

Ever since we made the clock, a lot of positive reactions followed regarding it’s looks and if it was commercially available. We do have plans to make a first prototype production run to build some more clocks for the people who want one and perhaps a KickStarter campaign in the future, as we think this could be a nice clock for the masses. If you’re interested drop us a line! Suggestions of future expandability are also welcome.

A more technical blogpost about how it all works and what’s in it will follow shortly.