OctoClock

Representing time in a different way

Since I was young I had always loved wearing watches. For years I hardly ever left the house without one on my wrist. One watch company that caught my eye years ago was SLOW watches.

This company only sells 24 hour watches that only have an hour hand. This means that the single hand on the watch only rotates once per day. I have always had the idea that after consistently wearing one of these watches, the position on the hand of the watch would begin to mean even more than just the time. Since each hand position is visited only once per day, it would be quite easy to associate the hand position with the certain feelings, emotions, and events that happen at that time. For example, I imagine it would be weird to see the hand at the 4 am position because the vast majority of the time I am asleep at 4am and am not checking my watch. Another example would be associating the 6 am hand position with the feeling of being forced to get up early when you would rather stay in bed and sleep in.

Inspired by SLOW watches and a desire to add some decorations to my bedroom, I decided to build a clock. This clock, much like SLOW watches’ products, would only have an hour hand that makes one full rotation per day. In an attempt to take this concept one step further, I decided to add in a way to represent not only one’s progress throughout the day, but also throughout the week. In order to do this I decided to incorporate color changing LEDs that would cycle throughout all of the colors in a week. This over time would cause the owner of the clock to begin to associate certain colors with certain times throughout the week. For example if it was white on Monday mornings then they would associate the clock being white with the start of the week. Another example would be if the clock was red on Friday nights. Over time, the red on the clock would come with a feeling of excitement and relief that the work week is over and the weekend is starting.

In order to bring this idea into fruition I decided to use an arduino uno as the main controller and then connect a motor and an LED strip to it. While this project seemed quite simple, I ran into problems once I started building. I ran into plenty of problems with simultaneously powering the microcontroller, the LED strip, and the motor, all of which had different power requirements. In the end I managed to find a solution that worked and in the process learned quite a bit about soldering and circuitry.

About Me

Im an incoming junior studying Computer Science at the University of Michigan. I spend my free time hanging out with friends and working on side projects. I also like woodworking and exercising.