Infinity Mirror Clock: There’s A Time Joke There Somewhere

Infinity Mirror Clock

We don’t think we’ve seen an Infinity Mirror Clock before, but we love this new twist on an old favorite. Different colors distinguish between seconds, minutes and hours, and an additional IR sensor detects when someone is directly in front of the clock and switches the LEDs off, allowing it to be used as a normal mirror. This build is the work of [Dushyant Ahuja], who is no stranger to hacking together clocks out of LEDs. You can tell how much progress he’s made with the mirror clock by taking a glance at his first project, which is an impressive creation held together by jumbles of wire and some glue.

[Dushyant] has stepped up his game for his new clock, attaching an LED strip along the inside of a circular frame to fashion the infinity mirror effect. The lights receive a signal from an attached homemade Arduino board, which is also connected to a real-time clock (RTC) module to keep time and to a Bluetooth module, which allows [Dushyant] to program the clock wirelessly rather than having to drag out some cords if the clock ever needs an adjustment.

Stick around after the jump for a quick demonstration video. The lights are dazzling to watch; [Dushyant] inserted a stainless steel plate at the center of the circle to reflect the outer rim of LEDs. After a quick rainbow effect, it looks like the mirror enters clock mode. See if you can figure out what time it is. For a more step-by-step overview of this project, swing by his Instructables page.

 

20 thoughts on “Infinity Mirror Clock: There’s A Time Joke There Somewhere

    1. How hackable is it? ATTiny isn’t exactly good for much beyond the job at hand, but if you are posting the driver code I’d consider porting it to a richer control platform. For example, one that could keep sync with time servers automatically.

  1. I like it and it is actually readable as a clock unlike 99% of time devices on HaD :) I’ll be keeping my eye out for ya, Jarek. It has a very nice aesthetic sense to it :) Good job!

  2. Just got a ring of Neopixels the other day, it fits right round my finger. Makes me think, what about an infinity watch? There’s a glass-cutter’s somewhere on a road nearby, maybe they’ll do me a couple tiny circles of the right glass. Looks like it’d fit, say, a Flora board exactly, add a nice round watch battery in the middle…

    Hm and Bluetooth, I want that too.

    1. The tough part would be making 60 neopixels fit in a circle. The smallest circle of neopixels I made was ~5inches, and that design didn’t allow for filtering caps either…

      I’m pondering a design based on a previous comment though…

      1. Mine came in a ring, a PCB, with 12 Neopixels. About 2″ or so diameter. That’s enough for hours, and minutes if you don’t mind only being accurate to 5 minutes, which is fine for most practical purposes.

        If you wanted actual minutes, use colour coding. Eg, blue for the hour, green for the 5-minute period, and 1 to 4 red pixels trailing after the green, to add minutes to it. Or perhaps go for 1 or 2 red pixels behind the minute, to 1 or 2 in front, for add / subtract 0, 1, 2, minutes from the nearest 5-mark.

        There’s lots of ways of encoding readable time. Binary watches probably take up the least display elements, but the way I mentioned, which isn’t something I invented myself, seems practical and easy enough to read with a bit of practise. Add a little button and the user can flip between several options, if you like.

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