Clocks

Every project is a prototype, which calls out for a second version avoiding the mistakes of the former. The trick is to give the prototypes away; then one has a legitimate excuse to make another—and one gains an (undeserved) reputation for generosity to boot. After the quick sunrise alarm clock various things happened, including a ’two week lockdown’ to build up capacity in the NHS, which turned into three months. Thus I was stuck in one part of London, and my fiancée in another, and the streets were patrolled by Dobermans with £10,000 fine notices stuck to their teeth. How to get from one side of London to the other?

This was a sudden impulse last summer: I’d seen a ‘sunrise’ alarm clock (which fades on slowly to simulate sunrise, theoretically bringing you out of deep sleep naturally and waking you up gently). My sister mentioned having difficulty getting up and needing multiple alarm clocks. Ergo.

First thought: where to get the light? I had a look in the LED parts draw, but it was disappointing, as was the draw of old led torches and bike lights. None of them gave a reasonable light: more like a little pin-prick than the sun. So off down the road to the bricolage shop (or bric-a-brack as we call them) and I came back with this:

Dad rather liked my clock. In fact, he went looking for ‘a clock with hands and an adjustable chime’. Which, of course, made me wonder whether I could make one.

The first question was the hands: I liked the leds at the front of mine, and didn’t see the point in moving real hands around with a stepper motor or something of the kind. A digital clock should, I think, look digital. Looking online for things like ’led ring clocks’ showed the odd design, but none with all three hands in one ring, and three rings struck me as a bit much. Thus I started looking on farnell for bicolour leds to make the hands out of, and found an orange/red led on clearance at around 10p each: and also some red/green rectangular leds. Now, wouldn’t it be nice to have the ’ticks’ in the display differently shaped as well as coloured?

This project began when the noise of the ethernet switch opposite my college room became unbearable. I picked the room for the view, which was sublime: the valley falls away so steeply you can see right down, over the trees, to the river, and climbs again the far side in a steeply wooded bank over which the pigeons perform what I can only describe as buzzing runs on the squirells. In the distance, the rolling hills, at night the moon and by day the sun—morning and evening, opposite corners of the window. Sometimes the outside world would come a little closer: