xkcd world clock

We created a real-life version of the awesome xkcd.com/now world clock

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Description

After seeing the xkcd.com/now comic for the first time, I instantly thought it would be a great idea to hang it up in our hackerspace.

* First I used Inkscape to vectorize the reference image of 00h00m
* The outer ring would be put on a 30cm wide Bamboo plate later
* Then I engraved the inner image onto a 3mm sheet of white acrylic using our laser cutter (The FaZzZ0r)
* I cut out a 23cm circle using the laser (that is the maximum size I can laser)
* using white board marker pens, I colored the engraved parts. This works pretty well because on the non-engraved parts, the color just wipes away but it sticks okay-ish on the engraved parts
* On the electronics side, my hackerspace buddy ABrock went all the way and used a stepper with an Atmel AVR :o)
* The outer circle was printed and glued on the bamboo plate
* The acrylic plate was glued to the motor and put on the Bamboo plate

The result was hung up in RaumZeitLabor hackerspace in Mannheim, Germany

Details

since we have a bit of space between the base plate and the acrylic plate, and the acrylic is a tiny bit translucent, we thought about putting a cross of different colored LEDs underneath so that you have reference lines for noon, midnight, 6am and 6pm.

Since we have an AVR in there anyway to run the stepper motor, it wouldn't be much of a problem to even run them in PWM to find the perfect brightness level.

Might do that soon-ish ;o)