After seeing this post on the laser cutting subreddit, I was pondering ideas for a mirror clock that wouldn’t have a mechanical clock in the middle. It occurred to me that the solution would be to make use of some large and small NeoPixel addressable LED rings and an Arduino controller.

I have the rough dimensions for the LED rings I’d want to use, next step will be to source some small round and / or square mirrors and test laser engraving them to see what results I get.

Update 2/6/21 – Stopped by Michaels, found some 7″ diameter mirrors for just a few bucks, also found some 4″ square ceramic tiles which I should be able to test engraving as well.

The backlighting has a few design stages I’d like to test:

1. LED ring lights up for each numbered position on the clock
2. LED ring transitions between each numbered position on the clock along with a secondary ring for minutes
3. LED for each numbered position on the clock changes color based upon time of day (transitions between bright yellow-white midday to orange sunset, white with blue for moon at night, then orange sunrise, etc).
   1. This would essentially be a 24 hour clock, I’d probably want to generalize morning / evening off an average time.