A Clock That's Close Enough

Some people appreciate finely-crafted timepieces that don’t drift even a single second in the span of a year so that they always know precisely what time it is. Other people couldn’t care less about a few minutes and just want to know roughly what time it is. For this latter group, fuzzy clocks can be a good choice. These clocks tell time approximately, using natural language like "quarter past three" or "nearly evening" instead of exact digits, which can feel less distracting and promote a calmer sense of time.

If you are interested in making a fuzzy clock of your own, then Redditor lazyplayboy’s recent project is worth checking out. It was made with just a few components, and it looks great. It also incorporates local weather information into its display, but that could just as easily be left out if you want less clutter.

The clock is powered by a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W single-board computer that uses a 7.5-inch Waveshare E Ink panel as a display. This hardware, along with a small UPS, was installed in a picture frame so that it can be displayed in one’s home without an ugly mess of wires and circuit boards to look at.

To grab local weather information, the Raspberry Pi requests data from the Open-Meteo API. Additionally, a button on the frame can be switched to change the clock's mode; if you need more precision, it can also display an analog or digital clock face.

The clock is intended to always be plugged in, but if the power goes out, or the clock needs to be moved, the UPS will keep it running for about five hours.

There are no instructions for the build at this time, but given how simple the design is, that may not be much of a problem. Following a few tutorials should be enough to help most people get a similar clock up and running in a matter of hours.