RuudK5's Fibonacci Clock Offers an Organic, Spiraling Take on Time-Telling

Pseudonymous maker and timekeeping enthusiast "RuudK5" has built a clock with a difference: the time is displayed using light-up segments inspired by the Fibonacci sequence.

"The best clocks can be read in just a second," RuudK5 writes by way of introduction to the project. "For example [on] a digital or analog clock you can read the time within a blink of the eye. I have tried to make a clock that has that same feature. It's not supposed to be display the time exactly but to give an organic view of time in minutes of hours."

To do so, RuudK5 set about using 24 LEDs — one per hour. Rather than arrange them in a circle as with a traditional clock, or even a line, he decided to opt for a different layout — one inspired by the Fibonacci sequence, in which each number is the sum of the proceeding two numbers, visualized as an ever-shrinking spiral approximating nature's golden spiral.

The clock is driven by an Arduino-compatible Wemos LOLIN D1 Mini microcontroller board, connected to a driver board for a strip of individually-addressable LEDs. The strip is then glued into a 3D-printed framework, which curves it in a fashion designed to mimic the early stages of a Fibonacci spiral. Finally, a 3D-printed spiral on the front of the housing marks off the hours — making it easier to figure out the time at-a-glance.

While the clock is already fully functional — including using the LOLIN D1 Mini's Wi-Fi connection to update the time from an NTP server — RuudK5 has a few extra features planned, including an organic alarm clock and dawn light, alarms, and app-based LED color adjustment.

3D-print files and source code for the project are available on RuudK5's Instructables post.