Liam Wade, Nick Nelsonwood, Josef Biberstein and Travis Libsack are lifelong friends who first heard of binary numbers in high school math class. Now as college students the team calls themselves Limbeck Engineering and have created ClamClock, a binary timekeeper for makers and tech enthusiasts. The project is currently finishing a successful Kickstarter campaign.
ClamClock is intended to be a maker project for experienced users or new makers who want to learn about programming, soldering, and binary numbers. The guiding principles during the design and development of the clock were quality production components and a product that would look visually appealing in any environment. Cases are available for office, dorm, or industrial settings.
The clock itself uses three rows of lights to display the time in hours, minutes, and seconds. The lights display the numbers in binary, with five lights in the hour category vs six lights for minutes and seconds. If you're like me you just did a quick math review in your head.
The design is meant to be completely open source and one of the rewards is a parts list and PCB schematic so that backers can make their own clock. The case is also intended to be a part of the do-it-yourself nature of the product so users can design their own case for any use. LEDs can be switched out for different colors and Arduino and ISP code can be used to change the original code.
ClamClock is a great simple project that brings together the maker spirit and the ability to learn about programming and assembly. The kit itself feels a little expensive to me at $40 for the components and instructions, but the goals of being visually appealing and technically interesting are great. The project will be funded on August 29, and first units are expected to ship in December, 2016.