Here's a neat gadget for a touch of functional, neon-minimalist home decor: a palm-sized smart canister device that fixes onto a wall and uses slim, moving LED beams to create giant, glowing, multicolor clocks and/or temperature gauges.
It's a simple enough idea; the Hubble Traveller Dot Clock has a pair of multicolor LEDs in the middle of it, stacked one on top of the other in mechanically driven rings. The light is focused through a series of lenses, and exits through slots in the side of each ring to create a precise, slim line of light on the wall it's attached to.
The hour ring sits on top of the minute ring, and can be set to aim at a sharper angle, shortening and thickening the glowing 'hour hand' it creates. A built-in processor controls the movement of each ring and adjusts the strength of the light beam for day and night use.
There's an alarm function if you're into that sort of thing, and there are Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connections through which it can interface with a smartphone app to set the time, and choose between color themes, time zones and other functions.
The device itself, 10 cm (3.9 in) in diameter and 8.6 cm (3.4 in) tall, has a few small switches and a rotating bezel on top for manual control. It's handsomely mechanical to look at, like a fancy shower tap – and stylish enough to take out a Red Dot design concept award back in 2020 as an early prototype.
Its built-in battery gives you up to a week of operation between charges, after which you pop it off its wall mount and stick it on a USB or wireless charger to top up. Alternatively, you can set it up more permanently by wiring up the wall mount to act as a constant charger.
They'll ship with a template and some numbers you can stick on the wall – or of course, you can come up with your own design instead – but the effect is terrific; a huge-diameter light clock that works with all sorts of wall colors, and looks particularly cool in low light. It needn't keep you up at night, though, since the app allows you to put the clock to sleep between certain hours or turn the beams down to a barely-there setting if you prefer.
The creators, One Balance out of Hong Kong, are also making a smaller, cheaper "Moon" unit with just a single LED "hand." This can function as a standalone hours-only clock for an even more minimalist approach, or in conjunction with a set of small dot sensors it can also function as a temperature or humidity gauge.
That's handy if you want to grab the temperature or humidity in the room – but it'd also be neat if the device could grab a weather forecast through its smartphone connection to tell you what it's going to be like outside, or change the colors of its hands as an instant visual prompt on what sort of day it's going to be.
The Hubble Traveller Dot Clock Kickstarter campaign has just opened, and has already impressed enough backers to blast through its goal within a couple of days. "Super early bird" 40%-off deals on the single-hand Moon unit start at US$179, and the two-hand Traveller itself starts at $419, with deliveries scheduled to ship by mid-2025.
Source: Hubble Traveller Dot Clock Kickstarter
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