Laser glow in the dark clock

[jjsym]

I finished the next version with galvos and now it's close to perfect.
I quickly designed and 3d printed a frame for all parts and was able to fit everything into a surprisingly small enclosure.
Controlling the diode with PWM I set the brightness to a level where it doesnt disturb sleep at all and it still saturates the GITD material quickly (a few sec to draw the time).

Also when drawing slowly with the galvos they make absolutely no sound at all.

Heres some photos of the messy prototype and gif of my bedroom ceiling in a very dark room.

 

[LewDude]

When you 1st posted this - I was thinking along the lines of this (really cool!) project: https://imgur.com/gallery/d2qLI. And I can see where the noise would not be ideal for sleeping:

What you have accomplished is AWESOME! Kudos and thanks for sharing with the group!

 

[Gazen]

Good job, it’s great to see that you followed through with the idea.

 

[Encap]

I finished the next version with galvos and now it's close to perfect.
I quickly designed and 3d printed a frame for all parts and was able to fit everything into a surprisingly small enclosure.
Controlling the diode with PWM I set the brightness to a level where it doesnt disturb sleep at all and it still saturates the GITD material quickly (a few sec to draw the time).

Also when drawing slowly with the galvos they make absolutely no sound at all.

Heres some photos of the messy prototype and gif of my bedroom ceiling in a very dark room.

Nice work -- an idea whose time has come :gj:

Best of luck in building the final version. :beer:

 

[dkumpula]

What a great project. Congratulations on the successful implementation.

May I humbly suggest that you take it to the next level by adding an alarm function? Perhaps something like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dt8oiOsyqCU

 

[Benm]

I finished the next version with galvos and now it's close to perfect.
I quickly designed and 3d printed a frame for all parts and was able to fit everything into a surprisingly small enclosure.
Controlling the diode with PWM I set the brightness to a level where it doesnt disturb sleep at all and it still saturates the GITD material quickly (a few sec to draw the time).

Also when drawing slowly with the galvos they make absolutely no sound at all.

Great result i think, also for moving the galvo's so slowly their noise is no longer a problem.

Things like alarm function or even NTP time synchronization call all be done in software. The most important part is that you got the hardware to work as intended. Once you get the hardware down you can think of additional functionality, perhaps it could draw another line of text with notifications or anything like that that.

How often are you updating the clock now? I'ts not really clear from your video - do you draw it again every minute or perhaps several times a minute to keep the GITD brightness constant?

 

[jjsym]

Thanks everyone

How often are you updating the clock now? I'ts not really clear from your video - do you draw it again every minute or perhaps several times a minute to keep the GITD brightness constant?

Time is drawn once every minute.
Previous time gets just perfectly dim enough and next draw to appear bright enough to prevent bad ghost images from earlier draws. The letters/numbers are always very clear no matter at what point of cycle you happen to look at it in the middle of the night.

 

[Cyparagon]

Holy sht, someone actually followed through and built one of the weird project ideas they had.

All of my kudos to you, sir.

 

[Benm]

Yeah, it's cool how people sometimes do on an idea that seems a bit silly from the start, but actually works out well. It's also nice that those galvo's can run a such a slow rate whilst still being accurate... not something technically difficult to do, but as the manufacturer probably never considered that use nice.

 

[Bacon]

That is... most excellent!