I wanted to build an LED clock using a circle of 60 LEDs and use them to show more than just the time. I thought it could be useful to show the weather, too. Before building anything physical, I decided to prototype it fully in software as that would be faster. Plus I’d need to write some software anyway.

The clock uses a weather API to get the forecast for Boston, Massachusetts. It then displays:

• The current time (the purple light is the hour, the dark green is the minute, the light green is the second)
• The current temperature (moving backwards from the current hour, each red light is an increment of +2 Celsius, or each teal light is an increment of -2 Celsius)
• The weather forecast for the next 12 hours (each 5 lights represents the forecast for an hour. The more grey, the more cloud. The more blue, the more rain. The more yellow, the more sun/clear night. The more white, the more snow.)

Highlights

• It works (for Boston, at least)

• It demonstrated that the concept (in it’s current form at least) was probably too confusing to be useful

Downsides

• I never ended up using it