Dioramic Light Clock

I made this dioramic clock with a NeoPixel strip which simulates a rising and setting sun and moon. It was a project in my Engineering class to make a special clock of our own, and I decided to go crazy with it. "How do I make such a beautiful, finely crafted masterpiece like yours?" I hear you say. Well, follow this guide and see how you can make a dioramic day/night clock that won't ever be as beautiful than mine, which I made within an entire five days!

Plywood sheets (1/8 in) - x20 (there are 20 layers to the diorama)

Wood Glue - x1 bottle (glues every plywood layer together)

Clamps - x3 (holds every layer together while the glue)

Paint - white, gray, blue, green (why do you think this thing needs paint?)

Laser cutting machine - x1 (cuts plywood into desired shapes)

NeoPixel strip - x24 LEDs (to simulate the sun and moon, 1 LED represents 30 minutes, 2 represent an hour, 24 represent half a day)

Wires - x3 (connect NeoPixel strip to Arduino)

Arduino Uno R3 - x1 (tells NeoPixel strip how to behave)

USB / Arduino connector cable - x1 (connects Arduino to your computer's USB port)

Computer - x1 (tells the Arduino what to tell the NeoPixel strip)

First things first: you gotta create each layer to the diorama. I made my whole project out of laser-cut plywood, since 3D printing takes literal ages to make all 20 layers. The laser cutting machine to help me with this, however, couldn't just do this on its own. So I used a program called CorelDRAW to create specific guidelines for the laser cutter to follow.

The images above are of the drawings we want the laser cutter to follow. Take a look.

So, you've gotten a laser cutter to cut out the shapes to this project. You should see all the desired layers in Image 1. The black lines resemble the pieces we're gonna be removing.

I also had some issues with cutting; sometimes the laser wouldn't cut through all the way, so I would try and push it out and sometimes break the frame, and it also took ages to cut every frame out. Take a look at Image 2 for some helpful tips when cutting.

(I know the images are sideways. I just couldn't rotate them)

And now it's time to assemble this thing. You can see in Image 1 how the diorama is supposed to look. 20 layers total, 14 hollow frames and 6 special frames; 6 hollow frames between the backboard and the clouds, 2 hollow frames between every other special frame.

You may have thought, from my flawless painting of my finished diorama, that one could just glue it together first and paint after, but doing it like that makes it a bit messy; so you're gonna want to take time to paint each layer individually.

• Paint the front side of the backboard blue like the sky (light enough for day, dark enough for night)
• Paint the clouds white (if you used wood instead of white plastic)
• Paint the mountains gray (with a little white on its snow peaks)
• Paint the tree and hills green (leave the trunk wood-colored
• Paint the final frame gray (make the top white like a snow peak too)

Anyway, that's gotta dry for a bit, so we better get this out of the way while we got the chance.

While the paint dries, you might as well grab your roll of NeoPixel strip and cut yourself one strip with 24 LEDs. Then, grab a few wires and connect them to the Arduino as shown in Image 3 (ignore the LED strip having only 12 LEDs and being cut in half, it'll be fine).

In image 4, you can see the nightmarish wall of code to even make this thing work. All you have to do is just write all of it down. Just make sure to write it down carefully; it's annoying to get one thing wrong and comb through all of that.

You'll want to write it down in a Tinkercad circuit file, since it can simulate what this thing will do before applying the code to the actual thing.

Once you've written this down and test fired it in Tinkercad, you should see a yellow light appear at the start of the strip and slowly make its way up from light to light. Once the yellow light gets to the end of the strip, a blue light should appear at the start and repeat the process. I imagined the light changing every 30 minutes to more closely resemble a clock (2 LEDs would resemble an hour), but I made the code a bit quicker so I could actually see it change.

Anyway. the code should be good to transfer to the actual arduino, so open up the arduino application on the laptop you're using to read this instructable, copy and paste the code from Tinkercad into the program, connect the arduino to your laptop with the USB cable, and run the program. You should see it do the same thing on the real life NeoPixel strip.

That was the most agonizing part done. Good job! I'm proud of you! Now we can finally finish this thing off.

Now that the paint has dried off, and that horrific wall of code has been typed, it's time to bring the whole thing together.

Get some wood glue and apply it to the outer edges of every frame, then gently place another frame on top of the other. I think I don't have to explain how to glue stuff together. What I will tell you to do is to look at image 1 to memorize which order to do it. If you kinda can't tell, it goes like this:

• Backboard
• 6 hollow frames
• Clouds
• 2 hollow frames
• Mountains
• 2 hollow frames
• Tree on a hill
• 2 hollow frames
• Hills
• 2 hollow frames
• Front frame

Once every frame is placed on top of each other, and the wood glue sits in between each layer like a sandwich, place a clamp on each corner of the diorama and squeeze it together. Let the glue seal it together, push the NeoPixel strip through the hole in the base, make it curve over the mountains and hills, and just like that:

Hooray! You did it! Won't ever look as beautiful as mine, but ah well.

You can always play around with the code -- line it up with the actual sun and moon, get it to show actual hours, make resemble an actual clock like I said in the title of the instructable. You do you, you have a dioramic clock now.

Alright, that's pretty much it, bye.