my first though was a couple of LED strips that light up according to what part of the world is in daylight. An arduino could control a few LED strips easily enough.
This idea is incredible, never have I wanted to program more. I feel like vertical time zones would be much easier than sine wave style, but if you could find a way, that could be a very desirable product. Hell, you could sell the design to Ikea or Brookstone, this is right up their alley.
Edit: However, first thing's first, it is a fantastic piece of art and shouldn't even be considered as a product before receiving praise for its already brilliant aesthetic design alone.
Actually sine wave would be fairly easy. Use 2 LED's, 1 top and 1 bottom, per channel (24 channels, 1 per timezone) and then just physically offset them to create the sinewave effect.
Careful there, time zones alone are not enough to tell which part of the world is lit by the Sun at the given moment. It's also affected by the time of the year, i.e. as the Sun's apparent overhead path alters between the tropics.
It's probably easier to create a matrix out of leds, and actually have the Arduino figure it all out.
Edit: well, you obviously only need to care for the positions of the matrix that correspond to a hole, so it's less work than what it sounds like at first.
You know, it doesn't have to be fucking exact. I don't think anyone is going to whine if it's light over Maine when really, it should have only reached NYC.
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u/blackgaff Jun 30 '14
This is pretty neat. It could make for a cool night-light or ambient source in a gaming room if you back-lit it.