Potter DIY: Weasley Clock
When Harry Potter enters the Burrow for the first time, he notices a strange clock sitting on the mantle. This clock was completely useless if you wanted to know the time. It had a face with no numbers and nine hands. Where the numbers should have been there were places like home, school, work, traveling, lost, hospital, prison, and mortal peril. Each of the hands had the face of a member of the family that pointed to the location where that family member was at that given moment.
One clever Reddit user, tbornottb3 (otherwise known as Trey), created his own working Weasley Clock for his parents.
The clock before the transformation!
When asked what his inspiration was for creating the clock he said, “Harry Potter was really important to my siblings and me as kids, and now that we’re all going our different ways, this clock seemed like a way to bring to life something from our childhoods and create something that binds us together.”
Original sketch of the clock’s design
He created the clock by combining an old clock frame, laser-cut wood and acrylic pieces, LED lights, a Photon microcontroller, and If This Then That. He said, “I used the Innovation Studio on campus at Duke to make precise measurements of the gutted clock and to laser-cut the pieces to fit snugly in,” in regards to his ability to create such an intricate Weasley Clock.
The finished face
The most amazing part to me was how he got the clock to update the location of the different family members. “Everyone in the family created IFTTT rules on their phones that send messages to the Photon if activated, which changes the lights on the clock!” IFTTT, or If This Then That, is a free website that lets its users create a chain of conditional statements. The changes are triggered based on changes on other web services.
Trey’s IFTTT List
Trey told me that a technical background will help, but it is not necessary. “I borrowed a lot of the code from public repositories online, but it helped to have a background in Computer Science to make the right tweaks and additions to make it do just what I wanted. The Innovation Studio also helped show me how to set up the Photon and wire up the lights.”
Trey is one innovative Ravenclaw who has no plans of stopping now! I inquired about his future plans to create other objects from the wizarding world, and he responded, “As for other magical objects… an e-ink Marauder’s Map would be really cool! Or a magnetic wizard chess!”
The finished product!
Hopefully, I will be trying to make one in the near future. Let us know what you think or how your attempts at creating the Weasley Clock went in the comments below! Take a peek at our main craft page, Potter DIY, to find other fun crafts.
