A fresh portion of maker ingenuity has appeared on Instructables, where educator and creator nicknamed BrainJar has presented a noob-friendly 3D-printed ring clock – a combo of simple electronics, clever code, and a bit of RGB flair. The project is built around a 12-LED RGB ring board and placed in a custom 3D-printed torus, Hackster reports, being a great example of timekeeping tech that keeps things visually playful.
“Playing around with a 12 RGB LED ring and a Raspberry Pi Pico it occurred to me,” explained BrainJar in the blog post, “how could I make this into a clock?” The answer arrives in a smart, color-coded system: a blue LED marks the hour, while the minute indicator smoothly shifts from red to green as each minute passes. When the two hands overlap, the LED cycles through a full spectrum—an elegant solution that makes the most of limited pixels.
Twelve LEDs naturally map to the hours on an analog face, though minutes land at five-minute intervals. Still, as BrainJar jokes through the project notes, it’s “good enough for making sure you’re not too badly late to an appointment.” A front diffuser built into the 3D-printed shell softens the light, and the electronics sit neatly in a compact base.
The build relies on a Raspberry Pi Pico paired with a Waveshare real-time clock (RTC) module, whose battery backup keeps time even when power is unplugged. A USB-C connector handles power delivery, but the standout feature is a simple hardware switch that toggles daylight savings mode instantly requiring no resets. “Just hit the switch,” BrainJar notes, “and this desk clock does the rest.”
For those eager to try printing or remixing the design, BrainJar provides a full guide on Instructables, STL files on MakerWorld, and MIT-licensed source code on GitHub.
