What is the natural way to display time? Is it 20:29? Maybe, if you work in a missile launch site.
Is it a circle with 2 hands pointing at numbers? Well, that also works.
We argue that the natural way to display time is by using words – the same way one might respond to the question “What’s the time?”.
It’s creative, cognitively appealing and most of all… it’s fun!
The natural way to display time needs natural materials.
Wood is a natural material and we love wood. We love its feel, its looks, even its smell.
The housing of time² is made entirely out of A+ quality pine plywood. Even the internal frame is made out of wood extracted materials. In fact, if any part of time² could be made out of wood, no matter the complexity, it was.
A square minimal design, a strong and strict typeface and flat plywood were employed to reflect the fact that time is straight and strict. It governs us all.
But we play tricks with it. We round it and try to loosen it.
So, time² also employs state of the art laser cutting techniques, like kurf cut living hinges, to tame the stubbornness of the seemingly unbendable wood and make its corners round.
Because it may indeed be 20:29 but actually, as far as most of us are concerned, it’s almost half past eight.
time² is an IoT device.
It has no buttons because it never needs time setup or adjustment. It uses WiFi to access the cloud, recognize its location, get the local timezone and accurately sync the time. time² will display the correct time without adjustment after a power outage, when summer time kicks in, or even if you move it to another country.
And if you want to override any of that, it can be controlled from your smartphone or other mobile device using BlueTooth.
time² features a high luminance LED matrix display supporting over 16 million colors.
Enable the lighting mode and flood your space with some decorative colourful ambience.
From color modes to transition effects, the display of time² can be fully customized using the time² Control App from your mobile device.
Want to monitor a second timezone? Select one and time² can display it at the same time as your primary timezone using a different color of your choice.
If you’d like, you can even use customize time² to hint you about the weather forecast in your location.
Every now and then we think of a new feature or mode.
On every cloud time sync, time² uses its internet access to “phone home”, check if there are feature updates available and apply them.
time² truly shines when it’s in your native language.
Besides the English version, Spanish, French, German, Danish and Greek versions are available.
More versions are in development so check back often to see if your language has become available.
Are you a maker like us? Do you like to tweak stuff?
time² is based on readily available open hardware modules, like the WEMOS Lolin32 development board and the ZS-042 RTC module. If you have some Arduino experience you can completely reprogram time² to function as you’d like.
We even added an I²C bus expansion port on its PCBA to help you add custom peripherals.
We are a group of 3 friends passionate about making interactive products that combine good design and smart electronics. Even though we have different day jobs in different parts of the world, we are makers at heart, so whatever free time we have we spend it in our projects.
Our past projects were one-of-a-kind custom ordered items or installations and that makes time² our first attempt on a massively produced consumer product.
We call ourselves nm_design and we are happy to meet you!
Nikos comes from Greece and he is the founder of nm_design.
He is currently stationed in Shenzhen, China where he spends most of his time working as a Product Director for a smartphones brand.
He is responsible for the initial concept of time² and most of its execution, including housing design, internal code, server side code, sourcing, prototyping, manufacturing & quality assurance.
Panos is the Electronic Engineer of the team.
He is stationed in Vasiliko Evias, Greece where he also designs electronic medical equipment for a company in the medical sector.
The PCB of time² is his brainchild. And it's' a very well behaved one. 🙂
If something needs coding, it needs Johnny. Rumor has it that he coded his way out of his mother's womb. 🙂
Johnny holds a BSc in both Mathematics and Computer Science and his main role in time² is the development of the mobile app.
He is currently stationed in Vienna, Austria where he is also working in some top secret projects for a big software firm.
time² is designed by nm_design in Thessaloniki, Greece.
It’s proudly made in Shenzhen, China.