My original justification/inspiration for spending money on another pi plus pretty lights was this tweet - a word clock.  Very cool!

However instead of doing that, I started thinking of other (easier?) ways of displaying the time, and this is what I came up with:

Obviously a normal (cubic) die only goes up to 6, but with 9 available dots it doesn't take too much effort to add in a few more numbers.  Zero shows no lights, so midnight looks a bit boring...

The unicorn hat python library meant this was minimal effort, once I'd written out many lists of pixel co-ordinates - followed by several weeks of laziness before I tidied and commented the code and stuck it on github. 

The LEDs on their own are a bit harsh, so my current temporary solution is to use a bit of paper to diffuse it.  This does not photograph particularly well, so you'll have to use your imagination

tags: code Raspberry Pi