Jensen designed the clock and circuit board himself, and his elegant sense of aesthetics became apparent to me as I assembled the board and mounted it and the tubes into the handsome metal case. The finished clock looks like the creation of some famous mid-century modern designer. I plan to buy more of Jensen’s clock kits to make and give as gifts.

No housing is supplied, and this is where it gets interesting. I mounted my panels into a cigar box, and put the circuit board on top, its exposed wires lending to the retro-tech design. (I also considered using an old Mac G4 Cube case, or mounting it naked to the wall in a PanaVise.) Based on an Arduino-compatible Atmel ATmega168 chip, the Chronulator lets you download and modify the source code, connect to a computer via a USB-to-serial adapter, and display any kind of data. Would it be crass to have a “Number of People in My Facebook Friend Requests Purgatory” meter?

The Chronulator runs on a minimum of 1.8 volts and about 200 milliamps, so it’d be easy to power it from a small solar cell and a super capacitor. Then we’d have green time!