Fed up with resetting bedside clocks, one tinkerer 3D-printed his own

An Ars Technica writer’s decades-long reliance on cheap red seven-segment LED clock-radios hit a breaking point after a power flicker forced yet another round of button-mashing to reset the time. That frustration crystallized a wishlist for the ideal bedside clock: it should set itself, handle drift and sub-second accuracy, optionally adjust for Daylight Saving Time, display the time on a specifically red seven-segment readout, and require no invasive companion app to function.

No commercial product checked every box. Radio-synced ‘atomic’ clocks came closest but none paired that self-setting capability with the exact red display he wanted. Rather than settle, he leaned on a 3D printer and off-the-shelf seven-segment hardware to build the clock himself, teasing a DIY project assembled from existing open hardware and community work.

The piece is less a security or industry story than a familiar maker narrative: when the market won’t produce the exact object you want, hobbyist fabrication and open tooling make rolling your own increasingly viable. The privacy angle — refusing app-dependent ‘smart’ clocks that harvest data — is a notable subtext for a technical audience weighing convenience against surveillance.