If you spend your life living under a rock you might have missed one of the recent obsessions amongst the young’ns: sequin-covered pillows, plush toys, and even clothing that change colour when you rub your hand across them. It’s a completely pointless experience, but also an incredibly satisfying one that’s actually inspired a clever hacker to make a clock that tells the time in sequins.
Understanding why the Sequino was created is an act of futility. It’s nearly impossible to find a gadget in existence that can’t display or tell you the time in some capacity, so creating a clock that takes approximately four minutes to write out the current time on a sequin-covered cylinder is a completely pointless endeavour. You’re already four minutes late if you wait around to actually check the time using the Sequino.
That being said, even sitting here at my desk watching the Sequino in action through YouTube I have to force myself to not reach out and touch my screen in an attempt to rub my hand across the clock’s sequined surface. It’s officially my new fidget toy obsession, even though I can’t actually buy it, don’t have the skills needed to build my own, and any attempt to interact with the clock’s sequin surface would interfere with its sole job of writing out the time from four minutes ago.
If you’d like to try and build one for yourself, “ekaggrat” has shared a fairly in-depth behind the scenes look at how they designed and built the Sequino over on Hackster.io. You’ll need the usual tools like a soldering iron, 3D printer, Arduino, and various other electronic bits that won’t break the bank, plus some sequin-covered cloth that can probably be salvaged by sacrificing a sequin pillow. If you succeed, just understand it will probably mean the end of any work productivity through the day as you watch (and touch) the minutes as they slip away.