ZIIIRO has come up with yet another way to represent time in a circle, as in the tried-and-true analog clock design, with their second pair of watches, the “Aurora” and the “Orbit”:

“What we are experimenting on Aurora is to reduce both swirls into a single element without taking away any functionality from the watch. Hour indicator which is on the bottom layer uses a 100% to 0% blue gradient and the Minute indicator uses a 100% to 0% yellow gradient. Overlapping both layers create a color mixing result thus producing an ever changing clock face color! It allows the user to learn a new way of interpreting time by understanding mixture of different colors. The Orbit is inspired by space and solar system. We want to build ZIIIRO as the ‘Solar system of time’ and therefore the hour and minute orbits around the parent star ZIIIRO. Colored orb represents the Hour and white orb shows the minute on Orbit. And most importantly, all these models are interchangeable with each other! All the watches in the rubber bracelet series: Gravity, Aurora and Orbit.”

-Via Core77

“This video shows the concept of my final degree project done at the Umeå Institute of Design: a device to listen to Spotify at home.”

Spotify box from Jordi Parra on Vimeo.

The box comes with different color coded RFID tags that can be linked to point to certain music on Spotify. Once it is setup, place a tag on the device and it will play that playlist or search, remove it and it will stop. The two small buttons are used to skip to the previous and next track and the big wheel where the tags are placed rotates to control the volume.

The setup and the process of linking music to the tags is done on the computer. The device has no display, it will only certain information on a LED matrix hidden behind the pattern of the speaker when needed (low battery, not recognized tag, connection problems…).

The current setup uses an Arduino Pro Mini that controls Spotify on the computer via Processing and Applescript. It is a prototype and it does require a computer. The goal is now port the current prototype to an ARM processor and get rid of the computer so it becomes a completely standalone device.

If you want to know more about the project, there’s a quite detailed worklog and a vimeo album with more videos of previous prototype tests: blog.zenona.com.

This project was done with the feedback from Rasmus Andersson and Christian Wilsson from Spotify.

-Via Zenona

Great fun party mix. Have a listen.

-Via Dannytrinh