Assignment 0: Model a Final Project

This summer, I decided to reread the entire Harry Potter series, which inspired my idea for my final project: the Weasley family clock. For those not familiar/unealthily obsessed with the series, the wizarding family of Weasleys has a rather unusual clock - rather than showing the time of day, it shows where each member of the family is located at that moment. For my clock, I want to show my own location by using my phone to send GPS signals to a wifi device on an arduino.

Note: If you haven't read the Harry Potter series recently, you'll probably find that half of my explanations sound like magical mumbo jumbo.

Pencil Sketches

After a quick search online, I found I wasn't the only person with the idea to make the Weasley clock. However, I wanted to do something more magical (and aesthetically interesting) than the existing clocks. Although I don't have the final design hammered out, I started out by sketching a few ideas in pencil (and pen) on paper.

The components I'm planning right now for the clock are:

Vector Art

Although the design is not finalized, I modeled the more aesthetic parts of the clock in Illustrator. I began with the clock face, since the design is more abstract, and then losely sketched the wooden body before tracing it over with vectors. For the final clock, I'd like to make the body look far more intricate by adding abstract curly patterns in the bodies of the animals, as shown in the earlier sketches of the wolf.

Loose sketch of the clock with the Hogwarts Crest.
Scrapped the Hogwarts Crest and tried a design with the Marauders instead.

CAD Model

For the CAD model, my main concern was laying out how the components would fit inside the clock. Since the vector artwork isn't finalized, I decided to focus less on the aesthetics and more on what the entire assembly might look like. For the parts, I used measurements from Adafruit.com, although I can always change the dimensions later on if I wind up using different components.