From a box to a dome: how Risemoor got its shape

Risemoor did not start as a dome. The first case drawn for it was a box: a base 150 mm wide, 130 mm deep and 168 mm tall, with a speaker chamber below, seven-segment digits behind a smoked acrylic window, three buttons on top, and an 80 mm dome on the lid for the lamp. All in, it stood about 211 mm tall.

It worked on paper. Every part fitted the printer, the sealed chamber hit its volume target, and the tests passed. It also looked like what it was: a box with a lamp on it. On a bedside table it would have been the biggest thing there.

One shape instead of three parts

The redesign started from a mood board rather than a parts list: one soft form with a single seam, a lamp that shows the time through its own diffuser, and nothing that looks like a gadget. What came out is a cylinder 104 mm across and 137.8 mm tall: a low matte-black base, 21% of the height, under a frosted dome that is the other 79%.

• The digits moved inside the dome. Instead of segments behind acrylic, the time is 62 small LEDs on a flexible strip behind the dome wall, each one shaped into a dot by a cell in a white sleeve. Four digits of 3 by 5 dots plus a two-dot colon is exactly 62.
• The three buttons became one. The dome rests on three switches and is held level by springy leaves, so a press anywhere on it clicks all three together. The whole dome is the button: about 4.1 N to press, by the model.
• The speaker went underneath. A small full-range driver fires down into the base and out through 120 slots around it, so there is no grille on the front.
• The clock floats. One soft ring underneath instead of four feet, so from the side you see a shadow, not legs.

Where the time sits

The time is centred on the front, as high as the dome's straight wall goes. From a pillow your eye is half a metre to a metre and a half away and roughly level with the clock, and the straight wall is the only part of the dome that faces you square on. The digits are 15 mm tall, which is large for a clock this size: chosen to be read at a glance without lifting your head.

What is still unknown

All of this is designed and checked by tests on a computer. None of it has been printed, lit or heard yet. Whether the dots look crisp through the dome, whether the press feels right, and how the speaker sounds are questions only a built clock can answer, and we will write about them when one exists.