Siderum
​
Siderum is a speculative design project imagining interplanetary time keeping with the aim to explore people-to-sense of time connection using networked devices. The name of the project took inspiration from ‘Sidereal Time’ (‘star time’) which represents the amount of time that takes a planet to rotate relative to fixed stars.
​
Siderum is a galactic timekeeping installation that helps visualize the relationship of time between two celestial bodies – Earth and Mars. Two spinning cubes, each at a different speed, represents a planet. Since each ‘Mars day’ is slightly longer than an ‘Earth day’, and each ‘Mars year’ is twice as long as an ‘Earth year’, it is important that inhabitants on the two planets understand this relationship to facilitate communication between the two communities.
​
The prototype was made by using two Arduino Nano33 IoT boards, each one was connected to one motor. One is connected to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) and spins a motor relative to the 24 hour long day and the other is connected to Lunar Standard Time (LST) in lieu of Coordinated Mars Time (MTC) since that API was more readily available and spins a motor relative to a 25 hour long day. The cubes were added on top to more easily display this comparison.
​
Project was part of CIID curriculum
Created by:
Neelank Sachan
