I used a 4-meter strip of RGB Neopixels and cut into 11 LEDs per row. Soldered rows together. Used Easel and X-Cave to create troves for the Neopixel strips.
Since this thing is driven from a python program, the lights can be turned off at any time. I decided to fill most of the lights with a dim random color and then display the time in words in a bright primary color. i hope this helps.
That is really cool, Michael. So cool, I shared it with my local Python nerd. FYI, just from watching the video, as a colorblind type, it doesn’t work for me. I would personally need all the non-active colors turned off. Very cool project!