When accepting this assignment, I might’ve failed to mention a small detail to the boss folks: I don’t own a car, let alone a DeLorean, for displaying the finished prop. Instead, mostly inspired by Jeri Ellsworth’s NES purse, I had this goofball idea of a slim, battery-powered device that could be installed and photographed in ironic settings: on a bicycle, on public transit, hung from a Flavor Flav necklace as “bling,” and so forth.

While the general idea could have been accomplished quickly and easily with an iPad running the Flux Capacitor™ app, I wanted to preserve somewhat the staggered design of the original, and it had to have real 7-segment LED displays…there’s no substitute for seeing the genuine thing. In much the way that nixie tubes have a certain vintage coolness about them, LED displays too are reaching a nostalgic threshold, iconic of 1980s technology.

Using stock parts required some design compromises. The date and time formats would be changed to fit these 4-digit displays (the film prop used back-painted glass fakes for the month display, with some segment changes being physically impossible, making a 100% match unattainable anyway…iPad wins there). Also took liberties with some LED colors and various spacings, but overall the piece is still highly recognizable.

For the sake of a quick demo, I had to cut this short. Though all the displays are addressable, the destination and last-departed dates are simply fixed values from the first film; there’s no interaction. I may revisit this to add a keypad later, but for now it’s all just a fancy clock (it does show the current time accurately, using a ChronoDot RTC). Also, the vector files are not available, because they’re utter garbage! Creating something of finished kit quality requires many iterations and refinements…but with a rushed, one-shot piece like this, course corrections would come in the form of a Dremel tool and epoxy putty. If you plan to build one, give it some time and prepare your blueprint carefully.