Berlin. It's one of those days in January where most of the people just get up and go to work because they really have to. Not that it's freezing outside. No not even close. Just the grey, dreary sky and the light drizzle going on, probably for weeks again, already.

Yep, including me. I just headed home from college. And instead of working for college, there is still a lot of work that needs to be done to get Fluorescence by The VFD Collective ready. Since the successful launch of the project on Kickstarter, I yet need to update everyone what's going on lately. There's the assembly manual that still needs to be written and stuff that needs to be ordered. Nevertheless, the last few afternoons I have been busily working on the firmware of Fluorescence and excited to share some new features here with you, and to announce things that are being developed right now:

• FLUORESCENCE is finally international! Time can now be configured in 12h format, date can be set to either MMDDYY or DDMMYY

• Sleep well: In night mode, all LEDs are turned off, and the brightness of FLUORESCENCE is set to a pleasant 10%. You can manually enter night mode; an automatic night mode shift, simply set over USB or Bluetooth is on the way

• In music dancing mode, FLUORESCENCE now dynamically adjusts the sensitivity of the microphone, making music from the distance dancing as intense as music close to the clock's microphone

• Bluetooth communication using an iOS app by The VFD Collective is coming very soon!

You can now follow the development progress live, as I finally have created an account on GitHub. Follow The VFD Collective on GitHub to test, preview and contribute to the latest OpenVFD Firmware.

I've found The VFD Collective to encourage DIY making and creating by yourself. So of course, FLUORESCENCE will be available as a DIY kit. The DIY kit is exclusively available as a reward when co-funding Fluorescence by The VFD Collective on Kickstarter. A part of the clock circuit board is quite challenging to solder by hand as the components go incredibly tiny. This is why I promise that the most challenging little circuit, known as the protection circuit come already tested and soldered. Hey, got a few of them circuits soldered already, can't wait to ship them finally!