Chime Zone

Take a musical journey around the world in just four notes

Chime Zone is an interactive world clock with 24 city names on its face that correspond to time zones. Four times an hour, a chime signal is sent from the Arduino microcontroller to a MIDI-capable instrument which indicates the time of day as well as the time zones that the viewer has selected.

Progress as of Dec 1, 2014:

Clock face cut out of 3/16″ plywood.
Holes drilled and LED strand placed temporarily.
City names selected and attached to clock face.
Trying out different artwork for center of clock face – discovered that the city label order is reversed if using a North Pole projection. A South Pole projection is not as informative.
Wrote the Arduino code for selecting time zone based on four potentiometers attached to analog input pins.
Tested Arduino code with slider potentiometers attached to an Arduino Pro Mini.
Midi shield attached to a synthesizer and tested with code written for MIDI output.

Features of the final product:

Four user-selectable time zones for chime generation.
Algorithmic generation of musical chimes based on time zone selection and time of day.
Short 4-note chime played at 15 minute marks (:15 and :45). Each time zone has a semitone assigned to it. The 4-note chime plays in reverse during nighttime hours.
Longer chime played at 30 minute mark (:30). This chime begins with the 4-note chime then does one or two variations on it depending on the hour of the day.
Unique song played at 1 hour mark (:00)