Chronologie

Concept user-facing interface
Shell
hardware
Final product

Inspiration

Managing time effectively isn’t just about productivity—it’s also about well-being. Many people struggle to maintain healthy habits throughout the day, whether it’s remembering to stand up, take breaks, stay hydrated, or rest their eyes from screens. Traditional reminders often come in the form of disruptive notifications, which can be ignored or become another digital distraction. We wanted to create a subtle, non-intrusive way to keep users on track for their personal goals. Chronologie provides gentle visual reminders that can be adapted for various needs, from workplace productivity to health and wellness, allowing users to stay mindful of their schedules in a seamless way.

What it does

Chronologie is a productivity tool designed to help users maintain a focused, distraction-free work environment. It allows users to customize their daily time intervals and gently reminds them of upcoming events through running progress bars and periodic flashes that indicate reached milestones.

How we built it

Chronologie is powered by a Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller, which serves as the intermediary between the LED light strip and the user interface.

Challenges we ran into

We initially planned for the Pico to be Wi-Fi-based, intending to connect it to our frontend through a mobile hotspot. However, we encountered persistent network issues. We then attempted a router-based approach, but our university’s Wi-Fi required authentication through a portal, which the Pico could not handle. Ultimately, we manually connected the Pico to a personal hotspot and pivoted to a command-line argument approach instead of the frontend due to time constraints. Additionally, we originally planned to display multiple event indicators on the LED bar, but time limitations forced us to simplify the display to show only the current time and event time.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We successfully connected the Pico to a hotspot, allowing us to access the Time API (timeapi.io). Initially, we represented the 24-hour passage of a day using LEDs, then advanced to lighting up a number of LEDs proportional to the elapsed time. We also implemented a feature where users could add an event via command-line arguments, displaying a different-colored LED on the bar. .

What we learned

We gained experience working with Raspberry Pi Pico WH, Python, Thonny, HTML, CSS, NeoPixel, TimeAPI.io, the Python Time Library, GitHub, and the Python Network Library.