ECE 5730: Clocktower LEDs

A prominent feature of Cornell’s iconic clocktower is the coloring of the clock faces for special events, which many students enjoy. However, the current controller for the clocktower is a small remote that is less than ideal (with unclear controls, variable communication strength, and lack of extensibility/advanced features).

For our project, we designed a custom LED controller system for the clocktower. This system uses the existing LED lights, but uses a distributed system involving 6 Raspberry Pi Pico W’s to configure and drive the LEDs. With the system, Chimesmasters have the ability to not only set a constant color with more control, but to also have the lights change with ambient light and volume, and have the ability to extend the system over WiFi/Bluetooth.