Traffic status on a wall clock

Use of traffic navigation apps to minimize the wait time on road is very common for drivers these days. Google navigation gathers data from the drivers who are navigating via Google Maps and shows the traffic flow on smartphones in real time. While this is a great feature to have in smartphone, it would be nice to have access to the same information in a much simpler way without the need to open the app. That’s exactly what this traffic status display wall clock does.

A regular IKEA wall clock is modified to have 12 RGB LEDs placed around it. The LEDs glow with different colors to indicate different traffic status. The LEDs are controlled by an Arduino board and 1sheeld. If you are not familiar with 1sheeld, it is an Arduino shield that allows the smartphone to be used as 40 different kinds of shields. Smartphones are equipped with many built-in sensors and a very high quality display. 1sheeld acts as a bridge between the smartphone and the Arduino board in providing access to all those features of smartphone. The link between the smartphone and 1sheeld is through Bluetooth. For this project, the 1sheeld retrieves the traffic information from the smartphone using Google Distance Matrix API and make it available to Arduino board, which in turn decides what color is to display using the RGB LEDs.
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