Mosque TV Prayer Clock
Masjid clocks are usually the old fashioned vertical LED digital displays that are quirky to set up with a fiddly remote control. Most of the time the prayer times on the display vs that on the mosque website vs that which is printed on their annual calendar is are disjointed which leads to confusion and frustration.
The management at the Muslim Cultural & Welfare Association of Sutton (MCWAS) approached me with a request to find an easier way to maintain the masjid prayer time consistent across all their distribution medium and at the same time remove the need for manual maintenance considering the Imaam was getting very frustrated with the fiddly remote control.
We started with a single source of truth for the prayer timetable which was in the form of Google Sheets. With some setups, we were able to transform the sheet into an API endpoint using Google APIs and were able to distribute the data in JSON format. The same google sheets also services the online prayer timetable through the website.
Next, we wrote the core program using a language called Processing which connected to the google sheets via the API and processed the timetable and displayed the current days’ timings on a simple graphical display.
Additional features include a 20 mins countdown to salah so that those in the congregation know if they have enough time to pray sunnah (optional prayers) before fard or the obligatory prayers.
The clock has been received well, especially the regular elder members of the congraation and most importantly the Imaam who no longer has to adjust the times using the fiddly remote control.
The prayer clock showing the “Time to Salah” countdown
