#977: ChimeChip

I love mechanical clocks. Their ticking is for me reassuring but I know people for whom the opposite is true of certain clock sounds.

Today’s invention is an MP3-based sound generator module + speakers for digital (or quiet mechanical) clocks. The sounds would be either digitally generated or recorded direct from historical clocks.

This type of unit could be placed discreetly behind any timepiece allowing a variety of different ticking sounds to be selected (as well as chiming the quarter-hours, if you really fancy it – although chimes would need to be electronically adjusted to match the digital time displayed with any ancient sounds).

Naturally, the volume would be controllable remotely (and programmable so that all the sound effects could be muted at night).