Busy Status Bar

If you're looking for something with an addressable LED matrix in a clock style form factor, the Ulanzi TC001 [0] for ~$50 is worth having a look at.

Doesn't quite have the same aesthetic but inside it's just an ESP32 (flashed via the USB-C port) and there's various mature open source firmware replacements. I use awtrix[1] on mine and it's very easy to tie in HomeAssistant for doorbell notifications and that sort of thing. I did also knock up a Pomodoro app for it.

0: https://www.ulanzi.com/products/ulanzi-pixel-smart-clock-288...

1: https://github.com/Blueforcer/awtrix3

I was going to say that $200 seemed awfully expensive for a programmable kitchen timer.

I've had a project idea for a while that would require a bit more juice. In short, I want to make a music practice timer for ADHD kids that avoid actually playing music during practice time. I want it to be beefy enough to run some simple ML for detecting instruments being played, and I only want the timer to count down while the instruments are playing. I picture it looking a lot like the clock above, but with something like a Raspberry Pi jammed inside so it's got enough power to reliably detect "violin."

Any ideas on hardware for that?