Development of a portable Muslim prayer time table clock

Abstract

The five daily Muslim prayer times namely Fajr, Zuhr, Asr, Maghrib and Isha vary from place to place and from day to day. The timings of these five prayers are not even for locations with same time zones. The exact timing of each of the prayer is important, because it is obligatory for every Muslim to perform these prayers at the correct time. The prayer times for any given location can be mathematically determined if certain parameters such as the coordinates of the location are known. The mathematical calculation become lengthy and tedious when the calculation of all the prayer times are taken into account, but the algorithms can be implemented into computers, microprocessor or on microcontroller. This project is about finding and implementing algorithms required for calculating the accurate five daily Muslim prayer times on ARM7 LPC2138 microcontroller and display the prayer times using 7 segments. Most importantly allowing the users to change the location information and other parameters used for prayer time calculation which describes different figh rules (conventions from major Islamic Organizations) and difference of opinion (in Mazhab) for Asr prayer time. Thus making it a flexible portable Muslim Prayer time clock which can be used almost anywhere in the globe, catering for the minor differing in schools of Islamic thoughts.