Musical Alarm Clock

[frank26080115]

Video and instructions at http://www.instructables.com/id/Music-Playing-Alarm-Clock/
I know most of you will simply glance at the first page and maybe skim through the rest. This Instructable has 18 steps (with demo examples for each building block) and 5 appendices, with about 90 files and pictures, including logic analyzer files/screencaps, expected terminal output, USB device dumps. I sincerely hope you explore all my efforts. I covered everything from SD cards, FAT file system, USB mass storage, IR remote control, LCDs, RTCs, and decoding MP3s. It's built using a Teensy++ and encased into a SparkFun shipping box.

[Alex]

Great work, I am worried it will break into pieces on a Saturday morning though. Consider a proper box for this nice project!

[sonicj]

looks like a very nice clock. i like the big numbers! definitely deserves a proper enclosure.
-sj

[williefleete]

nice.
at one stage i modded a clock radio to turn on an MP3 player and play music when the alarm pin on it went high
used an 08M to control the MP3 players play button and connected to the clock's alarm pin via optoisolator
kinda removed it afterward though, i have made my own clock using a few picaxe 08M's the main one has a 1 pulse per second ticker triggering an interrupt and sending out serial to some 7 segment displays being controlled with another 08M and shift registers

[johnwa]

That's a nice display you have there williefleete!

I see you prefer 24h format as well. Here is Australia, we seem to get thrown in with the US market sector, and all of the clock radios are 12h format. But, I took mine apart, looked up the datasheet for the clock chip, and found a 12/24h control pin, so I was able to modify it to my liking.

Actually, my current alarm clock is the Linux 'cron' command on the file server running an mp3 player. This way, you can automatically have different alarm times on weekends...

[williefleete]

i used 24 hour as it uses slightly less code space on the 08M's im using and i dont need to use a display to indicate AM or PM
i do however have it beep the number of hours in 12 hour format on the hour using the display's "PC speaker" which is controlled via serial, replacing the colon positions with bell characters.