Planet Arduino

This is an original way to hack a dvd-player and integrate it with an allarm-clock. Well, building up a new Digital Alarm Clock with Arduino is the real project, the integration with the DVD-Player is the Hack. Thanks [razrbhr] to send us your project.

Arduino led clock driven directly using an Arduino Mega 2560 board.. Has an in built alarm function and triggers a DVD player via optocouplers to start playing songs when alarm time is reached so you wake up with a smile…

You will find more and the full description of the project, included pictures on his [blog]

[Dmitry] really went the distance with this project. It started as a broken DVD player scrapped for parts, and turned into this clock with way too many features. That link is a pretty a dry technical collection of the work. You’ll definitely want to have a look at it, but we’d suggest first watching the demo video after the break which is initially much more exciting.

The donor DVD hardware included a Vacuum Fluorescent display which is the nugget which [Dmitry] was after. But that board came along with some other nice things, like an integrated IR receiver. He also chose to use the PSU from the device. An Arduino is used to drive the clock. We’re not sure where he found it, but the video shows the service manual for the DVD player which must have a been a real help in interfacing with the display. The white dome on the right is a PIR motion sensor. It brings the device out of sleep mode when someone is in the room.

The case is laser-cut and started as cardboard to ensure everything fit as designed. The enclosure makes it a showpiece, but the features of displaying day, date, time, and temperature make it functional as well. Since the VFD is alpha-numeric we think this could even see future upgrades to be used as a new-mail/tweet/IM alert as well.