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Archive for the ‘alarm clock’ Category

When Arduino first hit the maker scene, the world of embedded electronics was largely unconnected and offline. But as the IoT, home automation, and smart technology advanced, Arduino kept up. Today, there are a variety of Arduino development boards that offer built-in networking capability and you can use the Arduino Cloud to take advantage of them. To demonstrate that, Doug Domke built this button-free alarm clock.

User interface design is a complex field that has to balance usability, simplicity, and practicality. Take a look at the radio alarm clocks of the 1990s to see how bad user interfaces can make device interaction frustrating. Domke’s alarm clock goes in the complete opposite direction and omits buttons altogether. It lets the user “set it and forget it” through a simple Arduino Cloud dashboard. The time automatically updates based on the configured time zone and daylight savings settings.

This requires very little hardware. Power comes in through USB to an Arduino Nano ESP32 board, with a connected piezo buzzer module and four-digit seven-segment display. Those fit inside a basic 3D-printed enclosure. All the magic happens through the Arduino Cloud and Domke explains how to set up an Arduino Cloud account, create a dashboard, and connect the Nano ESP32 to that dashboard.

If you want a dedicated alarm clock, this is a quick and easy project that will help you get acquainted with the Arduino Cloud for future IoT projects.

The post No need for buttons with this Arduino Cloud alarm clock appeared first on Arduino Blog.

There is one thing that we can agree on: more sleep is better. None of us want to wake up, which makes that snooze button oh so tempting. That leads to the inevitable cycle of pushing the snooze button over and over again until suddenly you find yourself let for work or your kid’s school drop-off time. Many people have tried to find solutions to this problem over the years, but we like Arpan Mondal’s Smart Wake-Up Mat.

This is a small mat designed to sit by the user’s bed. When the alarm goes off in the morning, the user must get out of bed and stand on that mat for five to ten seconds. Until they do so, the alarm will continue blaring. Snooze is not an option here and the simple act of getting out of bed and standing up should be enough for most people to shake the sleep off, ensuring that they won’t fall back asleep. Best of all, this is affordable and easy to build.

The clock is an Arduino Uno board, which has onboard timekeeping accurate enough for an application like this — though it will drift eventually without the use of an RTC (real-time clock) module. The alarm sounds through a piezo buzzer. Instead of an expensive and finicky load cell, the Smart Wake-Up mat utilizes a custom sensor. It is essentially a big button made of aluminum foil sandwiched between sheets of cardboard. A mat of the user’s choice covers that. When the user steps on the mat, they push down the foil so it makes contact with a wire, completing the circuit.

If you have trouble getting out of bed in the morning, this is a great solution.

The post Smart bedside mat won’t let you snooze your alarm appeared first on Arduino Blog.

There is one thing that we can agree on: more sleep is better. None of us want to wake up, which makes that snooze button oh so tempting. That leads to the inevitable cycle of pushing the snooze button over and over again until suddenly you find yourself let for work or your kid’s school drop-off time. Many people have tried to find solutions to this problem over the years, but we like Arpan Mondal’s Smart Wake-Up Mat.

This is a small mat designed to sit by the user’s bed. When the alarm goes off in the morning, the user must get out of bed and stand on that mat for five to ten seconds. Until they do so, the alarm will continue blaring. Snooze is not an option here and the simple act of getting out of bed and standing up should be enough for most people to shake the sleep off, ensuring that they won’t fall back asleep. Best of all, this is affordable and easy to build.

The clock is an Arduino Uno board, which has onboard timekeeping accurate enough for an application like this — though it will drift eventually without the use of an RTC (real-time clock) module. The alarm sounds through a piezo buzzer. Instead of an expensive and finicky load cell, the Smart Wake-Up mat utilizes a custom sensor. It is essentially a big button made of aluminum foil sandwiched between sheets of cardboard. A mat of the user’s choice covers that. When the user steps on the mat, they push down the foil so it makes contact with a wire, completing the circuit.

If you have trouble getting out of bed in the morning, this is a great solution.

The post Smart bedside mat won’t let you snooze your alarm appeared first on Arduino Blog.

Who says an alarm clock just has to beep, or annoy you in the mornings? Certainly not MakeUnited, who’s put together an Arduino Nano verbal reminder project over on Instructables. His device lets you program a whole bunch of alarms that each play a specific MP3 file.

The REMIND-INO is styled to look like a vintage radio, as the maker’s target audience is his grandparents. That being said I’m not a grandparent, and this would be an ideal way to substitute my inability to keep track of what time it is… ever.

There’s no limit to the reminders or alarms you might program into the REMIND-INO, but MakeUnited has a couple of suggestions:

  • Reminding people to perform tasks at specific times.
  • Tell stories, read books, teach cooking recipes and even play songs.
  • Keep track of appointments.
  • Anything else you might need a timely verbal prompt for.

And because it’s designed for an older demographic, he’s kept the controls super simple.

When an alarm goes off, it continues to repeat the message until you hit the big, illuminated button on top. Or after five minutes, just so it doesn’t become a major annoyance.

It’s an amusing project, as you can see from the build-along video. But it’s also easy to see how useful and practical it is. We see his grandparents being reminded to take pills, and to set off for an appointment. Alarms that anyone would find useful, regardless of age, and the verbal alert just makes it all the more effective.

The simplicity of the project would really keep the costs down too, and there’s loads of room for expansion and innovation if you wanted to build on this ingenious project.

In case you need it, here’s a reminder of where you can find the project on Instructables.

The post Remind-Ino is an alarm clock for everything appeared first on Arduino Blog.

Like many of us, [Lee] wakes up every morning grumpy and tired. Once he decided to try to do something about it, he settled on making a sunrise alarm clock using NeoPixels. Over the course of thirty minutes the clock illuminates 60 NeoPixels one by one in blue mode to simulate a sunrise.

The clock has three modes: 30-minute sunrise, analog time display, and a seconds counter that uses the full RGB range of the LEDs to light up one for each passing second. It runs on an Arduino Pro Mini knockoff and an RTC module for the sake of simplicity. [Lee] chained NeoPixel strips together in five rows of eight, which allowed him to use a 3×5 font to display the time. The only other electronics are passives to protect the LEDs.

NeoPixels are great, but powering them becomes an issue pretty quickly. [Lee] did the math and figured that he would need 3.4 A to drive everything. He found a 3-outlet USB power adapter that delivers 3.4 A total while shopping at IKEA for an enclosure. [Lee] took his first Instructable from beginner to intermediate level by cracking the adapter open and using two of the USB ports wired in parallel to provide 5 V at 3.4 A. [Lee] has the code available along with detailed instructions for replicating this build. Be sure to check out the demo after the break.

We love a good clock build around here, especially when they involve Blinkenlights. For those less interested in building an alarm clock, here’s a word clock that pulls time and weather data with an ESP8266.


Filed under: Arduino Hacks, clock hacks

[Bokononestly] found a lil’ music box that plays Stairway to Heaven and decided those were just the kinds of dulcet tones he’d like to wake up to every morning. To each his own; I once woke up to Blind Melon’s “No Rain” every day for about six months. [Bokononestly] is still in the middle of this alarm clock project right now. One day soon, it will use a *duino to keep track of the music box’s revolutions and limit the alarm sound to one cycle of the melody.

stairway-musicbox-alarm-clock[Bokononestly] decided to drive the crank of the music box with a geared DC motor from an electric screwdriver. After making some nice engineering drawings of the dimensions of both and mocking them up in CAD, he designed and printed a base plate to mount them on. A pair of custom pulleys mounted to the motor shaft and the crank arm transfer motion using the exact right rubber band for the job. You can’t discount the need for a hig bag ‘o rubber bands.
In order to count the revolutions, he put a wire in the path of the metal music box crank and used the body of the box as a switch. Check out the build video after the break and watch him prove it with the continuity function of a multimeter. A clever function that should at some point be substituted out for a leaf switch.

We’ve covered a lot of cool clock builds over the years, including one or two that run Linux. And say what you will about Stairway; it’s better than waking up to repeated slaps in the face.

[via r/engineering]


Filed under: 3d Printer hacks, Arduino Hacks

If DC motors are the “Hello World” of making things move, servo motors are the next logical step. [Simone Giertz] is following this exact path with the Wake-up Machine and her newly released Chopping Machine. [Simone] discovered that the best way to wake up in the morning is to be repeatedly slapped in the face by a robot. The Wake-up Machine was custom designed to do exactly that. Who could sleep through being repeatedly slapped in the face? A beefy gearmotor from ServoCity spins a Halloween prop arm round and round, providing  “refreshing” slaps.

wakeThe system is triggered by an alarm clock. The clock’s alarm output is connected to an Arduino Uno. The Uno then activates a relay, which spins up the motor. [Simone] realizes that she could have skipped the Arduino here, but it was the path of least resistance in for this project. If the slapping hand isn’t enough to get you going, the Wake-up machine does have a secret weapon: It may just grab your hair, turning a video shoot into a painful ordeal.

Simone’s latest project is the Chopping Machine. ServoCity must have liked her first videos, as they’ve sponsored her for this project. The machine consists of two knives that … well, chop. Two high-powered servos are controlled by an Arduino Nano. The servos raise spring-loaded knives, which then drop down, chopping vegetables, fingers, and anything else in their path. The whole machine is built with aluminum channel stock, and a huge wooden cutting board. Of course, just building the machine wasn’t enough. [Simone] filmed a parody infomercial for any perspective Chopping Machine buyers, and to put fear in the heart of anyone named Chad.

Click past the break for a couple of [Simone’s] vlogs describing the machines.


Filed under: Arduino Hacks
Feb
20

What time is it? Explore Galileo board’s real time clock tutorial

alarm clock, ArduinoCertified, clocks, Featured, Galileo, Intel Galileo, lasercut, tutorial Commenti disabilitati su What time is it? Explore Galileo board’s real time clock tutorial 

intel_blog_post

In the past weeks we explored how to make a gsm-controlled star light, a touch-screen controlled marionette, and how to learn more about Linux on Intel Galileo Gen 2.

In today’s tutorial  you’ll learn how to create a “Wake up clock” which will turn on and illuminate the room slowly, simulating a morning sunrise. And hopefully, it will make waking up on Mondays a bit easier!

This is the bill of materials:

Intel® Galileo Gen 2 power supply
Arduino Protoshield
LED power supply
1 High power white LED(3v 700mA)
1 1000 ?F Capacitor
1 2.1 mm DC jack-to-screw terminal adaptor
1 10k potentiometer

1 1.8Ohm 2w resistor
1 LM317t voltage regulator
2 10kOhm resistor
1 2n7000 transistor
1 Coin battery holder
Jumper wires
Colored wire
Pin header
1 8 mm magnet
Stiff wire (that is attracted to magnets)
Wood glue
Hot glue sticks
4 mm MDF components – lasercut according to drawing
Plexiglas components – lasercut according to drawing
Nuts and bolts
Rubberband

Download the files and learn how to assemble electronics at this link

Dic
13

Arduino Led Alarm Clock

alarm, alarm clock, clock, dvd, gallery, LED Commenti disabilitati su Arduino Led Alarm Clock 

 

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]



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