Alarm Clock: Current Progress

For a long time (longer than I would like to admit...), I have been working on an arduino alarm clock. However, I really want to finish it as soon as possible (preferably before I go off to college), so I have been making a push to finish it. This post will be about my earlier design as well as my current progress.

My first drawing for the alarm clock. There is a row of toggle
switches at the top, the control pad on the left, and assorted
encoders and potentiometers in the bottom right.

My original motivation was to make an alarm clock that would trigger the lamp next to my bed and make it easier to wake up. I planned to use an arduino for the main processor, a real time clock to keep track of the time even when the clock was unplugged, a 16x2 LCD screen for the display, and the power switch tail to control the light. Beyond that, my design was rather over complicated. I wanted the clock to look like a control panel. It would have buttons in a standard up/down/left/right/select configuration and each day would have a separate toggle switch to turn the alarm on or off. After thinking a lot about the menus and interface (and even getting some of the parts I would need), I realized I was getting hung up on the control panel look. It was making my design over complicated and bloated. So, I decided to redesign
the entire alarm clock.

The ipod nano box I am planning on using for an enclosure

My final design is fairly minimalist (if you ignore the fact that an arduino is being used for a simple alarm clock). I kept the basic components, but I ditched the toggle switches and buttons. Everything will now be controlled with a single rotary encoder with a push button built in. This allowed me to shrink the size of my enclosure as well. I now plan to house the alarm clock in an old ipod nano box (to make it fit I will have to build my own arduino from the free plans on the arduino website).

The current state of my alarm clock

Currently, I have all of the components bread boarded and working together. I have written some basic code as well. I can scroll through a list of strings (the beginnings of the menu) and also display the main screen with the time, date, light control (the L in the top left), and the link to the menu (the M in the top right). Eventually, I hope to have alarms stored in the arduino's flash memory, options for the time/date display, control of the LCD's RGB back light, and lots of nice options for the alarms. Currently, I am working on figuring out a menu system that is easy to traverse and display.

I will be posting more updates on this project as I make progress.

UPDATE: The wrong date and time is from the battery being unplugged from the RTC for a while last week.