Stavros Korokithakis has long thought that a bedside alarm clock would be perfect, but he couldn’t find one that fulfilled all his requirements:
- I needed something that had a screen that would always be always lit, so I could check the time with one eye and half a brain awake, in the complete darkness of the bedroom.
- A screen that wasn’t too bright and wouldn’t disturb sleep, but that would also be legible in direct sunlight, so I could see the time during the day. This meant adaptive brightness.
- Octagonal shape so I can lay it down on its side (or at 45°) instead of having to crane my neck up to check the time when lying down (I really did think of everything).
- Weather forecast for the next hour or two, so I can reliably fail to wake up for tennis when not necessary.
- Annoying beeper for alarms.
- Less annoying built-in LEDs that would increase in brightness for a few minutes before an alarm went off, so I can wake up less annoyed.
Conceptually, making an alarm clock to fulfill these requirements isn’t hard. You take a small OLED screen, an ESP8266, connect them together, add some LEDs and a buzzer, and you’re done!
The result is a nice bedside clock with OLED display and 3D printed case.
See this GitHub repo for the code.
Eink, E-paper, Think Ink – Collin shares six segments pondering the unusual low-power display technology that somehow still seems a bit sci-fi – http://adafruit.com/thinkink
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