Alarm clock in bedroom

Finished product

There is no space in our bedroom for bedside tables. Nowhere to put a regular alarm clock, mobile phone, magazine, book or eyeglasses neither bedside lamps. We decided to build our own all-in-one solution.

Even my wife’s scared look did not discourage me from going this way. We confirmed our decision by making a market research. There are many alarm clocks, from very easy one to projection on, but none of them has impressed us at all. The same situation with bedside lamps – we did not find a table or wall-mounted lamp that we would like. This was the right time to sit down and write down our ideas and requirements for final product. These were items on our list:

  • Regular clock showing time of day, date and day of week.
  • Two independent alarm clocks (for me and my wife), snooze function, audio and visual alarm.
  • Two independent lights and light controllers, both with intensity control and auto-off feature.
  • Large, good visible and easy to use and intuitive interface.
  • All this should be housed in practical and elegant case.
  • Last alarm clock setting restoration after power outage feature is a must.
  • All that we can make or manufacture ourselves (with respect to our skills and resources), will do at home in spirit of do-it-yourself concept (DIY).

This project is rather huge so I split it to several pages of this post. There are partial information on each page discussing individual parts of resulting product. For impatient readers, there is a photo of finished product at the top of this page and a usage video on the last page. Project is based on Arduino platform. Enjoy reading.


Page 1 – Introduction
Page 2 – Controller board
Page 3 – User interface
Page 4 – User interface, part 2
Page 5 – The case
Page 6 – Frame building
Page 7 – Case modification
Page 8 – Shelf installation
Page 9 – Hello World! video
Page 10 – Observations and conclusion

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