Guys,

I’m always commenting about the Arduino project, so I thought that it would be nice to show one of my PIC based projects.
Note that I call it the Noduino…, LOL

I don’t believe 1hz crystals exist… the aforementioned timing source is commonly produced by the ac line frequency in alarm clocks.

@ Agent420

Agreed.

Anyways there is a common crystal used in cheap watches, that when divided by some number, gets you a 1Hz clock. But as far as I know, most alarm clocks use the AC line for their timing.

I’m def one of those guys who needs a aggressive alarm clock. The best would be sensors in your bed that make it so it won’t stop ringing until you actually get out of bed. Sometimes I manage to get out of bed, turn off the 4 alarms on my cellphone and the two on my alarm clock then go back asleep with out remembering. a cool feature would be adjusting the loudness according to how badly I need to get up.

I do something similar, though in a much less fancy way. I have a flexible desk lamp with an old CFL in it pointed at the ceiling. The desk lamp is plugged into an mechanical light timer set for about half an hour before my alarm goes off. Since the CFL is old, it takes a while to warm up, so its like the sun rising. On days I don’t want it to turn on I leave the switch on the lamp off. A bit Rube Goldberg, but it works.

Great, and just in case it would not wake me up, let’s wire it to me and turn on the power >:)

since when is there a 1hz crystal?

Maybe it is just me. I think all wake up alarms relying on wall electricity is a failure. Unless it has a backup battery which I doubt. All it takes is a short power outage and you will be confronted with the blinking 12:00.

On a related note, I find cell phones great as an alarm. Most of them has calendar function.

My first microcontroller project (well, first after the immensely satisfying “hello world” blinking LED) was a clock with an LCD display, and like this guy, I tried to use a controller with an internal oscillator.

It was a hilarious failure. Accurate to +-10 minutes / hour, and ran for no more than 4 hours on a fresh 9 volt battery.

It doesn’t get used as a clock anymore. These days all it does is tell me what command codes are being sent by various infrared remote controls.

LOL 1Hz crystal. I sense a decline in the quaility of HAD admin.

Yikes, is that an incandescent? Might want to change to CFL.

Not because of the eco-friendly stuff, but because burning your hand when you hit the light instead of the switch has got to be painful.