The “AlarmTock”, a Chumby Hacker Board Alarm Clock
posted Aug 28th 2011 10:03am by Jeremy Cookfiled under: clock hacks
[Thomas] wrote in to tell us about his latest project, the “AlarmTock”. Like many hacks, this was inspired by some outdated hardware, a radio alarm clock from 1992.
After finally getting fed up with his old alarm clock, [Thomas'] wife purchased him a new one for around $10 from a local retail store. Although most likely an improvement, [Thomas] wondered why after so many years he still had to listen to either an annoying “beep” sound or whatever song the DJ on the radio decided to play.
In true hacker form, he decided to do something about it. [Thomas] crammed a [Chumby Hacker Board], which has much of the same hardware as the [Chumby One] device, into his clock radio. RSS-driven text-to-speech was used to tell him exactly what he wanted to know every morning. A sample .wav file is provided as well as the python script used to execute his morning wakeup routine. For another fun hack from [Thomas] check out his Google treadmill hack here!
Interesting! I used to have that exact wireless card a few years ago. I can’t seem to find it now…
I had to have a fan blowing on it to keep it from overheating, so I hope his version won’t have those issues.