my kinda hack right here which im sure many of you can relate to. this alarm clock is not just an alarm clock. it is one that is scared. scared of shock. thus, if you punch, kick, chuck a dremel at it when the alarm goes off, it will remain quiet. this is no simple hack mind you, but it’s not too hard if you can solder onto a pcb board and read hand-made plans just fine. a little more soldering and you’re done! you can now kick you alarm clock at will to make it snooze. you snooze, alarm clock = lose. very nice hack [mr. hackadayfan]
i highly reccomend checking out the “greatest hits volume 2” video. lots of laughs.
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lol i like when he threw the screw driver at it :)
Old news,
http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2005/04/alarm_clock_hac.html#comments
YEESH deian – so it’s old news, SO WHAT – IT’S STILL COOL! And there are those of us out here who HAVEN’T seen it elsewhere. For crying out loud – the poor writers of this Blog can’t seem to get ahead here…
Interesting hack – slightly surprised they left the sensitivity Pot inside the case completely. Sure it looks like they didn’t tamper with it any – but I can imagine situations where one would need to adjust the sensitivity to match the environment – opening it up to get at this seems a bit over the top, when they could’ve cut a hole in the case and made it externally accessible.
does anyone besides me think this hack is a little over-elaborate for the problem? why not simply replace the snooze button switch with an internal “vibration sensor,” i.e. a waggling spring. It wouldn’t be accurate to within .0001 of an accelertaion unit, but then again we’re going to be smashing this thing more than once a day.
Sorry, I have to agree with Jared… This is a Rube Goldberg-esque approach to the problem. However, hardware hacking isn’t always practical, so I say go right ahead and make an alarm clock more accurate than NASA says… I don’t plan on doing this, but still cool.
I know that it requires time to find new cool hacks and that there are also readers that don’t read make. I just thought of linking to make although I do realize that in my choice of words it seems as if I am bitchin.
I didn’t mean sound like an asshole – I like this blog and I do appreciate the read;)
it’s a good idea, but can be done much more simply and cheaper, i like the spring idea previousley mentioned. i think the hacker was just trying to incorperate(sp?) one of his products.
And dian, the site you posted linked to the one posted here.
The DE-ACCM is a good choice for this project because other vibration sensors such as mercury switches or reed switches only provide open or closed switch outputs, whereas the DE-ACCM provides a continuous analog voltage directly proportional to the intensity of the vibrations. For example, a mercury switch might prove to be too insensitive to measure the small vibrations of someone banging on the table, or it might be so sensitive that it activates simply from the vibration of the alarm clock
Agree with others about being over-engineered. Since this is a clock, we have distinct advantages when it comes to sensing movement or vibration. We can assume the clock will be in a standard position (that being, upright, with the L.E.D. viewable by a human). Therefore we can dispense with nearly all electronics and install a simple two-wire movement/vibration switch. See here for excellent switches to do just that. It would take about ten minutes to do, including disassembly, soldering, and re-assembly.
http://www.assemtech.co.uk/products/prods.asp?Cat=Movement%20/%20Vibration%20-%20Non%20Mercury
old news by 3 days??? look, if it’s a good hack, it belongs here. hackaday doesn’t make any “first to publish” claims that I can find. a good cookbook doesn’t remove a recipe just because it’s become a staple of everyone’s repertoire. it’s still included to help out the noobs since it’s new to them.