The codes for the lights are done. One will control the "five ten quarter..." it just uses simple delays for the appropriate times. Due to a lack of pins this code will be run through an Arduino mini.

I had a bit of help wiring a practice run.

My second code controls the hour lights, alarm, and  keeps a more accurate time. this will run through the red board arduino

The clock face was tricky. My panel was too large because the store refused to cut it because Jimmy was not there. So I used the carpentry shop on north to get it down to appropriate size. then i designed the face with appropriate words a hole at the top to provide a target as well as a little design to fill the space.

the hole would be filled with a 3D printed part with the photo resister glued to the middle.

the back panel would also be made of wood. The sides as well as dividers will be laser cut out of acrylic. 

It was very strange watching the laser cutter decide where to go next. It would often skip letters and go back to them later. After several attempts and a few burnt pieces of wood we got this

 

after a bit of hot gluing

the last thing to do was the wiring. I GREATLY underestimated the time it would take to wire the whole thing. against my better judgement but in a pinch I tried hot gluing the wires together, and in an incredible shock it didn't work. So I sauter the wires instead took much longer then it should have because of the age of the sodder was using but It works non the less

I never said I was any good or that it would be pretty.

This is the final version of the arduino and breadboard controlling the bat, speakers, and LED strip. It will be connected to the clock and light sensor on pin 7 to receive either a HIGH or LOW signal. It took a long time to play around with each individual component and the way it was wired. I would say the most difficult part was the LED strip. I needed to use a transistor to power it but the one in the sparkfun kit was not large enough to power the entire strip which was originally 10m long. I had to calculate the mount of LED's the transistor could handle, cut the strip there, and rewire it. Even after this I was having a lot of trouble getting the transistor to behave the way I wanted it to. Eventually I realized I had the pins wrong and was able to fix it. The servo was also fairly challenging to control but I used a sweep function I designed in a lab earlier this semester and it did the trick. The speakers were fairly straight forward once we got them plugged in.

Above is the release pin for the bat which is triggered by the servo motor. To make this part I used a jigsaw to cut the 2x4 seen in the picture. I then screwed in brackets on either side and bent the pin out of a piece of wire. I attached the pin to the servo using a length of thread that I folded over itself a few times to add strength. Initially the pin was not functional because after the servo pulled it, it would jam up and not let the bat fall. I was just about ready to redesign the trigger mechanism when I tried bending the pin a little bit at the beginning. This solved the problem and it hasn't jammed since.

This is the wiffle ball bat that will be used to wake up subjects. It will be dropped by the servo motor pulling a pin. It's wrapped with an LED strip that is capable of RGB although we are only using it to blink red. The bat is also spray painted a metallic gold in order to reflect more light as well as making it more visually appealing. Lastly the LED's are wrapped in a few layers of plastic wrap to protect the LED's and the person they are being dropped on.

Above are two versions of the design I drew up for the bat dropper. The scale is 1 block to 1 inch. The original design is on top and on the bottom is the updated current design. When designing it I wanted to keep the following in mind:

• Lightweight and sturdy structure
• Consistency
• Portability
• Maximum reach from wiffle ball bat
• Aesthetics

These are pictures of the speakers we are using to produce the alarm sound. The two speakers will be mounted on either side of the bat dropper and a battery powered amplifier will be attached to the back.

I've had them for a long time and while they don't sound great plugged into an music player, they are perfect for waking someone up. I simply had to strip the input wire and connect it in a circuit with a 10 k resistor to the pin associated with the speaker code and the speakers worked perfectly with Nick's code.

Above are screenshots of the code that will be used to control the bat dropping device, as well as the speaker.  When an input signal is received from the clock, it will activate the speaker, which will produce several tones before dropping a bat on the unsuspecting target.

Here is a picture of the code that is going to be used for the speaker.  Because sound is a wave, it can be simulated by alternating between turning a speaker on and off.  A longer pause between the alternation will result in a lower sound and vice versa.

I am beginning to work on the clock and light sensor aspect of the project.





I like this one however I believe it is sloppily made due to the LEDs bleeding into words they are not supposed to.

This project requires the following steps in no particular order. (aside from the last step)

1) figure out how to get more pins out of my existing Arduino. The number of LEDs required exceeds the amount of pins I have available.

2) Format the clock and prepare a sketch for laser cutting.

3) Code LEDs and sensors.

4) Construct final clock

 The pictures shows the three main parts of the clock. Top being the fount view.

Top picture (from left to right) Back housing for wiring and Arduino - cardboard piece to hold LEDs - Display.

Bottom picture (left to right) Display showing the 3D aspect of the display and the walls around words insuring the light from the LED will not bleed through- middle panel for lights and back panel.




 



























  

This blog will be used to chronicle our arduino project.

 

 

The three you see above are the members of our group, Jack Gillette, John Maloney, and me, Nick Cocca.  We have tentative plans to create an alarm clock using our arduinos that will coax even the laziest person out of bed. 

 

Below are some arduino projects I thought were pretty cool.