Smartalarmclock

It happens quite often that i see a cool Raspberry Pi project that i want to have working in my own home. Basic functionality usually is operational in no time. Then the real challenge begins.

How to fit this in as a real monkeyproof/wifeproof solution for everyday use?

In this case I wanted an alarmclock. Not just an alarm that beeps at 6.30 in the morning, but a little screen that tells me time, google calendar events for the day, the weather,etc.

Raspberry, touchscreen, speaker. Installed a webserver to display some webpages with time, weather and events and to control MPD.

Ready?

The raspberry has a light indicator (red). The usb wifi dongle flickers blue. The screen has white backlight visible.

Usb wifi dongle light flickering is very annoying in an otherwise dark bedroom. But there is no configurable setting to switch this off. I saw some forum posts on compiling new versions for specific kernels. Too difficult for me. So for this I had to use tape. I also taped off the raspberry light. The backlight of the screen was killed by switching off the screen during daytime and in the middle of the night with the help of a conjob.

But.. When i awake somewhere during the night, i do want to see the time. But the screen is off.

How to solve this? No solution found yet.

The clockradio is another item. I want ease of use when setting an alarmtime, and ease of use on stopping the alarm.

A cronjob can switch on the radio at a specific time during weekdays. But cronjobs are not easily disabled when there happens to be a day you can sleep in. Nor can I easily change the time.

Still I sticked to using cronjobs. The cronjob starts up MPC at a specific time but sets no volume. So by manually setting the volume to zero, I can skip an alarm. Of course then I have to remember to turn up the volume the next day. For occasional later or earlier alarms I can use http://raspctl.com This allows for webbased alarm setting, but strangely requires a specific date to be entered.

Ease of use for stopping the alarm. Throwing the alarmclock against the wall is not an option of course, but with a sleepy head trying to find the right button is also not desirable. The solution is found in stopping MPC by touching the screen (the entire div leads to url that stops mpd).