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pneedlemanon I built my daughter a custom alarm clock because everything on Amazon sucked

Appreciate the feedback. I made updates so the birthday story is more clear.

pneedlemanon I built my daughter a custom alarm clock because everything on Amazon sucked

Appreciate the feedback and agree. I made updates so its now in my voice.

pneedlemanon I built my daughter a custom alarm clock because everything on Amazon sucked

Adafruit and ~$60

The parts are all linked on the site and the GitHub.

pneedlemanon I built my daughter a custom alarm clock because everything on Amazon sucked

really good feedback. I made it for her for her 12th birthday as a surprise, and I can update the blog to make that more clear.

Since then, I have asked her for feedback and we made some tweaks. She is more excited to market/sell it, than build. I mentioned that at the end of the post and got her permission to open source it. She really wants to try to sell these which I am not as excited about due to being a full time parent & professional.

pneedlemanon I built my daughter a custom alarm clock because everything on Amazon sucked

I'd love to see them :)

pneedlemanon I built my daughter a custom alarm clock because everything on Amazon sucked

100% - the screen automatically turns off at night based on Sunset time, and turns back on at sunrise (unless alarm goes off before).

You can also get a classic green or color display with negative display and use custom backlight colors (https://www.adafruit.com/product/399)

pneedlemanon I built my daughter a custom alarm clock because everything on Amazon sucked

wow, means a ton. my daughter has actually been insisting that I sell them and had to get her approval to open-source the code this week.

Code and materials are on my github: https://github.com/pneedleman/reclaim-spotify-clock The off-the-shelf hardware runs around $60.

If enough folks would rather have a pre-assembled plug-and-play kit instead of soldering it themselves, I might seriously look into doing a small-batch run or Kickstarter.

pneedlemanon I built my daughter a custom alarm clock because everything on Amazon sucked

My daughter had an iPad and would listen to it at night. Eyes glued to a screen at bedtime drove my wife and me crazy. It would also just keep playing indefinitely unless I remembered to go in and turn it off, along with having to manually manage her Yoto alarm on holidays and school breaks. We wanted her to be more independent and listen to music WITHOUT a tablet in bed.

I ended up building my own because I couldn't find anything on the market without microphones that also had a Spotify controller. This has been going strong in her room for ~1 month now. Features include, alarm sync'd with her school district days off, weather (and alerts), Spotify, Hue, Sleep timer, parent dashboard, and much more.