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2022-02-09 Watchtower Clock (#1)

Intro

I can't count how many times a regular alarm failed to wake me up.

But I know what would work - a strobe and a dissonant sound. Powerful lights help the brain, especially during winter, to reset its circadian rhythm. When my sleep is shifted by 6-12h, -if- I manage to wake up, I use light to try to get myself back on track.

Notice the big -if-. How about I create my own clock? That will play dissonant, annoying crescendos, that will flash lights in my eyes.

    .-====- 
   /"/  |  \                                         ..        .
  /'/   1  .\               .-. -            .-   .        .
 / / `       \             --mm---.           .-  .-+
/_/.         ,\      ..  --#          +.++#+..
| |           |     ... #m..  MAGIC WAKEUP TECHNIQUES™
| |-9   o== 3-|   .m*%-%--                      . ... .          ..
|_|      \    |   .%m-m++-#.- .  .-.-.         %-m.m+.-  m.
\ \,      \  `/     . .  ++%m#.+.++m-%%% . . ...   .
 \,\       \ /                     - -.          .  . .        .      ..
  \;\,  6 . /                %#+++ .-
   \%\  |  /                ..   .m--+m.-.   ---  .
    ~~~~~~~                             .  +         .    .-

Features

So I've gathered up a list of features which I'd definitely like to have:

custom fonts
highly customizable and updatable alarms
output to connect to another board with strobes (and I'm talking about strobes which could be used as car lights)
ability to sync events with some SBC or my phone
ability to update alarms and fonts over-the-air
ability to flash it over-the-air (cool eh?)

Technical sketch

Since it needs to communicate, the easiest solution would be BLE/Regular Bluetooth. For alarms and fonts, an SD Card would be the most appropriate solution. Not only I can update it OTA, but worst case scenario I can plug it in my computer.

I've pondered a while about how to play alarms. Using a PWM and an amp, would definitely annoy me. But what's the fun in that?... Using a sound bank seemed nice, but I wouldn't be able to create microtonal distress. So in the end I've settled for a VS1011 - easy to use, configurable.

For the microcontroller unit, I've chose an ATMega128 for the pins and frequency.

I'm still trying to decide - should I use an LCD? Should I use an E-Paper? I guess the last one would be quite fancy but I still have to investigate how fast it would be.

Current status

My current work can be found in my Disroot git account [1].

I still have to do the power circuitry, adjust the audio codec, and decide over which display to use. The current circuit would also do with some power on/off of the peripherals (just to minimize the consumption).

At the end pictures and videos will be posted ^^.

Appendix

[1] Watchtower Clock repo