Recently my alarm clock broke and I started looking around for a new one. I've seen some really cheap stuff for about 2.99 or 12.99 etc. but it started me thinking about building my own!

I took some electronics courses back in school, and worked with the Basic STAMP devices. I've done programming on different bits of hardware including the Game Boy Advance, and work as a full time software developer, so have a general insight into what I want to achieve.

My main goal is to build a linux embedded alarm clock that has a bit of a "geeky" appeal to it. Some features I want include:

* HTTP Server, with tools to set time, alarms and configuration
* All functions available through local interface using input buttons and LCD screen (may skip if HTTP interface is good enough)
* MP3/AUDIO output for a variety of tones that can be changed or configured through the HTTP-interface tool
* Multiple alarms, with ability for different tones on each alarm
* Programmable snooze delays with maximum snooze counts
* Daily alarm times, so it doesn't wake me up on a weekend and I don't have to switch it off on friday night
* Time-syncronisation with network servers (also ability to set delay, so its accurate time but 5 minutes behind :-p)
* Nice big LCD display, graphical would be nice but they dont seem as bright as the character based ones. I wanted huge digits that I can see without focusing my eyes too much in a morning. But also wanted to use the display for date, day, weather information, rss feeds (maybe :-p), etc.


I don't think a serious amount of processing power is needed. I'd looked at some embedded arm boards that had 200Mhz processors on... I think the running of the webservice will be the most demanding, and decoding the audio. Unless there's a board that can do mpeg decoding in hardware.

I've thought about making it network bootable but I'd like to be able to take it other places other than my home so I'd want the clock to store all its data locally. I think the MP3's or audio files should be stored externally and only store tones or midis locally.

It should be fairly small, about the size of a normal alarm clock and take a simple 5v DC adapter - low power would be nice for the electricity bill. I want the thing to be wired to the network... wireless is an option but it bumps up the price a little and I don't like the unsecurity of wireless networks... especially for my alarm clock! :-p

So, all that out of the way... I'd basically like some help on where I can go about building it. I plan to hide it all inside a pre-manufactured alarm clock so that I don't have to make my own, and I'd like it to be a cheap as possible. I was looking in the range of £100-£200 for the lot, with development boards anywhere between £100-200

I'd been looking at ARM but I think anything that runs linux is on the cards. I think about 16-32mb of ram would be nice... especially with audio loaded into memory, and anywhere between 16 and 128mb for flash... I dont think an SD-slot is required as I'd like to pull any extra audio from a network drive, but it would be nice for loading code onto it, as apposed to reflashing. So maybe it'd be an internal SD slot only.

A connection to the board would be nice, but I think so long as it has support for it (rather than a big hefty serial port on the back) then that would be fine.

If anyone knows a better forum where this can be asked I'd much appreciate it, but I'm basically looking for a single board solution that can run a form of embedded linux and be powerful enough to decode audio and run a web service. Also an internal header for serial output as I think the LCD screen will need to be serial-controlled...

Thanks guys,
Chris

Try linuxdevices.com