Conclusion

After using it for a while and getting out the obvious bugs, it looks like the soft- and hardware now is as stable as it was the last 15 years. I think this should be sufficient to make the clock radio useful for the next 15 years again.

Ofcourse, this project is open-source. You can grab the patch I made to the Carambola-kernel if you're interested in how I integrated the OLED and the other chips in the OS. If you want to do something interesting with the userspace clock radio code, feel free to nab the sources using Git:

git clone http://git.spritesserver.nl/clockradio.git

Also, feel free to download the artwork of the PCBs I made. I made the design in gEDA pcb and the version up for download has all the issues fixed that I found in my builds.

Unfortunately, I see no easy way to put online the openwrt tree I used to make the image for the Carambola. If you do have a use for it, make sure to contact me and we'll work something out. Also, if you do something with my code, I'd love to hear about it.

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20 comments

Darren Challenor wrote at 8 Feb 2021, 19.35:

If I was doing this project today, I would use squeezelite-esp32 on an ESP32 board.

Paolo wrote at 14 Jun 2020, 6.34:

Hi, this is a great project! How did you size the capacitors for the voltage doubler? You could have a ripple around ~2V (1V positive and 1V negative) based on a rough estimate of the current draw. However, it's difficult to find information on the acceptable input voltage ripple for the switching regulators. Thanks!

JayBeRayBearGun wrote at 21 Mar 2017, 15.52:

Hats off to this great project!

elparadise wrote at 2 Jun 2015, 0.45:

oooppsss... Got it. ;-)

elparadise wrote at 1 Jun 2015, 17.22:

Display pinout: http://www.22b2.com/index.php?dispatch=attachments.getfile&attachment_id=405 Can you put to download the library used to drive the oled? Thank you.

Mark wrote at 21 Feb 2015, 6.01:

Alas, OLED displays are not known for their longevity... I doubt the display will last 15 years. Many cheap OLED displays are spec'd at less than a 10,000 hour lifetime.

Sake wrote at 11 Dec 2014, 8.10:

Thanks, yes indeed: I have overlooked the pinout table time and time again. I'm thinking of connecting it to an ESP8266 for a remote display, or an HLK-RM04 possibly as a VNC client, or even something completely different... -- Sake

Sprite_tm wrote at 10 Dec 2014, 14.18:

Sake: The two-page thing you mean? It does, but it's easily missable: the pinout is next to the mechanical specifications.

Sake wrote at 10 Dec 2014, 10.05:

Hi Jeroen, Always enjoying your project descriptions! The simple datasheet available on the internet for the display that you used doesn't show the pin-out. Could you please share that information with us? Thanks! -- Sake

Zmaster wrote at 30 Nov 2014, 23.53:

SpriteMods FTW, always makes my day seeing this good stuff :)

Allan wrote at 27 Nov 2014, 1.01:

I have an alarm clock like this, and the last thing in the world i did think was making this. Loving your website

Sprite_tm wrote at 25 Sep 2014, 8.31:

Reynald: It actually does that; there's no need to manually set the time. In case of a temp power loss that brings down the network, and because it can make the alarm go off in hardware, I added the RTC anyway.

Reynald wrote at 23 Sep 2014, 19.53:

What about requesting accurate time from NTP service, rather than setting it locally?

Sprite_tm wrote at 19 Sep 2014, 22.19:

Amos: Good catch! I've corrected it. Rena: Thanks :) A capacitor or a battery doesn't matter that much: the RTC is mostly limited by the self-discharge rate of the thing that powers it. I wouldn't mind exchanging the battery after 15 years :P And theoretically I may be able to place the proximity sensor somewhere else, but the IR-led/receiver parts of it are a bit too far away to make it fit without drilling extra holes.

Rena Kunisaki wrote at 19 Sep 2014, 21.20:

Really cool design. The menu looks great and I like how you did the hardware safety fallback to ensure the alarm would still go off no matter what. Also like that you can change the next alarm setting temporarily, and that you don't have to hold the buttons. It looks like a very good UI. A couple things I wondered reading through: 1. Why not use a big capacitor instead of a battery backup for the RTC? Then it would be able to charge itself when the power is on, so no need to worry about replacing a battery. 2. Could you mount the proximity sensor on the top, in the gaps/holes where the speaker sounds through? It might work better there than through the plastic on the front. Anyway it looks great, makes me want to design something like that myself... ;-)

Amos wrote at 19 Sep 2014, 21.01:

As always, great project and great write-up! I hope it serves you well for more than just the next 15 years :D PS, I found a tiny error you might want to fix: when you describe the decreasing snooze period, you switch from minutes to seconds.

luftek wrote at 19 Sep 2014, 20.12:

I enjoyed reading your post! Great work you did.I like that you describe your design flow. I really need more debugging skills.

IuriC wrote at 19 Sep 2014, 15.55:

Great stuff you got there man!

Bruno Gonçalves wrote at 19 Sep 2014, 15.55:

Man, awesome job, awesome ...

Anon1706 wrote at 19 Sep 2014, 12.39:

This is some awesome shits.

Linux-based clock radio - Conclusion

Conclusion