I’d been waiting for this moment. I’m not a electronics or coding expert and so, sooner or later, I expect all of my projects to die. But the Dawnclock just kept on living – right up to the point when it didn’t. I first blogged about this project in January 2013, which means that it’s been operating for eight years…. Read more »
The dawn clock is working well. To recap, here’s how it works: And here’s a basic description of how it works (more info & functions in previous posts): One hour before alarm time (configurable), the first LED is switched on. Subsequent LEDs are switched on at the rate of one each minute. To simulate dawn, the first 8 LEDs are… Read more »
The software for the dawn clock is written in Python. And no, I’m not going to upload it to GitHub, or anywhere else for that matter. There are two reasons for this: first, it needs work still; and second, it would take too much explaining, not least because it uses loads of my hand-rolled libraries and classes for the Raspberry… Read more »
My first big disappointment with the Raspberry Pi was the audio output from the headphone jack. When I built my first dawn clock, using an Arduino, I had to buy a separate shield for audio output, and even that was severely limited. With the RPi, I thought, life will be easy because all the audio stuff I need is built-in…. Read more »
One of the problems with my Arduino-powered dawn clock was that 10 LEDs just don’t put out enough light. I wanted a lot more for the Mk.II, but that then raises the issue of how they are controlled. Cascading shift register ICs would be one way to go. I decided, instead, to go with I2C port expanders. I selected the… Read more »
I don’t like waking up. I need easing into the day, slowly and carefully, especially in Winter. My wife is the same, which is why she bought a ‘dawn clock’. This is an alarm clock with a light that fades up slowly, over the course of 90 minutes, before sounding the alarm. It’s a fine device and we still use… Read more »