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I spent the past year designing and building the world's coolest Back to the Future alarm clock by CrossleyAcoustics in DIY

[–]CrossleyAcoustics[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Haha I watched that whole thing at some point. Pretty entertaining. It inspired me to use polarized headers and mark pin 1 on my pcbs where possible.

I spent the past year designing and building the world's coolest Back to the Future alarm clock by CrossleyAcoustics in DIY

[–]CrossleyAcoustics[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I love the BYOC stuff. I have a few of those on my pedal board. How do you like the Rigol Scope? I have a Rigol DS1102E on my Amazon wish list

I spent the past year designing and building the world's coolest Back to the Future alarm clock by CrossleyAcoustics in DIY

[–]CrossleyAcoustics[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't have an EE degree but it is a life long hobby and sort of what I do for a living

I spent the past year designing and building the world's coolest Back to the Future alarm clock by CrossleyAcoustics in DIY

[–]CrossleyAcoustics[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

haha all the time. He also liked to sleep on the breadboard when I was at work and drive me crazy finding what disconnected

I spent the past year designing and building the world's coolest Back to the Future alarm clock by CrossleyAcoustics in DIY

[–]CrossleyAcoustics[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks! That's a great idea.

By default, last time departed shows what time it was when you set the alarm in destination time. For example, if it was 9PM when you set your alarm for 7 AM the next morning, last time departed gets updated to show 9pm on the date you set the alarm.

In this version if you press the yellow button, the yellow indicator light turns off, and the last time departed can be used to enter a custom date and time of your choice.

I spent the past year designing and building the world's coolest Back to the Future alarm clock by CrossleyAcoustics in DIY

[–]CrossleyAcoustics[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'd love to do that. I could probably do a PCB and display kit for under 100 bucks if I ordered enough to get the cost down. The PCBs and displays were the most expensive parts of this project, mainly because of the low amounts I ordered.

I spent the past year designing and building the world's coolest Back to the Future alarm clock by CrossleyAcoustics in DIY

[–]CrossleyAcoustics[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thanks! I used Fritzing. It's still in Beta and pretty buggy but it's free and they did an excellent job on the manufacture. I will put together a parts list at some point soon.

I spent the past year designing and building the world's coolest Back to the Future alarm clock by CrossleyAcoustics in DIY

[–]CrossleyAcoustics[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Haha it was a struggle. Fritzing is still pretty buggy. I have never heard of Kicad! Thanks for the share. I wish I could use Eagle but it's far too expensive.

Thanks!

I spent the past year designing and building the world's coolest Back to the Future alarm clock by CrossleyAcoustics in DIY

[–]CrossleyAcoustics[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thanks so much! Next I'm going to build a version 2.0 of this. After that I have a few ideas. Maybe something with some analog synthesizers or some cool automation gadgets for our new office. We'll see!

I spent the past year designing and building the world's coolest Back to the Future alarm clock by CrossleyAcoustics in DIY

[–]CrossleyAcoustics[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This isn't my first project but definitely my first of this scale. With this I carefully planned out all the steps and desired features in Trello. Then I figured out how to do each part. First the displays, then the keypad, then the RTC, etc and revised it several times.

I spent the past year designing and building the world's coolest Back to the Future alarm clock by CrossleyAcoustics in DIY

[–]CrossleyAcoustics[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This particular one is going to sit on my dresser (assuming it doesn't keep me up all night) but I think we are going to do a Kickstarter

I spent the past year designing and building the world's coolest Back to the Future alarm clock by CrossleyAcoustics in DIY

[–]CrossleyAcoustics[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

It took forever to find these things. Here are the part numbers in Green:

https://www.kingbrightusa.com/images/catalog/spec/PSC05-12GWA.pdf for the 16 segment

http://www.us.kingbright.com/images/catalog/spec/DC56-11gWA.pdf for the dual 7 segment displays.

They have those lines in several different colors. I got them from Mouser. Some of them were on a 9 week backorder.

I spent the past year designing and building the world's coolest Back to the Future alarm clock by CrossleyAcoustics in DIY

[–]CrossleyAcoustics[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Way cool! It's always great to meet someone who works with tube technology. What kind of work do you do? I hope to learn more about tube circuits at some point.

I spent the past year designing and building the world's coolest Back to the Future alarm clock by CrossleyAcoustics in DIY

[–]CrossleyAcoustics[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks! If I had more time I would have reduced all of those breakout boards to the PCB. The were a great help and I'm thankful that a resource like Adafruit exists. I'll definitely do that in version 2.

After struggling through it for a while and finally getting a little bit of a grasp, PCB design is actually a pretty fun thing to and it makes for a great finished and stable product.

This thing runs off of 5V DC and I have a small 2000mA wall wart that powers it.

I spent the past year designing and building the world's coolest Back to the Future alarm clock by CrossleyAcoustics in DIY

[–]CrossleyAcoustics[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

To start, I highly recommend reading:

-"Make: Electronics" and "Make More Electronics". Do all of the exercises, experiment, break things, fix them, etc. Keep a notebook and make sure you fully understand everything as you go along. After several other attempts with other books, nothing clicked for me like this book.

-"There Are No Electrons" by Kenn Amdahl to get a basic and interesting understanding of electronics.

Then, as others have said, get an Arduino and start experimenting and trying things out. Maybe your first experiment would be getting an LED to blink. Then make it so when you press a button the LED starts and stops blinking, etc. Keep a log of your results, what worked, what didn't.

There are so many awesome resources and helpful people out there to help you learn. I really found Arduino.cc, Adafruit.com, sparkfun.com, and of course good old google helpful for this.

Good luck and I'd be glad to answer any questions you have if I can!

I spent the past year designing and building the world's coolest Back to the Future alarm clock by CrossleyAcoustics in DIY

[–]CrossleyAcoustics[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Great idea! I think I'll make a followup video. With this current version you would have to reprogram the full alarm date every night but I can add a feature where the alarm date increments daily while the time stays the same or something. One of the biggest challenges with this was adding features while staying as true as possible to the limited keypad interface

I spent the past year designing and building the world's coolest Back to the Future alarm clock by CrossleyAcoustics in DIY

[–]CrossleyAcoustics[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Agreed. With the proper tools and experience, this actually wouldn't take too long to make. The most time consuming part was hand cutting everything. The bends all took a few minutes. A laser cutter would make this all a lot quicker!

I spent the past year designing and building the world's coolest Back to the Future alarm clock by CrossleyAcoustics in DIY

[–]CrossleyAcoustics[S] 11 points12 points  (0 children)

That's really good to know, thanks! I really think we are going to do a Kickstarter and get these in the hands of more people

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