lost_and_confused:
Liudr,I went to your site and posted a couple of things there, and they now seem to be gone.
They are in the pending-review folder. I'll post replies to them after I'm done here on this thread.
Looking at the Phi-2 instructions, I found a couple of "faults" - luckily minor ones.
I don't think here is the place to specifically mention them, can you help me with a method of pointing them out?
Couple of other questions - I shall hope to buy the shield from you soon, but need more things clarified.
I notice the shield has buttons on it. I bought a LCD shield as I have mentioned and it too has buttons. Kinda defeats the purpose if there are two sets of buttons.
I dug up an old LCD display I bought, it is a LCM-5044, or GEB-2294V-0 S. Suffice to say is it a BIG display.Could/would it work with the adrino and your shield?
That display seems to be 40X4 and my code only works up to 20X4. The connection is also slightly different so won't fit.
The GPS module would be nice and handy to use as a time sync. Every now and then I would/could poll it and get the time and then re-set the clock to the right time. I'll take it that this would be possible, but there is a problem with location. The clock would not be near a window or have a good sky view. So the GPS module would have to be remotely connected. Say 5 metres distance. Cat 5 cable and a small box? I would wire up another RJ45 socket and plug it in - but am looking for thoughts if this woud/could work.
Good idea. You have to have the GPS with open sky to lock to a signal. On the other hand, GPS only reports the standard time at zone 0 so you need some conversion to get your local time 
I have not made a "remote" GPS but I suppose it would work. A GPS works at 5V and outputs slow serial data so a few meters it not problem, just don't let the wire near any source of noise, like a halogen desk lamp base. It's a transformer. Every time I turn that thing on, it knocks off my keyboard and mouse, connected to unshielded USB extension wires :))))
You will have to cut the wire to the GPS connector or purchase one connector with bare lids on one end and connector on the other end.
There is also now (I hear) cards to play MP3 sounds from a small SC card. Could one of these also be included to play a sample when the alarm goes off?
I feel there won't be enough I/O lines to do all this, but I would like to get a feel for what the unit can do before I get my hopes up too high.
I will have to look at what MP3 shield you want to use. I'm also a bit concerned with number of pins. I imagine the MP3+SD card shield will use up at least 5 pins, LCD 6 pins, RTC 2 pins, GPS serial 2 pins, buzzer output 1 pin, buttons, 6 pins, upload sketch 2 pins, more than arduino UNO can have. You could, purchase a serial LCD keypad backpack so save the LCD and button pins. My current phi-panel backpack can do that. You will need to modify the program then.