Hi everyone !
Since I've recieved my Arduino Kit from Adafruit, I've been playing/messing around with electronics for the last few days.
Recently, someone gave me an old working FM Radio/Alarm Clock. A very generic one (not this one but looks a lot like it).
In the other hand, a few days ago I began to work on a very rudimentary "Photo sensitive alarm clock".
It simply was an Arduino Duelmilanove connected to a photoresistor and a speaker. The more lights there's in the room, the louder the sound is (it's not even a tune, just a generic voltage making an unberable noise).
Then I pluged a minijack from a radio to the circuit board. So the idea was that the radio was turned ON and on the correct frequency and so the Arduino raise the volume of it's own speaker as the sun rises.
Somehow it didn't really worked well. I don't recall well, I think the volume wasn't loud enough even to be audible.
And finally, someone gived me this alarm clock.
PLEASE KEEP IN MIND THAT I'M A COMPLETE BEGINNER. YOUR HELP IS WELCOME INSTEAD OF SAYING/TROLLING THAT IT'S A VERY HARD PROJECT.
I first tought about merging my "photosensitive-clock" with this one. Modification would have been extrimely simple. Unsoldering the switch and solder a wire only in the "On" position, so the radio would be always turned on, and then connect the Arduino+Photoresistor to the volume switch (in order to turn on the volume as the sun rises) and reusing the original switch in order to turn the photoresistor on or off.
I planned to use a very small version of the Arduino such as the Arduino Mini o/ Nano o/ Pro Mini (I don't know which one would be "better" for this project).
Anyway, I wasn't really satisfied with that idea. It sure sounded cool but what when the sun rises at 11am (lol, just mean after you need to get up)during the winter ?
But also of course, I'm sure there's a lot of other cool features to add in addition to this one (LEDs reacting w/ sound ?).
So... this is when I came on the forum to talk about it. I need your advices, your ideas and anything else (your warnings ?) for this project.
Arduino version to use:
- NOT DECIDED YET
List or Arduino related features:
- Add a photoresistor that will used to progressively increase the volume.
- ADD YOUR IDEA HERE
List of non-Arduino related things:
- Clean the shell
- Paint the shell in another color than ugly-black (Glossy Lime ?)
- Replace the poor wire acting as a radio antenna by an (powerful) internal antenna (Long wire used in cheap wireless keyboards ? I already done this with a cheap radio, works great !)
- YOUR IDEA HERE ?
Bugs to fix:
- The radio can be powered up by sector or 9V battery. Unfortunately the powerplug was too damaged to be keeped so I revmoved it, and now it doesn't turn on when I power it up with the 9V battery only. However, the device turn on when I connect the 9V battery to the point where the transorfer(?) wires were soldered (three points, one acting as + and two acting as - ?). Not a big issue, will be fixed quickly.
Last thing, if you want some info about the chips used, there's only two. The LM8560 570 and the SEC K609A-2B KA22427.
Thank you very much in advance for your answers !