Solar Powered Customizable Timer

Projects General Guidance
1

First of all, i'm very novice at Arduino, the code to me seems simple but the hardware and how to connect the different parts is still a mystery to me.

I want to make a Solar Powered Timer that uses buttons to set how many hours before the timer "goes off" or changes state. The display only need to show how many hours until next timer, or if the button is not pressed, how many hours since last timer "went off". The whole device should preferably be very small (like the size of the display and solar panel of a regular calculator, but without the rest of the calculator).
i want it to be able to track time 24/7 and have a light being turned on if the timer has already went off.

For setting the timer i need two buttons or maybe a single "stick" button that can go up, down, left, right and be pressed.

List of parts:
Small solar cell panel
Small calculator-like display
a diode
and buttons for customizing the display

Hope you can help me out, so i can get started. Any advice or references of like-wise projects are gladly recieved. Thanks in advance!

2

small display, google for OLED, there are a few that are small.
if you want to know the actual time of day, you either need an RTC or go to the internet.
if you want buttons, find buttons you like. find an enclosure you like and will fit the parts you want to use.

not sure what you are doing with the solar part,
you might want to look at solar phone chargers. some have lots of room for your bits and pieces.

if you imagine making something the size of a calculator, you have a very ambitious project.

3

The AVR Butterfly would be a good starting point.

4

Yes i really wish I could program with the arduino IDE

5

What is the magic diode supposed to do? There are thousands of diodes out there…...