I built my daughter a custom alarm clock because everything on Amazon sucked(reclaimtheday.substack.com)
18 pointsby pneedleman3 hours ago2 comments
  • gabrielsroka5 minutes ago
    Obligatory, related from Ben Eater https://youtu.be/3XDH-fZKnQk

    "Let's build a digital clock", part 1, Aug 2026

  • pneedleman3 hours ago
    My daughter had an iPad and would listen to it at night. Eyes glued to a screen at bedtime drove my wife and me crazy. It would also just keep playing indefinitely unless I remembered to go in and turn it off, along with having to manually manage her Yoto alarm on holidays and school breaks. We wanted her to be more independent and listen to music WITHOUT a tablet in bed.

    I ended up building my own because I couldn't find anything on the market without microphones that also had a Spotify controller. This has been going strong in her room for ~1 month now. Features include, alarm sync'd with her school district days off, weather (and alerts), Spotify, Hue, Sleep timer, parent dashboard, and much more.

    • raylad2 hours ago
      Looks cool but you may want to rethink the blue LED for an alarm clock, because blue light interferes with sleep.

      https://www.health.harvard.edu/healthy-aging-and-longevity/b...

      • pneedlemanan hour ago
        100% - the screen automatically turns off at night based on Sunset time, and turns back on at sunrise (unless alarm goes off before).

        You can also get a classic green or color display with negative display and use custom backlight colors (https://www.adafruit.com/product/399)

    • Glemmlko3 minutes ago
      You are adults, you can control what your kid gets and what not.

      No kid needs an iPad.

      Man are you kidding me?

    • bdangubic3 hours ago
      fantastic. i would easily pay $150 for a product like this
      • pneedleman3 hours ago
        wow, means a ton. my daughter has actually been insisting that I sell them and had to get her approval to open-source the code this week.

        Code and materials are on my github: https://github.com/pneedleman/reclaim-spotify-clock The off-the-shelf hardware runs around $60.

        If enough folks would rather have a pre-assembled plug-and-play kit instead of soldering it themselves, I might seriously look into doing a small-batch run or Kickstarter.

        • sieve3 minutes ago
          Crowdfunding takes the guesswork out of these things, and is a throwback to the old days of patron/subscriber supported ventures. A Kickstarter will let you know exacty how much demand there is for this before you order a single piece of hardware.