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|   May 21, 2009 at 8:04 PM

Great idea and price! The clock idea leaves the "student" with something they can use. The basic platform could probably be re-purposed to something else useful when they want to practice programing. It even comes with a 5V wall wart!

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|   July  1, 2009 at 9:30 AM

Thanks! We worked hard to try to hammer down the price.

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|   May 22, 2009 at 1:36 PM

The picture of the assembled device seems to have a nice mounting point for programming the chip, but in the parts list and in the picture of all the parts I do not see that part. In the schematic I believe this is the AVR_PRG part.

This looks like a nice kit and all, but won't we need something to connect to the AVR to program it? Perhaps you should mention that or have a link to the things you will need to actually program the chip.

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|   July  1, 2009 at 9:32 AM

The ATmega comes pre-programmed. You just have to solder the clock together, plug it in, and it works!

I apologize - the pictures are a bit off. We do not include the ISP 6 pin header. But you will not need a programmer.

You are correct - if you want to change the code, you will need to solder in a header and connect a programmer.

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|   July 11, 2009 at 11:18 PM

Though you'd still need a programmer if you wanted to reprogram the Mega, I don't generally solder headers onto my projects anyway. Instead, I keep the header plugged into my programmer. Slide the other end of the pins into the holes on the board where you *would*have* soldered the header, torque it a little to one side, and you're good to program.

... Hopefully somebody will correct me if that doesn't carry over to this board, which seems to be a little more whitewashed than I'm used to.

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|   July 13, 2009 at 8:27 AM

You're correct, you can program the device using the method you've described. In fact, that's how we program many of our boards in-house.

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|   May 26, 2009 at 1:47 PM

Any chance of a fitted enclosure being offered?

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|   June  3, 2009 at 6:18 AM

I'm no electrical engineer so this will appear as a rather dumb question here but how tough would it be to replace the buzzer with a light? I'm thinking this would be good to put in the kids room (ages 2 & 4) and then teach them that they can't get out of bed until the light comes on. (In case you don't know kids sometimes get up at 4 or 5 AM and want to play.) The light would have to stay on for about an hour or so. Running it off of a 9 volt or 2 AA's would be better as well since you don't really want too many things plugged in in a room like that. Make it and you will sell a million of them!

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|   June  3, 2009 at 4:04 PM

If you teach your kids that, be sure to add "unless there's a fire"

Instead of replacing the buzzer, you could just have the display flash or make a funky animation that is displayed instead of the time.

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|   July  1, 2009 at 9:35 AM

Really great idea! I would love to see that mod if you get the chance to try it.

All the battery operated clocks I've seen use an LCD display for lower power consumption (passive black and gray LCD like on a sports watch). Because of the bright LED display, the ClockIt uses enough power that it would kill the batteries within a few days.

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|   July  2, 2009 at 6:43 AM

Amazing! But, you mentioned that it's possible to hook up a LCD to it. Can you go into detail how to do so?

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|   July  3, 2009 at 2:31 AM

This could be a cheaper alternative for me to replicate your huge wall-mounted clock. With the code being open source, it would probably be possible to have the clock set from a GPS too :)

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|   August 29, 2009 at 10:25 AM

This would be an amazingly handy device if it had perhaps 10 alarms. It could be used around the house for kid prompting(wake,breakfast,bustop)or in schools (end of class, end of lunch), who knows where else.

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|   September 11, 2009 at 8:22 AM

I've been trying to disect the source code of this project. (You know...learning and stuff...) The pin connections on the schematic don't seem to match the pin selections in the source code...Either that or I'm confused... no, no, it must be the schematic.

Any thoughts there?

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|   October 23, 2009 at 7:39 PM

Is this board designed to fit in the Clear SparkFun project case (Stock No. WIG-08632)?

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|   January 11, 2010 at 1:25 PM

It would be a lot easier to mount this if the Display were on one side of the board and the rest of the components on the other side. Also, real pushbuttons, either panel mount or PCB mound would be better.

I never have understood why most clock kits are like this. All the components on the same side of the board :-(

Kenny

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|   February  1, 2010 at 10:21 PM

Does the programmed ATMega have the Arduino bootloader on it as well as the clock code? or is a programmer completely necessary?