[Brad] was asked by his Sister to design a motion-based alarm that would help her catch her son sneaking out of the house at night. Obviously this didn’t need to be a long-term installation so he decided to throw something together that is only active at night and can be battery-powered. What he came up with is a light-sensitive motion sensor that uses very little power.

He knew that an Arduino would be overkill, and decided to try his hand at using the Arduino to develop code for an ATtiny85. It has an external interrupt pin connected to the output of the PIR module, which triggers action when motion is detected. The first thing it does is to check the photoresistor via the ADC. If light levels are low enough, the buzzer will be sounded. [Brad] measured the current consumption of his circuit and was not happy to find it draws about 2.5 mA at idle. He spent some time teaching himself about the sleep functions of the AVR chips and was able reduce that to about 500-600 uA when in sleep mode. Now all he has to do is find a nice place behind the house to mount the alarm and there’ll be no more sneaking around at night.

If you’re trying to keep a tight leash on your own kids you could always make them punch the time clock.

Filed under: Microcontrollers

When an earthquake is about to strike in Chile, who do you think is first to sound the alarm? You might be surprised that it’s not the government, but rather a 14 year old boy.

After living through an earthquake in 2010 and seeing the devastation this spring in Japan, Chilean teenager [Sebastian Alegria] decided that he wanted to construct something similar to Japan’s earthquake warning system. He purchased an off the shelf earthquake detector for less than $100, and connected it to his computer via an Arduino.

Now, whenever seismic activity is detected, his sensor tweets an alert letting his 29,000+ followers know that a perceptible earthquake is 5 to 30 seconds away. Apparently the Chilean government is working on a similar system that is still at least a year away, so in the meantime his fellow citizens rely on [Sebastian] instead.

While it might seem like a relatively easy hack to pull off compared to other earthquake detectors, we’re impressed by [Sebastian’s] creativity, and his will to help others. He’s been pounding away at computers since he was about 4 years old and has several other popular Twitter-based projects under his belt already, so we won’t be surprised if we hear from him again in the future.

Filed under: arduino hacks, misc hacks

Hackaday reader [Oneironaut] wrote in to share a modular, portable security system he built for himself.

He likes visiting the Caribbean, but his favorite vacation spot is apparently rife with cat burglars. He enjoys sleeping with the windows open and wanted to find a way to scare off ne’er do wells. At home, there are a few different buildings on the property he owns, and he was looking to keep curious trespassers away.

The alarm system was built using a matrix keypad that interfaces with an ATMega88 micro controller. The micro controller handles all the logic for the system, triggering an attached “pocket alarm” when ever the sensor is tripped. Like most household alarms, it is armed and disarmed via the keypad, giving the user 60 seconds to enter the disarm code if the alarm has been mistakenly tripped. A wide array of trigger methods can be used, from mercury switches to motion detectors, since his alarm uses a simple plug interface that accepts any two-wire sensor.

Now, no one is claiming that this is high security by any means – the alarm addresses a couple of specific scenarios that apply to [Oneironaut], which may also be applicable to others out there. At the end of the day, the alarm is more meant to scare an intruder into fleeing than anything else, and in that respect, it works perfectly.

Continue reading to see a quick video demonstration of his alarm system in action.

Filed under: security hacks

As a project for an embedded systems class, [Alan] recently built himself a sunrise-simulating alarm clock. You are probably familiar with these sorts of timepieces – they gradually light up the room to awaken the sleeping individual rather than jarring them awake with a buzzer or the radio. Since many commercial units with this feature are sold for $70 and up, his goal was to replicate the functionality at a fraction of the cost, using only open source components.

An Arm Cortex M3 processor runs the show, displaying the time via a pair of 8×8 LED matrix panels on the front of the device. The clock is programmed to gently wake up its user by simulating a sunrise over a period of 5, 15, 30, 45, or 60 minutes. If the user has not woken up before the sunrise simulation is complete, the clock resorts to a traditional piezo alarm to rouse the heavy sleeper.

The project is nicely done, and after looking at his bill of materials it seems to be far cheaper than many sunrise alarm clocks you will find in stores.

Filed under: clock hacks

Instructables user [EngineeringShock] has been hard at work building a laser trip wire security system, complete with a combination lock. The security system works just like you see in the movies, employing an array of mirrors to bounce the laser across an opening several times in order to secure the space.

A PIC18F1220 micro controller sits at the center of the alarm and handles the majority of its functions. It takes input from the laser detection circuit, triggers the buzzer, as well as arms and disarms the entire alarm system. An LS7222 digital lock handles the passcode verification side of things, taking input from a 16-button matrix keypad, and telling the PIC when the proper code has been entered.

As you can see in the video below, the alarm system works and the buzzer is quite loud. There is one small problem however – the alarm only arms itself after the proper code has been entered and the lights have been turned off. The light sensing circuit he uses is too sensitive and can only operate in darkness, though he discusses the ability to add a more accurate sensing solution.

If you are interested in reading more about laser tripwire security systems, check out this similar passcode-based system, this alarm system built into a toy, and this Arduino-based alarm system.

Filed under: laser hacks, security hacks

[Markus] had a TI MSP430 sitting around from the LaunchPad kit he bought a while back. He didn’t know what to do with it, but eventually decided that it would make a great miniature alarm clock.

He added a shift register to the mix in order to drive his 7-segment LCD display, using two of the MSP430′s output pins in the process. Four more pins were tied to the display’s cathodes, while the remaining two pins are connected to push buttons which register user input.

He crammed the clock’s logic as well as an alarm tune into the chip’s scant 2KB of memory space, literally occupying everything up to the last available byte. The clock is quite a power-miser, using just 2 µA in standby mode. According to [Markus'] calculations, that should enable the clock to use one set of batteries for 10+ years.

While this isn’t the first MSP430 clock we have seen, it certainly is the smallest and most simple.  Stick around to see a quick video of his clock in action.

Filed under: clock hacks, Microcontrollers

Sometimes security doesn’t need to be overly complex to be effective. Instructables user [1234itouch] recently built a simple laser tripwire alarm that can be mounted virtually anywhere, complete with a keypad for disarming the device.

He mounted a photo cell in a project box, along with an Arduino and a 12-button key pad. A laser pointer is aimed at the photo cell from across a gap, which results in a steady voltage being read by the Arduino. When the laser beam is broken, a drop in voltage is detected, and the alarm sounds until you enter the proper pre-configured passcode. Entering the passcode triggers a 15 second grace period during which the the alarm cannot be tripped again.

It might not be built with triple-thick steel doors and thermo-sensors, but it’s a simple device for simple needs. In its current form it could be pretty useful, and with a little reworking, there are a wide range of things it could be used for.

Continue reading to see a demo video of the tripwire alarm, and be sure to check out these other tripwire-based security systems.

Filed under: arduino hacks, laser hacks, security hacks

This is the Edison clock, designed by [David Krawczyk]. It shows time in the same way as the multimeter clock, regulating power to two analog needle meters. The feature that makes this one a bit different is the alarm. You can see the series of holes on the front of the base. These have a small light bulb socked in each, and correspond to hours and 5-minute increments. Insert two bulbs to set the alarm time, and make sure that the alarm knob points to ‘on’. As you can see above, the alarm has been set to 8:15. Hidden on the last image of the article above is a PDF with just a bit more explanation. Still, much has been left out so if you replicate this clock we want to hear about it.

[via Gizmodo and Walyou]

Filed under: clock hacks

On the shortest day of the year wouldn’t it be nice to wake up to a bright room? This alarm clock with an integrated wake-up light is one way to do just that. It has some nice features, like a wood veneer that allows the seven-segment display to shine through, but hides it when the display is turned off. There’s also a feature to adjust the color based on ambient room temperature (another way to dwell on how cold it is in your bedroom).

A CC1101 RF chip came to the party, but we can’t figure out what it’s purpose is in this circuit. If you can shed some light on its involvement please do so in the comments.

[Thanks Eric]

Filed under: clock hacks

Waking up at 5:30 in the morning. [Mark Stead] didn’t like the idea either when his chickens started crying to be let out. One simple solution obviously is to eat the chickens build an automatic door opener. The mechanism starts out with an old style mechanical alarm clock, add a geared motor with some creative switch work to pull open the door, weather proof the entire thing, and done. [Mark] even modified the setup later to work with vertical doors. No MCU required for either.

Pair this with an automated feeder system, egg gathering and cooking setup, and you’re half way to having your breakfast ready for you when you wake up in the morning – around noon like the rest of us.

[Thanks MS3FGX]

[Madmanmoe64] has really done a fantastic job with this burglar alarm built into a zippo.  He crammed a picaxe microcontroller, some IR LEDs, an IR sensor, a battery and various switches in there quite well. It almost closes perfectly, something we think he could remedy if it really bugged him that much.

It has several modes, all initiated by a different sequence of button presses. There is the proximity alarm, which sounds when something moves very close. The reverse proximity alarm which sounds when you remove something from its immediate vicinity.  A doorbell mode, and a silent alarm mode. Check out the video after the break to see it in action.

This alarm system senses motion and then alerts you by phone. [Oscar] had an old external modem sitting around and, with some wise hardware choices, he came up with a simple circuit to use it. First up is the PIC 16F628A chosen because it doesn’t require an external crystal. This connects with the modem via a DS275 RS232 transceiver because it requires no external parts for connection. The final portion of the puzzle is a PIR sensor that triggers a pin interrupt in the sleeping PIC, which then dials your number to alert you. It doesn’t look like anything happens other than your phone ringing, but that’s enough for a simple system. We’re just happy to see how easy it was to use that modem… time to go hunting for one in dreaded junk trunk. Don’t miss the clip after the break.

Cats and dogs can get along quite nicely when they are raised up together. The problem with this type of arrangement tends to be keeping dogs out of the cat box and away from the cat food. [Ryan Meuth] tried out a simple electronic barrier to keep the dog away. It uses an IR transmitter and receiver to shine a beam of invisible light across the doorway to his cat room. In the demo after the break you’ll see that he took steps to make sure the cats don’t set off the alarm. The beam of light is set high enough that their bodies don’t get in the way, and the firmware measures the amount of time the beam was broken in order to avoid false positives caused by the cats’ tails. If the dog does try to get into the room it will break the beam and set off a high-pitched alarm sound.

It’s interesting that the dog doesn’t like the sound but the cat’s don’t seem to be scared of it. Also, we’ve got a less-than-ferocious feline that would love to chew on the cord that connects the two modules. Still, it’s a solution that works for [Ryan] and could be incorporated into an automatic feeder to keep the dog away from feedings while you’re out of the house.

[Bogdan] has some trouble getting up in the morning. A blaring alarm will do the trick but that’s no way to start the day. To get him through the dark winter months he wanted to try a sunrise simulator. He patched into the alarm signal of his bedside clock, intercepting the command from the clock’s microprocessor and using it as an input for his own ATtiny13. From there, the tiny13 gradually brightens a 150W halogen lamp using a triac until his room is as bright as a July morning. A signal is then sent to the alarm clock’s audio amplifier to turn on the audible alarm. He’s got the system set for a 20-minute sunrise so it’s just a matter of programming his alarm 20-minutes early than the ‘I absolutely have to get out of bed now’ time.

[malikaii] needed to set up some kind of tripwire style alarm system for his office. His bosses kept sneaking in to find him slacking. So, like any loyal hacker, instead of just working harder he built an alarm system. After a failed attempt to recreate an IR alarm circuit he found on the web and built from old appliance parts, he found the Hack a Day article about harvesting McDonald’s toys. The end result was a fully functional IR detecting alarm for the office doorway. This is pretty simple really, the best kind of hack.

Need to monitor not only if a fan is running, but if it is running fast enough? Check out this PC fan failure alarm circuit. After several failed attempts using various circuits, they settled on a Schmitt trigger. They even show a couple variations including a manual reset and a relay instead of a buzzer.

[via HackedGadgets]

Ever accidentally left your front door ajar and had a pet escape? [BlackCow] came up with a simple solution to this problem. The circuit is fairly rudimentary but a great example of using the basics to get the job done. Now, instead of having an alarm that sounds as soon as the door is open, he has a 30 second delay. This helps avoid the “boy who cried wolf” effect also known as the “vista security warning” effect of being bothered too many times for a non issue.  We also have to say that we like his taste in blog layouts.

[via Hacked Gadgets]

[Michiel], unsatisfied by his Phillips wake up light, decided just to make his own. He really wanted programmable weekend alarms as well as an easier to find snooze button. At first, his circuit was not reliable enough, losing several minutes per hour, but he gutted another alarm for the 1Hz crystal. After some carpentry, his final alarm ended up quite nice.  After so many aggressive alarm clocks, it’s nice to see that not everyone needs to be assaulted out of bed.

Correction: apparently, there’s no 1Hz crystal. That was a guess on my part. -[Caleb]

[via Hacked Gadgets]

Alpha-Geek Clock

Oh this one’s good! This clock has a built-in WWVB receiver to make sure the time is always accurate. But with just one LED as the display we wish you good luck when reading it! A whole bunch of info (time, day, year, etc) is blinked out in binary encoded decimal. [Thanks Tymm]

Standard Time

Manual labor. This clock is an art installation in Rotterdam. In the video you can see that workers changed the segments of a four-digit display every minute over a twenty-four hour period. Since they filmed it we’d expect the ability to turn this into a video clock like the one we saw last week. [Thanks David]

International Clock

Low-tech but highly creative. The instructional video uses basic geometry and the workings from a cheap clock to craft an international clock. There are twelve labels corresponding to different time zones. Put the zone you want up and read the clock as normal. [via Red Ferrett Journal]

Princess and the Pea

There are few who will agree to have an air tank as part of an alarm clock. The Princess and the Pea concept uses compressed air to inflate an exercise ball in between the mattress and the box spring. Watch this video to see how it will roll you out of bed if the hissing air sound didn’t wake you first. At least it’s more gentle than the pneumatic alarm clock from last June. [via Neatorama]

]]> http://hackaday.com/2009/12/18/clocks-that-only-a-geek-could-love/feed/ 0 http://hackaday.com/2009/10/28/mr-wake-wakes-up-and-runs/ http://hackaday.com/2009/10/28/mr-wake-wakes-up-and-runs/#comments Wed, 28 Oct 2009 15:00:20 +0000 admin http://hackaday.com/?p=17868 ]]>

[isotope] must really hate himself. He has built a torture device of pure evil. Mr. Wake, his alarm clock robot, should be considered a torture device. This cute looking little bot, with its bright and colorful clock and neat plastic tube frame is an alarm clock. As soon as it’s alarm goes off, Mr. Wake starts watching for you. If it detects your presence, it takes off, only to wait for you to stumble, bleary eyed, to its current location. Do you know what it does when you catch up to it? It takes off again. Why would you build a robot that you know you are just going to destroy in a groggy fit of animalistic rage?

We actually like Mr. Wake more than clocky, simply for its hackish feel. If you really really have problems getting up, you may want to consider something a little more drastic.

[via Makezine]

]]> http://hackaday.com/2009/10/28/mr-wake-wakes-up-and-runs/feed/ 0 http://hackaday.com/2009/09/25/140-db-alarm-clock-hack/ http://hackaday.com/2009/09/25/140-db-alarm-clock-hack/#comments Fri, 25 Sep 2009 22:30:26 +0000 admin http://hackaday.com/?p=16152 ]]>

This silly little video caught our attention. It is an alarm clock, hacked with two amazingly loud car horns. They are using a laptop power brick to push the two external car horns. The horns are triggered by a relay wired to the internal speaker of the alarm clock. This is a super quick project that could be done, not only to help yourself, but it is the perfect amount of effort for a prank. We bet you guys could probably wire one of these up and hide the horns in only a few minutes.  If you are having problems waking up, you might also want to check out some of the other alarm hacks we’ve seen.

[via gizmodo]

]]> http://hackaday.com/2009/09/25/140-db-alarm-clock-hack/feed/ 0 http://hackaday.com/2009/08/17/the-happillow-project/ http://hackaday.com/2009/08/17/the-happillow-project/#comments Mon, 17 Aug 2009 13:39:21 +0000 admin http://hackaday.com/?p=13392 ]]>

[Harandi] wrote to us to let us know about a project he’s working on to improve our nightly rest. This is the Happillow. The Happillow is an alarm clock, as well as a snore relief system. We’re not sure that the snoring bothers us so much, but we’re sure our significant others appreciate that part. While pillows exist that are supposed to cut down on snoring, they generally have a specific shape to position your head properly, which should cut down on the snores. [Harandi] points out that this might be embarrassing to the user as it is obvious to anyone looking at the bed that they have a snore reducing pillow. The Happillow detects the noise and agitates you to get you to reposition yourself. We have actually seen a very similar project in the past with the Interactive Pillow project.

]]> http://hackaday.com/2009/08/17/the-happillow-project/feed/ 0