Arduino Alarm Clock & Apple Watch Charger

In this tutorial, I will be walking you through the steps of building an Arduino alarm clock with an apple watch charger from scratch. Since I am building this from scratch, the process of building the housing for the circuit requires some machinery that cannot be found in everyday households (e.g Laser cutters, CNC machines, and 3D printers). That being said you can always still use the circuit and code while making your own housing for the product.

I made this as a school project. Having already looked online for code and tutorials on how to make an alarm clock I found that once I followed all the steps, the clock never seemed to work, some seemed too complicated and others unfinished. As a result, I decided to try and code my own clock from scratch without using an RTC, This clock uses the millis() function instead.

Disclaimer: I'm sure that my code will not be as efficient as it should be since I am not an expert in the field. I have experienced several issues throughout the building process that I am sure you may face as well. To try and prevent this I have included some tips that helped me.

FYI - The step file attached below is the CAD file for the project with all the measurements and components.

Supplies Needed

- Teak 20mm sheet & 15mm sheet

- Acrylic 3mm Matte black sheet

- Black PLA for 3D printing

- Arduino Nano

- Jumper wires (around 25-35)

- 2 x 5-volt piezo buzzers

- 2 x basic small pushbuttons (any will work)

- 2 x LED Push Buttons

- 2 x Toggle switches

- 1 x Rocker switch

- 1 x RGB LCD (RGB if you want it to change colors)

- 4 x small perf-boards (around 4 x 3 cm, you can cut them with a guillotine)

- 1 x Female USB part

- 1 x apple watch charger

- 1 x Any old 5 volt USB cord that has a positive and ground wire

- 6 x M4 countersunk wood screws

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Equipment Needed

(Note: Not all the equipment is essential as it can be easy to find alternate ways to complete some tasks)\

- Soldering Iron

- CNC Machine (Method of cutting wood accurately)

- 3D Printer (For the watch housing)

- Laser Cutter (To cut acrylic)

- PCB Guillotine (To cut perf-boards)

- Hot glue gun (to glue circuitry in place)

- Epoxy Resin (to glue acrylic to wood)

- Wood glue (For wood to wood connections)

- Hand drill (4mm bit and a countersunk bit)

The first step was defining the housing environment. This is a crucial step as it is something that must be taken into account when deciding the shapes and materials used in the housing. Since my chosen environment was indoors I had a lot of materials available to me as there are no extreme conditions that must be withstood. I decided to go with a body of teak wood and a matte acrylic backplate and user interface.

The first part of the process was choosing my teak planks and shaping them using a CNC machine. The product is composed of four teak pieces. 3 of the pieces have a thickness of 20mm while the other piece has a thickness of 15mm. Cutting the first 3 pieces of teak wood is pretty straight forward and attached is a file with the dimensions of the cut. While the fourth piece is similarly shaped to the others, it has a 3mm groove in it meant to fit the acrylic user interface. Attached is a file with dimensions and pictures of the piece.

Joining

After ensuring the pieces line up together properly you can go ahead and glue the three main teak pieces together using wood glue. (One thing to take into account is the coloration of the wood, I did my best to match the surfaces). I used masking tape and a table clamp to hold the pieces together as they dried but you can also use weights if a clamp is not available.

Sanding

Once the glue has dried you can begin sanding the wood. Something to be careful is to not sand too much on one side. A mistake a made was doing this which resulted in one side being thicker than the other. I was able to fix this by sanding the other side down but it only caused more problems in the future. It's important to remember that the goal is just to level out and smoothen the sides.

Sanding Tips

- Don't sand too much on one side

- Try to avoid sanding more than is necessary

I've also added two photos of the groove piece with the user interface to give a better idea of its purpose

Once you've finished sanding, you can put the wood pieces aside and begin with the circuit. Some things to keep in mind about the circuit are:

- It's powered using a 5v USB cable (can be changed to a battery pack if necessary)

- It also powers an apple watch charger (If there is no need for the apple watch charger then you can just directly plug a USB cable into the Arduino nano which saves time, effort, and space)

- I used an RGB 16x2 LCD, If you are using a normal one you may have to remove and replace some of the code.

- It uses LED Switches which are not necessary

The first step in the process of building the circuit is testing and prototyping. This is generally done with a breadboard. Attached is a diagram of what the circuit should look like. It's important to ensure that all the toggle switches, pushbuttons, and the LCD are working before soldering.

Attached below should be the Arduino nano code.

Once you've checked that everything works with the breadboard you can begin with soldering. I used a strip perfboard which saved solder when connecting jumper wires to the Arduino nano because each row was already completely connected. Attached are some labeled images of the soldering process.

Once I finished most of the soldering (leave out soldering the led buttons and the USB as they first have to be installed in their respective interfaces), I made sure to try and fit all my components inside the body and mark out where I would attach them.

Unfortunately, I don't have many pictures of the circuit so some of them will be of the final circuit attached to the acrylic interface. Please note that some of the pictures of the circuit are not of the finished product. They are just to give you a better idea of the components involved in mine. I found that my design was quite messy so feel free to try and design your own layout.

I chose to laser cut both the user interface and the back piece of the product using matte black acrylic. I was able to also use the laser cutter to engrave labels for the different switches and then using a paint marker to color them. Attached to this instructable is a full CAD drawing of the entire product and the measurements can be found there. I used 3mm acrylic and for this reason the groove in my first wood piece was 3mm deep, you can change that depending on what type of acrylic you are using.

I also 3D printed the housing for the watch charger using Black PLA. The design can be found in the attached CAD file.

One of the last steps was drilling a hole for the apple watch charger to pass through the top of the wood piece. I did this by finding the middle of the top face of the wood, tracing out the usb rectangle, and then drilling small holes inside the rectangle. Once this was done I filed out the holes until the USB cord could slide through it.

I then installed all the switches into the user interface, fitted the interface into the groove of the first wood piece, and glued that to the main body. While it was drying I mounted the rest of the circuit onto some balsa pieces inside the wood body. Finally, I used m4 wood screws to connect the back acrylic piece to the wood body and countersunk the holes so that the screws were level.

Now that the product was finally all together, I tested it to ensure it was working. Once I confirmed this I used epoxy resin to first glue the watch charger into it's housing, and then the housing on top of the usb hole I made.

I then coated the wood body in teak oil and let it dry for 10 minutes three times. One additional thing I did purely for aesthetics was I cut out a third acrylic piece to fit around the watch charger though that was unnecessary. If you would like to see a detailed view of the design process check out this link.

Once all this is done, the product is complete.