I am making an alarm clock with a screen and 6 keys on top. I use an alarm clock app which allows me to play a game in which I memorize a series of squares and click them before the alarm stops ringing. The keys on top will serve as a physical version of that game.
Hey! Nice job on this. I like the pyramid shape, that's really creative. I can also tell you put a lot of time into making the case assembly nice. I'm returning this because I'm a bit concerned the switch holes are too small, you should add some tolerance to allow for printing inacuracies, I'd just make one big hole for all the switches actually. Also I need you to write some firmware just enough for the basic functionality of the clock. Other than that this looks good. Thanks!
Finally, all done. I found a small break in my routine and put in some work on the alarm clock and ended up finishing.
I cleaned up the CAD by filleting most of the edges and adding holes for the sound and power cable. I also changed the colour to black. I then went back to KiCad and flipped the MCU, buzzer, and pin header.
Finally, I followed the guide for the firmware, which was very easy to follow along with and finished everything up. Now I just need to commit everything to GitHub and submit my design for funding.
I found a lot of errors with my previous design. A lot of things just wouldn’t fit together if I went with the flat design and I just couldn’t figure out a clean way to make it work.
So, I pivoted. I looked online for some cool alarm clock designs and found one I liked. It was kinda pyramid shaped and I hadn’t seen an alarm clock like it. More importantly, it worked with what I already had and didn’t require to many changed to the PCB.
So I started CADing, but ran into another issue. In F360 the shell tool makes a cavity inside a shape that mirrors its outside. So a pyramid shaped hole in a pyramid. But this means that my screws would have to follow the tilt of the pyramid. I tried making it work, but failed. So I restarted and found a way to make just the corners straight (see pictures if this doesn’t make sense) so my screws could go straight in.
Overall, I ran into a bunch of small issues that caused the two CAD restarts, but we got through it. I also added the supports for the PCB but was limited to only 3 so that the display pins still had room.
My next steps are some more design work to make it look nicer, and I need to flip my MCU and buzzer in KiCad, but then I’m done. This honestly took longer than I expected. The CAD took soooo long this time because of tiny mistakes or oversights I made in the past.
After completing my schematic and PCB design I moved onto the case. Just like last time I’m expecting this to take the longest as with my hackpad I noticed problems while making my case that required me to go back and edit my PCB and in some cases my schematics.
I’ve already run into issues like that and what makes it a bit more difficult is that I’m using F360 while the tutorial is using OnShape, thought seeing as my design is different from that in the tutorial I doubt how helpful it would’ve been to begin with.
I’ve already had to restart once, but I’ve made some solid progress.
The design phase went pretty well. It helped that I had a design almost immediately when I saw the parts.
Moving on to the next part of design, the schematic phase also went by quickly now that I had the hackpad to reference. I started working on my PCB and ran into the first small roadblock. Where do I put the microcontroller? I don’t want to have an awkward empty space at the top of my case, but I still need room for it. I thought I’d just deal with the problem later and eventually settled on putting it on the side of the key matrix.
Then KiCad decided to crash without saving my PCB.
About 45mins of work just gone. So I had to restart the PCB design. But it wasn’t entirely bad. I realized the empty space that the microcontroller took up could be where the screen went. This would also allow me to make my alarm clock thinner as well.
So I guess thanks, KiCad, for crashing. Please never do that again.
PS. Why was the microcontroller on the schematic different from the one in the PCB? I triple checked and made sure I chose the same options as they did.
Another build! After my hackpad project got accepted, I saw this pop up but didn’t really have the time to start on it till now. However, as soon as I saw it (esp the parts), I knew exactly what I was gonna build. I have this alarm clock app that requires me to play a game where I memorize a sequence of squares and tap them in order. Seeing as I was getting keys as part of the kit, my mind instantly went towards building a physical version of that. Unlike with the hackpad project, I had some experience to work off, so this time I didn’t make the mistake of overcomplicating things. The “squares” will be a 2x3 matrix of keys. I also know how to use the tools (KiCad, Fusion360) a lot better, so I’m already seeing things going way faster.
Next steps are routing the PCB and designing the case.
