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Further Refinement

A project log for Hack-Ready Alarm Clock

An alarm clock that encourages tinkering and modification. Targeted for kids, but fun for old hacks like myself.

deckeregoDeckerEgo 02/17/2015 at 05:560 Comments

I'm still hacking away at the Hack Clock. I've had several teaching sessions now and found some bugs in the process - as well as some incorrect assumptions.

I had thought kids would be interested in the weather station aspect of the clock - but the thing they wanted the most was to press a button and have a music playlist start playing. I'll likely re-do the lessons likewise... instead of teaching I/O and buttons with the weather station, I'll hook in the music right away.

Since there has been a big emphasis on the sound of the clock, I also found several audio bugs I needed to squash. I also added playlist support as a way to teach arrays and lists.

I also need to write routines for automatic saving of changes and ways of automatically backing up the event loop source file. Students should feel free to experiment - so I need to make it safe to do so.

Also adding support for the 2.8" PiTFT... so high-res(ish) screens are in the near future.

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