While working at a place that had a cafeteria that closed at 13:30 every day, I needed a reminder to go downstairs for my afternoon refill. I could have written an app or used Google Calendar to pop up a reminder, but I wanted a physical clock on my desk that would not only flash/make noise, but display an image of *why* the alarm was going off. One potential design was a block of acrylic with a laser-etched image of the reason for the alarm that would light up at the selected hour, but it could only do one "type" of alarm without switching out the picture. A graphical LCD permits multiple alarms and multiple images.
When not alarming, the time is displayed on the GLCD like any other clock.
Components
1×
Arduino Uno
1×
LCD12864
GLCD Arduino shield with digital joystick on A0
After being backordered for several weeks, the LCD12864 has finally arrived from Shanghai. Step one is getting some demo code to display some trivial text and bitmaps.
I finally got an update on the contest results: the LCD12864 shield is on backorder and should ship sometime in April. In the meantime, I may get things rolling by taking a stab at building an interim clock with something I have on-hand, either a 2x16 HD44780 textual LCD or a different GLCD type (ks0108).
The prize, an LCD12864, should be shipping soon on a slow boat from Hong Kong, but I'm not waiting for it to arrive. I already have one of their older products, an LCD Keypad Shield with a 16x2 HD44780 textual LCD on it with individual tactile switches instead of a digital joystick, but it's a good starting point for the main loop and the non-GLCD code.