A DIY Retro-Modern Alarm Clock for Under $10

These days, you’ll find fewer and fewer alarm clocks on nightstands. The same little black rectangle that has taken the place of the morning paper, the bedside radio, and the family photo album has now silenced the alarm clock. By combining everything into one little device, smartphones offer us a lot of convenience and portability. However, not everyone is happy about physical objects vanishing in favor of digital replacements.

GitHub user telepath9 thinks it’s time for the alarm clock to return—but this time with a DIY twist. To make this vision a reality, telepath9 has developed what is called the ESPclock. As you have probably already guessed, it is a customizable digital clock powered by an Espressif microcontroller. It is built with inexpensive parts, and you can modify the design to suit your own unique tastes.

At the core of the build is a Wemos D1 mini development board with an ESP8266 microcontroller. This is hooked to a 0.56-inch digital seven-segment display, which comes in nine different color options. Both of these parts can be purchased for around $5. Aside from a few screws and bolts, the only other thing that is required is a 3D-printed case.

In the near future, telepath9 plans to port the code to the ESP32. There are also plans to add a buzzer and an alarm feature, as well as a few buttons to serve as the user interface.

The GitHub repository details the assembly process and makes the source code freely available. Everything has been released under a permissive GPL-3.0 license, so go grab it and make your own ESPclock.