soulxtc
February 19th, 2006, 12:41 PM
So I built a funky alarm clock out of an old Nintendo console. Why? Because I was at Value Village with my girlfriend and my sister, and while they were browsing through miles of clothing the only thing of interest I could find were two broken Nintendo units without paddles, and I had to do something with them.
http://www.mavrinac.com/projects/nesclock/nesclk1.jpg
I started by gutting a little alarm clock and the NES unit. I secured all the components inside the console, glued the speaker to the inside of the top where the air vents are, and cut a little faceplate to mount the LED display in out of black plastic (from a VHS case). I wired the Player 1 controller port to wires on the clock that would allow me to set the clock from the outside with a rewired paddle, should I ever get around to making it. I also wired the Reset button to the Snooze input on the clock's main IC. I wired the Power button to the output for the alarm indicator, and would have wired it directly to the Alarm On input on the IC as well, but there were two problems with that: one, the Power button is a SPST switch, and two, a quick check on the IC's data sheet showed that the Alarm On input is actually an Alarm Off input.
http://www.mavrinac.com/projects/nesclock/nesclk2.jpg
Strapped for components, I did the ultimate kludge job and the crown jewel of this hack: I soldered the prongs of a 24V DC adapter directly to the mains, and used it (switched by the Power button) to drive a 24V DC relay controlling the Alarm Off input as well as the Power LED and the alarm indicator in parallel.
The finished product's time, alarm time and other parameters have to be set by manually shorting Player 1 controller input contacts with wire jumpers. Not what I intended, but one day I will get around to rewiring that paddle.
PSST......HEY READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE (http://www.mavrinac.com/projects/nesclock/)
http://www.mavrinac.com/projects/nesclock/nesclk1.jpg
I started by gutting a little alarm clock and the NES unit. I secured all the components inside the console, glued the speaker to the inside of the top where the air vents are, and cut a little faceplate to mount the LED display in out of black plastic (from a VHS case). I wired the Player 1 controller port to wires on the clock that would allow me to set the clock from the outside with a rewired paddle, should I ever get around to making it. I also wired the Reset button to the Snooze input on the clock's main IC. I wired the Power button to the output for the alarm indicator, and would have wired it directly to the Alarm On input on the IC as well, but there were two problems with that: one, the Power button is a SPST switch, and two, a quick check on the IC's data sheet showed that the Alarm On input is actually an Alarm Off input.
http://www.mavrinac.com/projects/nesclock/nesclk2.jpg
Strapped for components, I did the ultimate kludge job and the crown jewel of this hack: I soldered the prongs of a 24V DC adapter directly to the mains, and used it (switched by the Power button) to drive a 24V DC relay controlling the Alarm Off input as well as the Power LED and the alarm indicator in parallel.
The finished product's time, alarm time and other parameters have to be set by manually shorting Player 1 controller input contacts with wire jumpers. Not what I intended, but one day I will get around to rewiring that paddle.
PSST......HEY READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE (http://www.mavrinac.com/projects/nesclock/)