It is nice to wake up from natural sunlight (instead of being jarred awake by a loud buzzer). While there are alarm clocks out there that do this with an artificial lamp, I thought it would be cooler and much cheaper to make my own. Also, instead using artificial light, my alarm clock will open my window shades letting in natural light.

For the project I used a battery-operated LCD alarm clock and replaced the clock batteries with a plug-in 5 volt power supply. I used the free space from the batteries to package additional circuitry.

To trigger the shades, I found a pin in the alarm that goes high when the alarm is triggered and programed an AVR (ATTINY45) to drive a servo motor on this signal.

On the side are some snazzy buttons can open or close the blinds (I'd like to make a wireless version of this soon). I also put in a switch to turn the buzzer on or off when the alarm activates.

For the shades, I took some generic window blinds (with the twist wand) and made some modifications. First I removed the wand, and using a dremel tool cut the sheet metal on the top to fit my servo motor. Along the top of the blinds there is a plastic rod that turns to open/close the blinds. I machined a plastic coupler to connect this rod to the motor.

Project Cost: Futaba S3003 Servo ($9.99), ATTINY45 ($2.13), misc electrical components ($10.00).

Total: <$22.00 + Alarm Clock and Blinds