I’m very excited. My latest project seems to be coming along nicely. I’m calling the project LiquidTime. Let me start from the beginning. I found a program called Citrus Alarm Clock. Essntially it is an alarm clock that runs on your computer and allows you to have an unlimited number of alarms set. The program plays a MP3 when it is time for the alarm to go off and it even fades the volume up over a specified amount of time. It is really a nice program. There’s one problem though. You have to get up and go to the computer to set a new alarm, turn off the alarm, etc. Another downside is that it doesn’t have a sleep function. Enter my program. Essentially I want to write a program that functions similarly to Citrus but with much more functionality. I have a CrystalFontz 633 LCD screen. In addition to being a LCD it also has built in buttons. My idea is to take the LCD and extend it to my bedside where it will essentailly become my alarm clock (updated to the atomic clock no less). This way when I go to bed I can enable the alarm right from bed and can disable it in the morning. I want to also be able to setup new alarms and set other settings from the bedside as well. If I can get it done I think it will be really cool. So far I have some classes developed for talking to the LCD. I’ve written software to talk to it before, but never anything to detect button presses from it. I think I actually got that working, which is why I’m so excited.
In addition to that, I’ve been working on a project for verifying prices at the store. It’s going to be pretty cool because it will actually talk to you and tell you the price after you scan it. That program is pretty much complete and turned out pretty cool.