code to drive display and gpio on my alarm clock project
I should say up front that python is definitely not my first language. likely not second or third either... but the libraries for my hardware are readily available in python, so I'm using it. and enjoying it honestly more than I thought I would.
while the code works, there are probably more ideomatic/pythonic ways to do some of the things I'm doing. if you have a suggestion, fork and submit a pull request.
danke...
the idea is to use a raspberry pi to build an alarm clock that is network-connected (either via wifi or wired ethernet). it should sync time via ntp so it is always in sync and doesn't require manual intervention. clock should check geoip for location and timezone on startup. all time is handled in UTC and scaled using timezone fetched via geoip. so if the clock is moved from los angeles to new york I should be able to plug it in and it will wake me up at my configured alarm time in the local timezone without intervention.
so far:
- 1 raspberry pi
- 1 case
- 1 power switch
- 1 four digit display
- 1 big illuminated button
- 1 small illuminated button
- 2 small buttons
- 1 stereo amplifier
- 2 small speakers
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datetime (python built-in)
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httplib (python built-in)
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json (python built-in)
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logging (python built-in)
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time (python built-in)
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xml (python built-in)
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fysom (pip install)
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pytz (pip install)
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suds (pip install)
most of the examples I found for both updating clock display and monitoring button input via gpio just spun in a loop, maybe with a small sleep... sub-optimal as far as I'm concerned.
so this project is doing things a bit differently. I'm using an event loop to monitor both gpio and timers. I've got a 60 second timer configured so it trips at the top of each minute, and that updates the clock display. means I can't have the colon flash, but I really don't care about that. another timer trips every hour and refreshes the stored weather forecast. the event loop monitors two buttons currently, a mode button and a set button.
state of the application is managed via a finite state machine, thanks to fysom. the mode button progresses from one state to the next. right now there are two fixed modes: clock and high temperature forecast. we also dynamically append an additional mode for each alarm defined in the configuration. with the current example configuration that is three additional alarm states for a total of five.
- clock is local time display
- high temp forecast is today's high temp until noon, tomorrow's high temp after noon
- alarm 0 through alarm N for the configured alarms
- ...then back to clock
there is also an inactivity timer running. the clock will revert to time mode after 15 seconds of inactivity in another mode.
the set button is mode-dependent in
- clock mode it cycles through display brightness levels
- temp forecast mode it currently does nothing
- in alarm modes it is planned to start the time scrolling to change the alarm time
things for the future:
a timeout timer, revert to time display after N seconds of inactivity in other modes- do something real in the alarm states, allow setting/changing of the alarm time
make the alarm states dynamic based on config, rather than statically defined- add a button to toggle alarm on/off, illuminate the button when alarm(s) are on
- add a button to turn the alarm sound off, illuminate the button when the alarm trips
- add sound ouput (most likely via pygame.mixer)
- fabricate the enclosure for all of the above hardware