Last Hope Alarm Clock

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  Schematic of the abomination

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  Interface on the phone

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  The laser printer board that I got most of the parts from.

Inspiration

Last wednesday I slept through 7 alarms, leading to me missing a lab and having to drop the course. I think that speaks for itself.

What it does

Electrocutes you to wake you up. You can set the time from your phone.

How we built it

I scrambled around like a madman for 4 hours at the start collecting stuff from the tech dumps to get the pieces I needed. Key things I found were a laserjet, which I harvested high voltage capacitors and diodes from, and a fluorescent lamp driver, which I harvested bigger capacitors from.

Challenges we ran into

I had to source a soldering iron from somewhere and was stuck using a terrible terrible iron with a terrible terrible desoldering braid. Additionally, because it's high voltage I cannot work on the high voltage part on campus, so that had to be done in my room. Getting the ESP32 to be able to control the high voltage module I made was also extremely challenging. Also, a key component fried which made it so that it does not function as effectively.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Building a "functional" high voltage switched power supply from literally random junk I found in the trash. This thing can boost a 5 volt source to >600 volts, and is fully adjustable based on the frequency given from the ESP32.

What we learned

I learned how switched power supplies work, about piezoelectric transformers, and got signifigantly better at de-soldering.

What's next for Last Hope Alarm Clock

I may solder the high voltage module onto a soldered perfboard though because I'm really proud of it and it looks cool too.

Built With

• esp32