This is the first prototype of the Alarm Clock Project. It is currently hooked up to a doorbell chime. This demos the user interaction style with the rotary encoder. The 5-digit number on the top line is for debugging – it represents the time of day expressed in total seconds elapsed since midnight.

I think I fried my programmer. I knew something bad happened when I shorted 24v into the voltage regulator. So I must have killed the programmer along with it. Now it shorts out my circuits every time I connect it. I doubt there is anything I can do now.  I have AVRStudio running on WindowsXP, running on Parallels, runnong on my iMac, and this little programmer worked through it all without any complaints. I’ll miss this little guy. It might be time to move on to the Arduino platform, considering I can get a USB development board for about $40, and a new programmer will run be about $150.