The eRaj MP3 Alarm Clock:
Waking Up to a Beautiful Day

Over the past four years, MP3 has grown from an obscure audio compression format to a near standard in music distribution. Songs can now be distributed over the Internet so that acquisition of new music is instantaneous, and many portable players exist that take advantage of the format. Instead of designing a prototype MP3 player, however, this project develops a unique idea: an MP3 alarm clock. Because morning radio is notorious for being too talkative, and CD alarm clocks are usually large, an alarm clock that uses MP3s provides a desirable combination of small size and personalized music that every person who sleeps should have the chance to enjoy.

Such a clock should perform the typical functions of an alarm clock, such as displaying the time and enabling and storing an alarm. Also, it should allow the user to choose the source of the alarm as either a simple beep or an MP3. This added functionality means that onboard memory and MP3 decoding capabilities are necessary, which adds complexity to the project. However, the clock should remain easy to use.

The above diagram indicates the components necessary for the desired implementation of the MP3 alarm clock. Because of its speedy download capabilities, USB is used to download music to the alarm clock. This data is placed into SmartMedia memory, which is extremely small and available commercially at low cost. A real time clock chip keeps track of the time, an LCD displays the time, and an I/O expander is used to track any action on the user buttons. Finally, various audio chips will decode the MP3 and send data to a speaker.

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