My daughter had an iPad and would listen to it at night. Eyes glued to a screen at bedtime drove my wife and me crazy. It would also just keep playing indefinitely unless I remembered to go in and turn it off, along with having to manually manage her Yoto alarm on holidays and school breaks. We wanted her to be more independent and listen to music WITHOUT a tablet in bed.
I ended up building my own because I couldn't find anything on the market without microphones that also had a Spotify controller. This has been going strong in her room for ~1 month now. Features include, alarm sync'd with her school district days off, weather (and alerts), Spotify, Hue, Sleep timer, parent dashboard, and much more.
If enough folks would rather have a pre-assembled plug-and-play kit instead of soldering it themselves, I might seriously look into doing a small-batch run or Kickstarter.
Crowdfunding takes the guesswork out of these things, and is a throwback to the old days of patron/subscriber supported ventures. A Kickstarter will let you know exacty how much demand there is for this before you order a single piece of hardware.
I ended up building my own because I couldn't find anything on the market without microphones that also had a Spotify controller. This has been going strong in her room for ~1 month now. Features include, alarm sync'd with her school district days off, weather (and alerts), Spotify, Hue, Sleep timer, parent dashboard, and much more.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/healthy-aging-and-longevity/b...
You can also get a classic green or color display with negative display and use custom backlight colors (https://www.adafruit.com/product/399)
Code and materials are on my github: https://github.com/pneedleman/reclaim-spotify-clock The off-the-shelf hardware runs around $60.
If enough folks would rather have a pre-assembled plug-and-play kit instead of soldering it themselves, I might seriously look into doing a small-batch run or Kickstarter.
No kid needs an iPad.
Man are you kidding me?
"Let's build a digital clock", part 1, Aug 2026
Don't waste your time.
I used AI to help with writing but I it’s not 100%. Do with it what you will.