Don't visit the website instructables.com unless you want to end up making something. I was wanting to find a way to use arduino for more than controlling led's with a joystick shield or something silly simple when I found several articles about using arduino boards to dim led's to simulate a sunrise with a real time clock as a daily alarm. And so it began...

A few more instructables later about LED driver circuits and using real time clocks, etc. and I was diving into the unknown. I was able to find a donor lamp body from a goodwill store for a few bucks. Just so happened that the base was the same diameter as an empty can of Gatorade Powder. And now we have the beginnings of an enclosure. After having a class about embedded real time systems, the thought of having buttons to change the time and set the alarm seemed easily achievable as a finite state machine. Some clever coding later, with the additions of buttons and a clock display and it's nearly done.

I say nearly because now that I have it working but have seen what re-using the backlight from a busted laptop screen looks like...I'm suddenly thinking "UPGRADE!" And I can still power it with 12V like I have setup currently!