I started this project as my girlfriend and I wanted to keep the bedroom free of iphones, blue light, radio waves and annoying notifications in the middle of the night. Then we would need a real alarm clock.

As most common alarm clocks have really annoying alarm sounds and usually only has one alarm set time, I decided to build my own just for the fun and educational value.

The original requirements:

• Display with nice soft red or reddish light
• Support for multiple alarms
• Support for any sound as alarm tone (no annoying beep-beep-beep)
• No radio transmitters
• No dependency on external local service (ie. internet connectivity, NTP etc.)
• Must by able to set and synchronize time automatically
• Must be able to handle DST automatically
• Simple interface for setting alarms, snooze, date etc.
• Simple and rugged design (no naked tubes or fancy steampunk'ish design)

As many others, I have been fascinated by nixie tubes ever since I found one used as channel indicator in an ancient TV set many years ago. So I decided to use nixie tubes for the alarm clock.