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Several years ago, my father gave me an Adafruit Ice Tube Clock kit as a Christmas gift. As an excuse to learn AVR programming, I started playing with the firmware. Eventually, none of the original Adafruit code remained, and the result was a feature-rich reimplementation of the Adafruit firmware.
Once the firmware was mature, I decided to revise the hardware design to support many of the hacks and mods described on the Adafruit forums. With the help of other clock hackers, especially Phil DeGruy and Russell Walker, the xmas-icetube hardware revision became a reality.
Today, the xmas-icetube firmware still runs on the Adafruit Ice Tube Clock v1.1 as well as the xmas-icetube hardware revision. For more information on the firmware and hardware portions of this project, please check out the firmware/README and hardware/README files.
Finally, although the xmas-icetube project is named after Christmas, it is designed for use year-round. The name is also a reference to Christmas as a cultural holiday--not a religious one. I sincerely hope this project is compatible with all religions.
John Archie <www.jarchie.com/email> April 2, 2014
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Below is a selection of comments posted on the Adafruit Clocks forum. They are listed in reverse chronological order. And to everyone quoted below: Thank you all for the kind words!
"[The xmas firmware] just worked from the beginning... Great documentation!" --MikeHg http://forums.adafruit.com/viewtopic.php?p=324261#p324261
"Every mod works beautifully... The code truly is clever... [John's] code is so clean that it's easy to add things." --rcb http://forums.adafruit.com/viewtopic.php?p=244224#p244224
"This firmware is really cool. I highly recommend anyone with an ATmega328p lying around to program it with this firmware and use it instead of the one that comes with the kit." --motocoder http://forums.adafruit.com/viewtopic.php?p=243916#p243916
"[John] has done a lot of nice work and added a lot of features. I can recommend his firmware as an upgrade..." --adafruit_support_bill, http://forums.adafruit.com/viewtopic.php?p=211476#p211476
"...I LOVE your firmware, and for about 2 weeks I was still finding new options and features in the menu." --wildtang3nt http://forums.adafruit.com/viewtopic.php?p=204665#p204665
"+10 for John's firmware! Please do not let the 'xmas' name sway you from giving it a try. It's the most feature complete Ice-Tube Clock firmware to date." --revnull http://forums.adafruit.com/viewtopic.php?p=180609#p180609
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The xmas-icetube firmware offers the following improvements over the official Adafruit firmware:
** Without external power, the alarm sounds with loud high frequency beeps. The only way to turn the alarm on or off is with the alarm switch. Snooze is not supported.
The following additional features are supported on the xmas-icetube hardware revision, but the Adafruit Ice Tube Clock v1.1 can be modified to support any or all of the following as well: