Invention, Intellectual Property, and Income
1. Week Assignments
Develop a plan for dissemination of your final project
Complete your final project, tracking your progress:
- what tasks have been completed, and what tasks remain?
- what's working? what's not?
- what questions need to be resolved?
- what will happen when?
- what have you learned?
2. Prior Knowledge
I have released software under Free and Open Source licenses before.
3. Work!
3.1. Plan for dissemination
Currently, I have no plans to sell or promote this alarm clock; it is not that interesting in my opinion. I may build another (more compact) version, apply some of the lessons I have learned, simply for the fun of it and to keep up my skills.
3.1.1. License
The work I have produced for Fab Academy as a student in 2026 can be used, copied, modified, merged, and published by anyone. I hope people learn from it and see how much fun and interesting Fab Academy is. This includes all code, 3D models, and other CAD sources shared here.
However, when material is copied from here, I would like attribution. Therefore, the copyright notice and licensing terms must be included in all copies.
The best matching licenses for these requirements (I know of) are as follows: all software is covered by the MIT License, all hardware designs by CERN-OHL-P-2.0, and all documentation, photos, screenshots, and videos are covered by CC BY 4.0.
I've update the README.md to reflect this and the copyright message in the generated documentation.
3.2. Complete your final project
At this point, I am making good progress.
3.2.1. Current concerns
My biggest concern at this point is the housing. I am worried about the milled parts fitting together because I plan to use wood, which is quite uneven. Even plywood itself varies significantly in thickness, and I worry it will not properly fit. Using acrylic for the sides is a safer option in that respect, but maybe not as pretty.
Another concern is the connector and fitting the two sides of it together. In my initial design, I wanted to make a wooden dock and clock with the connectors embedded in both, but that is quite challenging. As the deadline approaches, I switched to using 3D-printing for these parts.
The electronics is basically finished. I had a problem with the audio but solved it (see the 2026-05-27 Switching to MAX98357A).
3.2.2. Planning
I made a lot of progress in week 16, during which I essentially designed the entire project and selected the components to use.
Between then and now (and the regular assignments), I have:
- Tested the components individually.
- Tested combining the components.
- Created PCBs for the display and main board.
- 3D printed the frame to attach the display and main board.
The remaining tasks are:
| 5-28 | 5-29 | 5-30 | 5-31 | 6-1 | 6-2 | 6-3 | 6-4 | 6-5 | 6-6 | 6-7 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Connector | X | X | |||||||||
| Housing | X | X | |||||||||
| Software | X | X | X | ||||||||
| Video | X | X | X | X | |||||||
| Finish documentation | X | X | X |
