MP3 Alarm Clock

Aug 09, 2025 Last reply: 11 months ago 5 Replies
J

I asked this in the digital TV group and wondered if anybody here had any ideas.



I want a device that will wake me in the morning by playing music either from a thumbdrive or by streaming it over my home network. Ideally it would have:



A decent size clock that I can read without specs. Start playing music at a set time from the thumbdrive or network, no DJ jibber jabber. Built in speaker, clear but hifi not needed



I have a Roberts Streamium but the alarm either buzzes or plays the radio, it won't wake me to music from a thumbdrive. This seems true of every similar device on the market. Also when the music comes on the clock shrinks to an unreadable size but I can live with a separate clock.



Any suggestions welcome, I do have some old Android tablets but the sound is not good due to their size. I also have an early Amazon Echo, biggest disappointment I have ever bought, did absolutely nothing useful, now gathering dust.



I found the August MH420 which plays MP3s from a flash drive as an alarm, doesn't have a decent sized clock but everything else. Sadly second one is on its way back as the clock keeps re-setting itself, the clock on the first one didn't work at all!



Suggestions appreciated :-)


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J

Personally I would separate out the display and speaker.

Really what you have described would be a poster child for my HomeAssistant lash-up which runs my smart home. You can create an automation that plays the media from a source (network drive which could be a shared USB drive) and programmed by voice command.

If you don't mind asking it the time, you don't need a display.

Just setting an alarm or a timer is inbuilt to Google Assistant.

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T

Lovely build project.

I'd use a Raspberry Pi zero W to keep time from the internet and program it via a web server,

Give it an audio hat for outputting the sound and then 3D print a little plastic box to hold it, a little power supply and audio amp/loudspeaker and a quartz clock movement

But that's me....:-)

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A

As my alarm I have a timed automation on my Nest Hub that commands it to "stream times radio from tunein" it treats it as though I have given it the "ok google" wake-word followed by a spoken command, you could replace that with "stream jeffs playlist from youtube music".

I think you can "push" music to it from a Plex server, but don't think the Nest device can "pull" from Plex/DLNA/UPnP.

It ticks the large clock display and good enough speaker boxes.

There are gen1 and gen2 units, latter supposedly better bass, I bought a grey-imported gen1 from this seller, there's a "max" version which is

10" instead of 7".
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it needed "adopting" as a UK device by an official google provisioning app (straightforward process) and came with a US->UK adapter plug.

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J

Just for a laugh.

I put my flash drive in my Roberts Stream to makes sure it can play it, although it won't wake me up to it.

The first tune was called "System Volume Information", it'll never make the charts :-)

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J

And it looks as if the Roberts Sound 49 will wake me to a flash drive, due for release in a week, I have emailed them to check.

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