I thought it would be fun to build an alarm clock that looks just like the type of bomb that we always see in Hollywood movies. I certainly don’t know anything about how a real bomb might look, but in the movies they always have sticks of dynamite strapped together, a red digital readout, and a bunch of curly wires. Instead of just building an ordinary clock, I thought it should have a detonation sequence with a scary countdown just like in the movies. And why not make it “defusable” so I can try to stop the countdown by cutting the correct wire?
Of course that isn’t actually dynamite, Mike wrapped wooden dowels in paper. More interestingly, he used an ATmega328 to power the board so anyone Arduino-savvy can hack their own. He’ll be offering kits in the near future; you can sign up for an email notification on the project page.