Okay, so I've had this idea for a while now and have always thought it would be pretty cool to do, and that is to make a snowday (or inclement
weather cancellation if you want to sound technical) alarm clock over-ride. Because I live in northwest Missouri it isn't uncommon to get
a fair number of snowdays in an average winter, so here's the idea: Normally when snow is in the forecast overnight or it is snowing and a
decision hasn't been made yet, I will go to bed and set my alarm for the normal time to get up the next morning and check if school has
been cancelled (The school often won't make a notification untill 6:30 AM the day of). I'm the kinda person that once I'm up I usually can't
go back to sleep, especially if it's snowing outside, so I completely miss out on the opportunity to sleep in on a day when there is no school.
My idea is to have a service that will override my alarm clock and turn it off in the event of a school cancellation. I first had this idea when I
was maybe 10 or so, and it wasn't really a feasible thing to do with my technical skill at the time. I already have a filter set up in
my gmail that will detect an email about a school cancellation, so I need a way to have this incoming email essentially disable my morning alarm.
I am looking at this product here [link], but of course it is for adding an alarm via email, not removing it, and I don't need the rest of the
S.M.A.R.T. clock features, even a way of simply cutting off the power to my existing alarm clock via a Raspberry Pi would suffice. I do have
a soldering gun but am not very experienced with soldering PCB circuits (or programming for that matter), the most I can do is just some simple
wires, but I am open to any ideas as to how to make this work. I haven't yet had any experience with an open source software, but I am a quick
learner and willing to give things a try.
(Note: This would need to be a pretty fail-safe system so that it doesn't accidentally turn my alarm off when I actually need it.)
Thanks for any ideas or suggestions on how to go about a Snowday alarm clock override!
