A final project idea I would be really excited about - not my final idea yet - would be to design and build a minimal but engageable alarm clock. The motivation behind this alarm clock is that when I go to bed, I usually have the thought that I'll take a few minutes on my phone to wind down, which almost always ends up scrolling something I don't particularly want to. The same happens in the morning, when I open my phone to check the whether and always end up scrolling the news. I'd like to build an alarm clock where I can wind down and start my day healthily, without wanting to keep my phone near my bed.
This sketch demonstrates the general design vision and states- Aesthetically, I would like this alarm to resemble a vintage TV. I would like to use a transparent screen, although I have heard that these are either extremely expensive or extremely difficult to implement, so we shall see. The vision is that when the screen is off, the alarm clock will look and function entirely as just that. When the screen is on, I would like to build and implement some simple web interactions to check the weather/ calendar as well as to be able to do voice-journalling.
Here is a really simple cad mock-up of the clock, the main purpose of which is to imagine the aesthetics. I would love to build this out with wood, though doing so will be interesting as I wouldn't just be able to 3d print the structure and would need to learn some wood working skills! I am also imagining that it would be interesting to learn how to integrate existing components (like a clock) with electronics and my own controls.
Funnily enough, this is what GPT output when I prompted it about my design idea.