A novelty alarm clock designed to wake users by physically blowing up capacitors.
Raw Developer Origin & Technical Request
Hacker News
Jun 15, 2026
I made an alarm clock that blows up capacitors to wake you up.There are more details on the Github repo but it's made from an esp32-c3 as the microcontroller, with 3 capacitor slots. There are relays on each capacitor slot to put 15v reverse voltage on the capacitor, with 5.1 ohm resistors on each slot for current limiting in case the capacitor shorts out. I also chucked in an SSD1315 OLED to show the time and a menu to configure it, although there's a web UI as well. The esp32 also means you can fetch the time from NTP.It also functions as a small heater since I used LDOs to step down 15v to 3.3v for the esp32, I was lazy and didn't use a buck converter circuit :)
Developer Debate & Comments
No active discussions extracted for this entry yet.
Frequently Asked Questions
Market intelligence mapped to A novelty alarm clock designed to wake users by physically blowing up capacitors..
What problem does A novelty alarm clock designed to wake users by physically blowing up capacitors. solve?
Which technical concepts are associated with A novelty alarm clock designed to wake users by physically blowing up capacitors.?
Is anyone launching products related to A novelty alarm clock designed to wake users by physically blowing up capacitors.?
Engagement Signals
Cross-Market Term Frequency
Quantifies the cross-market adoption of foundational terms like web UI and relays by tracking occurrence frequency across active SaaS architectures and enterprise developer debates.
SaaS Metrics