Hourglass 2011 is a well put together digital alarm clock that uses an LCD display - but that's only half the fun. The other part is all of the ingenious programming that's gone into the device.

"My project was inspired by seeing how many things a digital alarm clock could do with only three buttons and an LCD screen that I wrote code for.  I tried to improve the user interface with every update, and eventually got a scrolling menu working. 

The most entertaining and rewarding part of making my project was writing all of the code.  It’s very satisfying to spend a few hours at home writing code and get to school the next day to program it into the project and for it to work the way you imagined.

While writing all the code was the best part, it was also the hardest.   It was also difficult planning all of the coding I had to do.

In my spare time I make computer-generated 3D models and animations.  I publish them to YouTube, where I have close to 300 subscribers.  I’m also interested in computers.  I personally built my current computer, which I paid for largely from competition winnings from a 2009 short film competition hosted by Studio 2.  I keep up to date with technology news, and plan to start learning relevant and useful programming languages like C++ in the near future."