My daughter had an iPad and would listen to it at night. Eyes glued to a screen at bedtime drove my wife and me crazy. It would also just keep playing indefinitely unless I remembered to go in and turn it off, along with having to manually manage her Yoto alarm on holidays and school breaks. We wanted her to be more independent and listen to music WITHOUT a tablet in bed.
I ended up building my own because I couldn't find anything on the market without microphones that also had a Spotify controller. This has been going strong in her room for ~1 month now. Features include, alarm sync'd with her school district days off, weather (and alerts), Spotify, Hue, Sleep timer, parent dashboard, and much more.
This advice is underrated for young children, but less helpful during the transition into the teen years, where it’s more important to teach a young adult how to keep healthy practical boundaries for themselves rather than tightly control their home environment (where they’ll spend less and less time as they develop.)
really good feedback. I made it for her for her 12th birthday as a surprise, and I can update the blog to make that more clear.
Since then, I have asked her for feedback and we made some tweaks. She is more excited to market/sell it, than build. I mentioned that at the end of the post and got her permission to open source it. She really wants to try to sell these which I am not as excited about due to being a full time parent & professional.
What board did you end up using, and did the parts come from AliExpress? Curious how much this year's tariff changes added to a one-off build like this.
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[ 38.5 ms ] story [ 84.6 ms ] threadI ended up building my own because I couldn't find anything on the market without microphones that also had a Spotify controller. This has been going strong in her room for ~1 month now. Features include, alarm sync'd with her school district days off, weather (and alerts), Spotify, Hue, Sleep timer, parent dashboard, and much more.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/healthy-aging-and-longevity/b...
You can also get a classic green or color display and use a custom backlight color (https://www.adafruit.com/product/398)
No kid needs an iPad.
Man are you kidding me?
And help should be parents not giving you the ipad and telling you why instead of looking at your teen how it fries its brain
"Let's build a digital clock", part 1, Aug 2026
Don't waste your time.
Did the daughter get involved in the design/build process at all?
It seems like a great opportunity to engage the daughter in some way. Better than buying off Amazon, better than just having AI do it.
Maybe I'm wrong or missed it in the blog, but I didn't see any reference to the daughters involvement at all.
Since then, I have asked her for feedback and we made some tweaks. She is more excited to market/sell it, than build. I mentioned that at the end of the post and got her permission to open source it. She really wants to try to sell these which I am not as excited about due to being a full time parent & professional.
The parts are all linked on the site and the GitHub.