Google calendar makes sweet love to your alarm clock

(Inspired from Raspberry Pi as a Google Calender Alarm Clock)

This year, my kids started riding the school bus, which is super convenient and means I don't have to spend extra time getting them to school. That is, if they make the bus. Sometimes they lose track of time, and I wanted a pretty reliable way of reminding them when it's time to go outside to wait for the big yellow limousine to escort them to school.

Since I am lazy, I decided to have this automated, which uses (ideally) a Raspberry Pi and Google Calendar to check for events that start with 'say' or have corresponding mp3 titles.

For example:

1. An event titled say Don't forget to brush your teeth will announce the phrase 'Don't forget to brush your teeth'.
2. An event with the title Get on the bus fires an appropriately annoying song snippet from the mp3s folder by The Doodlebops called get_on_the_bus.mp3.

It's dynamic in the sense that it will try and play any mp3 with the event title, and falls back to a default mp3 (my default.mp3 is an old school Nokia ringtone-- of course, you can make yours anything you wish).

Pre-requisite: mpg123

• If you're on Linux, you can install mpg123 via apt-get:

  sudo apt-get install mpg123

• If you're on OS X, you can install mpg123 via Homebrew:

  brew install mpg123

• Or you can download the source and run:

  ./configure
  make
  make install

Pre-requisite for Linux text to speech: espeak

sudo apt-get install espeak

1. Install the requirements:

    pip install -r requirements.txt
   

2. Create a new project on the Google Developers Console

3. Enable the Calendars API

4. Create the file config.py

5. Create new Client ID for web application and download the JSON as client_secrets.json and set CLIENT_SECRET_FILE = 'client_secrets.json' in config.py

6. Create a new key for browser application and set the API KEY value as API_KEY = xxx in config.py

7. Create a new Google calendar and set the ID as CALENDAR_ID = xxx in config.py (Click drop-down arrow by calendar name; choose 'Calendar Settings'; find ID by 'Calendar Address' section)

8. Add FREQUENCY_CHECK (in seconds) and MP3_FOLDER location in config.py.

9. Run the program: python alarm.py

All new events will try to play the name of the event as an mp3 file in the mp3s folder with spaces converted to underscores, i.e.:

Get on the bus == mp3s/get_on_the_bus.mp3

If the event has no corresponding mp3 file, default.mp3 will play. To have the sound play repeatedly until the event's time expires, enter repeat as the event's description.

Example config.py file:

API_KEY = '123456789qwertyuiop987654321asdfghjkl54321'
CALENDAR_ID = '[email protected]'
CLIENT_SECRET_FILE = 'client_secrets.json'
FREQUENCY_CHECK = 5 # in seconds
MP3_FOLDER = 'mp3s'