My  Arduino based alarm clock is making some progress. This weekend, I
  soldered together the DCF77 receiver and gave  it  a  spin.  It  works
  remarkably  well.  I'm pretty confident that I can omit an RTC because
  the Arduino has "okay-ish" timekeeping  functionality  and  the  DCF77
  signal is just brilliant.

  This leaves me with two big tasks:

     o Sound. The Arduino Uno can play basic tones but I'd rather have a
       sophisticated, dedicated sound processor.

     o A  real  "boxing".  Right  now,  everything  exists  only  on   a
       breadboard.