First, assuming you have a chumby (if not, get one here), set it to use chumby’s “beta control panel” software — you look for this link on your “my chumby dashboard” page on the chumby web site:
(Some more detail about exactly what’s involved in the beta software is described here. And soon this will all be part of the standard offering and you won’t have to be a guinea pig to do this.)
When you’re ready to turn-in, do the following:
1.) Create a “Neil Young” Pandora station on your chumby;
2.) Create a “Chopin” Pandora station on your chumby;
3.) Go to the “Alarms” area on your chumby, create a “Custom Alarm,” set the time you want to wake up and choose Pandora with your new “Chopin Station” as the Alarm music source ;
4.) Get out of the Alarms area on your chumby and go to the Music area;
5.) Select Pandora as the music source you want to listen to now and play your “Neil Young Station” on Pandora;
6.) When you go back to the Music area on chumby you’ll now see that there’s a timer above all of the music sources and it tells you that your Neil Young station is playing (assuming that it is) — you can choose to set this timer for how long you want Mr. Young, and other similar artists, to play before this channel turns off;
7.) Put your chumby in “Night Mode” where the screen gets dark (and, if you’d like, it can be turned completely dark), showing you a dim clock and how much time left before Neil turns off;
8.) Turn off your lights, lie back and drift off to sleep with Cinnamon Girl or some other classic and, when your alarm goes off, it will be to Chopin’s Etudes (or something “Chopin-like” in the Pandora way of thinking). Just beautiful.
By the way, once set, you don’t have to do these steps every time — you’re good-to-go with your morning Chopin alarm — it will do this every morning, or just certain mornings, whatever you decide — you don’t have to reset it, it remembers.
chumby wasn’t specifically designed to be a clock radio (it does so much more!), but this is what enables it to be a great one. Is there another clock radio that can do this?
Of course feel free to go to sleep to Chopin and wake to Neil, or replace them with any other artists, or any other music source for that matter.

this sure beats the buzz
March 4, 2009 at 8:07 am
Why Neil Young and Chopin?
March 4, 2009 at 4:13 pm
I just picked the ones *I* like. Feel free to pick any ones *you* like — that’s the whole point of chumby: completely personalizable.
April 23, 2009 at 5:46 pm
I don’t know Steve…since this is your creation I think we must follow your lead! :) Ha!!
My chumby arrived today and I must say simply stunning invention!! LOVE IT!!!!!! I’m a chumby evangelist now.
July 16, 2009 at 10:19 pm
[…] of course you can still go the Neil Young and Chopin route […]
November 13, 2009 at 11:16 am
Thanks, some interesting stuff to read here. But i’m having some problems using Opera Browser. Is it only me?
January 21, 2010 at 1:09 pm
[…] There is nothing else like it, and there may never be. It’s what I choose for my own bedside […]
March 3, 2010 at 9:35 am
[…] we’re making the consumer electronics industry better. We’ve greatly improved the clock radio, and, with some big partners, have been working hard to reinvent the product category that has […]
March 4, 2010 at 11:14 am
Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, most of the internet radio stations that I want the most, do not play on Chumby…yet.