Show HN: I made an alarm clock

https://www.stavros.io/posts/do-not-be-alarmed-clock/

by stavros • 5 years ago

271 192 5 years ago

stavros.io

JshWright4• 5 years ago

I’m too obsessive to not check all my messages instead of falling asleep when I see the notifications on the screen.

So this new clock is why you've stopped responding to my messages at all hours of the night? I see how it is...

StavrosK64• 5 years ago

Oh no, your messages I see.

hanniabu• 5 years ago

Lol do you guys actually know each other?

harkal• 5 years ago

Do you keep the screen constantly on (with dimming but still on)? I had the same for a thermostat I made and the pixel burn on those screens are terrible. I would add offsetting to mitigate it. (Periodically render stuff with small random offsets) kudos!

StavrosK64• 5 years ago

Yep, I do. I used this kind of screen in another project, but it took years to burn in (and that one was completely static). The screen only costs $3-4 or so, so I can just replace it if it becomes an issue, but you are quite correct that it's going to be a problem.

amelius• 5 years ago

An alarm clock without a radio?

StavrosK64• 5 years ago

Then put your little hand in mine

There ain't no hill or mountain we can't climb

mbg7213• 5 years ago

It's interesting how that song in particular instantly zones-out the listener. Even though I've heard it hundreds of times, I had to look up the second line to make sure I had the right one.

war1025• 5 years ago

Not nearly as nifty as this, but it reminded me that in college my alarm clock was cron job on my desktop that would launch a program every day at 8am which beeped the system bell once a second until I leapt out of bed and hit Enter.

Making that sound stop was a great motivator for getting out of bed.

gus_massa• 5 years ago

For a long time I had a similar setup, but I was just playing Thunderstruck by AC/DC. It stars quietly, the volume of the song increase slowly, and you have like a minute to get up and turn it off before they guy start to cry and wake up all your family.

eb0la2• 5 years ago

I used 'To live is to die' by Metallica. It starts with a nice tune, and you have less than one minute to turn it off before the music changes (slowliy) with the drums and distorted guitars ;-)

TeMPOraL6• 5 years ago

My high-school alarm clock was a power amp on a hardware switch that would activate roughly around 0630, plus a Windows timer on the desktop that would wake the computer from sleep and proceed to blast an mp3 through the (now powered) speaker columns.

The motivator for getting up was as much to stop the mp3 as it was to prevent the rest of my family from killing me. I eventually retired the system, after my half-awake brain developed an acrobatic routine, where in one smooth movement, I would raise, hit the power button on the power amp, and fall back to bed.

yetihehe2• 5 years ago

I've heard a story about one guy who tried everything to wake up to go for college on time. He even got to surround clocks with some pans and cutlery, so that when clock started ringing and he got to turn it off, he would be awake enough to not fall asleep again. One morning he was found by roommate snoozing on sofa, but already half-clothed for exit.

xuhu• 5 years ago

My 8:03AM cron job wipes the MBR on my test VM. And the alarm clock is set to 8AM. Been using it since 2016.

sgt2• 5 years ago

This symbolizes the futility of human existence and its incessant search for meaning in a cold and unfeeling universe that’s ultimately profoundly devoid of such, and then you die.
Not having to wake up to a buzzer is cool, though.

Hilarious!

StavrosK64• 5 years ago

I'd thank you but what's the point

sgt2• 5 years ago

I'd say pleasure, but you would have to thank me first.

larrik• 5 years ago

Octagonal shape so I can lay it down on its side instead of having to crane my neck up to check the time when lying down (I really did think of everything).

I actually didn't understand this part. Why an octagon? How does it help this?

pb7• 5 years ago

You can rotate an octagon in 45° increments.

StavrosK64• 5 years ago

Yep! That really is its killer feature, and it's very interesting how, when I'm lying with my head perfectly horizontal, it's easier to read the clock when it's at 45° rather than entirely on its side...

AndrewDucker• 5 years ago

Allows it to be angled in a variety of directions, but still be stable.

jordan801• 5 years ago

I enjoy the nihilistic morbid humor here. I too question the futility of my work as I waste away in this cold expanse.

Teknoman1172• 5 years ago

Sometimes I wonder if playing with old obviously obsolete computers is a waste of time.

Been working on replacing the BIOS on a 386EX single board computer with a custom monitor / "hypervisor" I'm writing in Rust as kind of a demonstration of how low level you can get with Rust. I want to post a Show HN after cleaning it up a bit.

StavrosK64• 5 years ago

Enjoying yourself is never a waste of time.

e12e2• 5 years ago

Nice write-up. No (ed: full) source code? I was somewhat qurious to see how much of it there ended up being.

In high-school I did the almost opposite of this - I taped down the play button on my hi-fi CD remote, and wired the battery through the switch for the alarm of an old alarm clock (and cut the wires to the actual alarm). Allowed me to wake up to whichever CD was in the player, rather than an alarm.

Most cd players would wake up from power off playing, but mine didn't - so I couldn't just make do with a timer on the mains. Plus, the analog alarm clock was easier to set for a time, than my timer-plug.

StavrosK64• 5 years ago

The code is here:

https://gitlab.com/stavros/do-not-be-alarmed

It's just pretty specific to me and I don't know if I committed any keys or anything, so I didn't really publicize it.

It should be perfectly usable, though, you can build it with PlatformIO after specifying a few #defines.

crazypython• 5 years ago

Nice to see it's under AGPLv3. Putting end-user code under AGPLv3 protects the rights of users to run, modify, contribute to, and share the software.

e12e2• 5 years ago

Thank you :)

shimonabi• 5 years ago

It's not that difficult. I made one for myself too with an ESP8266, a RTC clock module, a temperature sensor and a hd44780 screen.

It displays the time and date, outside/inside temperature, humidity, barometric pressure.

I have the modules mounted on a breadboard, currently in vertical position with wires hangihg out. :)

StavrosK64• 5 years ago

Yeah, it's a pretty simple build, which makes it much better because the payoff is large compared to the work. I didn't need an internal temperature sensor because I have a hypothalamus, but the rest sounds great!

bigiain3• 5 years ago

Is your hypothalamus properly functional at Oh Dark (Eight) Thirty in the morning?

bigiain3• 5 years ago

I built this a while back (checks photo date. Shgit, a decade back):

https://flic.kr/p/8Sdfju

Inspired by a board I found in a local jun/recycling shop and impulse-bought.

It's been upgraded since then to a "Time From Space!!! Clock" since I got bored of needing to reset it because the Arduino doesn't keep very good time, so I added a spare GPS module from my junk drawer (probably one from an old drone that got upgraded to a GPS with faster than 1Hz updates). It still has breadboard and wires hanging out...

roadbeats2• 5 years ago

How did you get the case built ? 3D printer ?

StavrosK64• 5 years ago

Yes! I love my 3D printer, it has the highest ROI of anything I've ever bought, and I've bought a bidet.

dceddia3• 5 years ago

Cool! What sorts of things have you 3D printed that give it such a high ROI?

I've got one too and it's fun to tinker with and I've printed a couple useful things, but not a lot of useful things. I'm always curious what people do with theirs, especially when they say they use it all the time!

brian_herman• 5 years ago

Cool are you going to sell it?

StavrosK64• 5 years ago

Nah, I can't be bothered with sales and stuff. I estimate the effort left to make it an actual product someone can use to be about ten to thirty times as much effort as I put into this prototype, and I don't think many people will want it.

hnburnsy• 5 years ago

That's really cool, but a projection clock really saves from having to strain to read the time on the bedside table.

StavrosK64• 5 years ago

I wasn't aware of projection clocks, thanks! I sleep on my side or in a prone position, so a projection clock wouldn't help me, unfortunately.

linsomniac4• 5 years ago

Agreed. Reading the time off the ceiling when it's dark is the way to go. I bought one years ago, and it comes with a normal clock and the projector added to the side, and it reads the time via the WWVB time signal.

I 95% like it, but: the normal clock part I never use, and the WWVB syncing sometimes goes out (happening more after 7 years of use), and it reads a time 1-3 hours wrong.

I LOVE the projector part, it's basically all I use. I've been tempted recently to pull it apart and hook it up to some microcontroller that NTP synced and just ran the projector.

fernandopj• 5 years ago

That was hilarious! And it's such a cool project. Just copy & paste this entire post in a Kickstart page and watch the money pile up. Seriously. (but omit the "liar" part)

StavrosK64• 5 years ago

Haha, but then I'd have to do so much work :(

I was actually contacted by the CEO of Pimoroni a while back, you can give them the product and they'll handle sales and manufacturing and give you a percentage, which is a great deal for a lazy guy like me. Unfortunately, he hasn't replied to my last 3-4 emails, so I haven't pursued it further.

LibertyBeta• 5 years ago

They're likely a little swamped with the Pico launch.

baxtr3• 5 years ago

The simple one-liner “Have you given up on this project” has worked wonders for me. Try it and let us know if he replies.

https://blog.blackswanltd.com/the-edge/sales-email-magic-the...

nip180• 5 years ago

One small design suggestion. You should include a battery so that if the electricity were to go out you could still see the time or be alerted at the time of the alarm.

StavrosK64• 5 years ago

Yep, I mention that in the post. I have an LoLin ESP32 board that includes a charger and battery connector, I might just use that.

smichel17• 5 years ago

Additional small design suggestion: fade in the beeper too instead of starting full blast.

I'd suggest checking out the Android app Talalarmo, which gets most things right (no snooze, same time every day). Specifically my fork, which adds press-and-hold-to-dismiss. I can build you an apk if you don't have an Android environment set up https://github.com/smichel17/talalarmo

rytis• 5 years ago

If the electricity goes out, so does the internet (usually). How is it going to keep track of time then?

StavrosK64• 5 years ago

It works without the internet, it just might drift eventually. It'd probably take days, though.

Sebb767• 5 years ago

I've wanted to do this for myself for a long time, especially the dimmer wake up part. This might be Inspiration enough to finally go for it.

Great write-up! I enjoyed the nihilist humour quite a lot.

StavrosK64• 5 years ago

Thanks! Go for it, I'm fairly sure the dimming will work for you, but I think the other similar screen I have doesn't work with that code entirely, it needed some small change that I don't remember now.

paxys3• 5 years ago

A long time ago I had a Google-branded alarm clock which had wheels and ran away when it rang so you couldn't hit snooze. Fun times.

StavrosK64• 5 years ago

Hahah I remember that one! It jumped off the nightstand and ran around the room, didn't it? That was hilarious.

paxys3• 5 years ago

Yes! It somehow managed to hide deep under my dresser every morning.

kirktrue• 5 years ago

Are you referring to Clocky? - https://clocky.com/

paxys3• 5 years ago

Maybe. Or a precursor/knockoff. This was like 15 years ago..

pbronez• 5 years ago

There’s an old Chinese saying:
To know the time, you must first connect to the internet.
– Sun Inc.

amazing

StavrosK64• 5 years ago

Thanks! I wasn't sure if it would be obvious enough, I don't think many people got it.

highpost• 5 years ago

Sun Inc. also said "The network is the computer." To which DEC Inc. replied "The network is the network and the computer is the computer. Sorry for all the confusion."

LeifCarrotson• 5 years ago

I enjoyed it, so there's at least two of us.

You've turned microhumor [1] into something akin to a spoken accent that pervades the entire blog post. I'm unsure how to handle this.

However, I was particularly amused by your closing sentence that mentioned how a LiPo could keep it running for "hours". That sounds about right for a 20 mA OLED and an 80 mA ESP8266, but it's remarkably shorter than an old-fashioned LCD alarm clock in which an alkaline battery could last for months.

By the way, I'd recommend an 18650 LiIon instead. If you want, the charge circuit can be as simple as putting the LiIon and a silicon rectifier in parallel with your 3.3V regulator output (assuming the linear regulator has an internal PNP body diode and doesn't backfeed) and then just charge the cell outside the alarm clock in an off-the-shelf battery charger. You don't need the current density of a LiPo, you want low current but high capacity, and cheap LiPo pouches have an annoying tendency to puff up and go bad. Going bad may result in burning down your nightstand, which is never a good way to wake up.

[1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/02/20/writing-advice/

bialpio2• 5 years ago

I didn't get the reference, if there is one here. :( Can you or someone else explain?

Yhippa• 5 years ago

StavrosK, you're my hero. Thanks for the delightful write-up.

StavrosK64• 5 years ago

You're my hero, Yhippa!

baxtr3• 5 years ago

Say I want to set the alarm for 9:30, just in time to be ten minutes late for tennis.

Haha. What a ridiculous time to get up - from my perspective at least having young children that are up at 6:30 the latest. That’s the reason why I won’t need your clock. I wholeheartedly agree though that it’s “sexy”. Niiice!

StavrosK64• 5 years ago

Oh man, 9:30 is my "this is inhumanely early" time. I usually get up around noon. Having kids will either be terrible or super easy, as I can keep the kid until 6 am, while my wife sleeps, and then we can switch shifts.

seanalltogether• 5 years ago

Once past the newborn phase, babies like to be asleep when its dark and awake when its light.

glitchc• 5 years ago

Ah, to be young again!

el_benhameen2• 5 years ago

Blackout curtains, sound machine, sleep training and a bit (ton) of luck. We've somehow gotten ours to stick to reasonable hours.

andreareina2• 5 years ago

The most reliable and least annoying alarm clock I ever had was the dog. 5am and it's time for walkies.

StavrosK64• 5 years ago

Sounds like it's 6 hours off to me.

noisy_boy• 5 years ago

I chuckled at the idea of having children solely for the purpose of waking up early :)

rlonn• 5 years ago

Young kids are very effective alarm clocks. The problem is you can't set the wakeup time.

And as they grow older they stop working, though you can always have another kid I guess.

robocat• 5 years ago

One thing I’d like to improve in the future is to add a battery, because right now it’s solely USB powered and will obviously die if there’s a power outage. Adding a small LiPo battery and a charger circuit will be pretty easy

¿Maybe just use a USB powerbank if you want a quick n dirty solution?

StavrosK64• 5 years ago

That works, it'd just be a bit clunky. I already have a board that supports a battery, so I'll probably use that instead.

tyingq4• 5 years ago

Nifty device, and great write-up. Seems like it might be simpler with an ESP32 though, since it does have an RTC.

StavrosK64• 5 years ago

That's what I get for not reading the datasheet more carefully, I guess. Thanks, I'll switch to that, I have a bunch of bare modules.

tyingq4• 5 years ago

It's +- 5% on accuracy, so not the best RTC, but it's fairly simple to give the internal RTC a better oscillator: https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/2858309/73125119-7...

Supposedly that makes it as good as typical cheap RTC modules.

Or, maybe +-5% is fine with just a few NTP updates now and again.

Edit: Apparently the built-in accuracy is substantially better if you avoid the deep sleep mode.

el_benhameen2• 5 years ago

Tangential, but do you have a favorite ESP32 project or documentation? I bought a bunch of them on a whim and I'm looking for interesting applications.

tyingq4• 5 years ago

My favorite is any variation of something that makes it like a 1980's home computer.

This is one example: https://www.instructables.com/ESP32-Basic-PC-With-VGA-Output...

TeMPOraL6• 5 years ago

Nice job!

(For some reason, when I saw the submission title, I immediately guessed it's you, Stavros!)

One question: since your design called for "A screen that wasn’t too bright and wouldn’t disturb sleep", have you considered colors like orange or (I guess old-school) red? They have a benefit of not messing up your night adaptation[0].

The octagonal shape is very clever. On a tangent, this reminds me of a cleverly designed clock my sister bought in IKEA [1] - it's a square device with bunch of functions, which are selected by turning the device to stand on an appropriate side.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purkinje_effect#Use_of_red_lig...

[1] https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/p/klockis-clock-thermometer-alarm...

StavrosK64• 5 years ago

Thanks, Jacek! Yeah, I did think of adding a color that's less offensive, but blue/white is all I had available at the time. Since I ended up using this a lot, you make a good point, I should order a red one.

On a tangent, this reminds me of a cleverly designed clock my sister bought in IKEA

Oh yeah, I have seen that! It's very interesting indeed, I think it has a mercury switch (not even an accelerometer), but it's been a while since I saw it and I only played with it for a minute.

fckthisguy2• 5 years ago

You could skip buying another display and just add a red filter to the existing screen.

listic• 5 years ago

KLOCKIS. Thanks for mentioning it! https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/klockis-clock-thermometer-alarm...

SamBam• 5 years ago

Indeed, I was also thinking of this one, where one tilts the clock to turn the alarm on or off: https://www.studiomama.com/on-off-2006

WD-422• 5 years ago

Always look forward to reading about your latest projects! They just keep getting better.

StavrosK64• 5 years ago

Haha, thanks man! Wait until you see the next one, it is completely pointless.

yetihehe2• 5 years ago

You mean round?

grifball• 5 years ago

For me, if I see the time, I'm awake. Something about seeing the time makes me go into work mode and I have to get up. I think I'd like something like a "color clock" so when I wake up early, it'll show a blue screen, meaning I should go back to sleep, but if it's close enough to when I should wake up, it shows a yellow screen or something.

mattmar96• 5 years ago

I like this idea

wryun• 5 years ago

Perhaps just having your room lights on a timer would solve this one... fake 'sun'.

fassssst• 5 years ago

There are tons of “wake up lights” out there. I use this one and it does just that:

https://www.usa.philips.com/c-p/HF3520_60.amp/wake-up-light

DrSiemer• 5 years ago

An older version of this lamp didn't work for me. My brain got used to the increasing light within a week, so that I'd only wake up when the gradually amplified bird chirping got to the "screaming flock of ravens" part.

jffry• 5 years ago

I kind of have this already, using the "Sunrise Alarm" feature built into Google's stock Android clock app.

15 minutes before my phone alarm goes off (not configurable sadly), the whole screen comes on a very dim red, and slowly fades through medium orange to a bright yellow at the time of the alarm.

With the phone laying flat on top of my dresser, this provides a great lighting cue.

jedimastert• 5 years ago

Sunrise alarms are definitely a thing. They slowly turn up a lamp when it's time to get up.

What you're describing is a toddler alarm. MAde for children that can't yet tell the time, but you put in the room and they show one color for sleeping and another for awake. Look up "toddler alarm" or "ok-to-wake clock" Here's the first one I found via google (non-affiliate link)

https://www.amazon.com/Hatch-Baby-Night-Light-Machine/dp/B06...

sokoloff• 5 years ago

As he was learning numbers, we taught our 3 year old that he could only come into our room once it was 6 AM.

Along the path, we got woken up at 4:46 (there’s a 6!) and once to “Mommy, Mommy, it’s not 6 yet in your room either!” as he excitedly learned that time was the same everywhere.

Kids are exhaustingly awesome!

kiddico2• 5 years ago

Wouldn't you want the opposite color progression? To avoid blasting your eyes with blue light when you need to go back to sleep. That's why operating systems have the night light feature.

I like the idea though... I think I've got an RGB light strip I pulled out of a pc case (not a fan of rainbow vomit styling...) around here somewhere. I'll put it on my growing pile of projects I should probably do.

mckirk• 5 years ago

Check out Andrew Huberman's podcast, I cannot recommend him enough.

Turns out it's not really the color that is the most important factor for wakefulness-shifting, but the amount of light your eyes perceive. Yes, the cells responsible are more sensitive to bluish light, but a ton of not-so-bluish light would keep you awake just the same, and just a little blue light wouldn't be that harmful.

That being said, 'blue for Go' still makes more sense to me instinctively :D

StavrosK64• 5 years ago

Yep, that's what the LED functionality was supposed to do (no light for sleep, light for "wake up"), but the lack of a good UI option deterred me from adding it.

herbst• 5 years ago

Did that with simple light bulb, as long as it has a specific color i know there is no reason to get up

Ice_cream_suit• 5 years ago

When Google Home wakes me up in the morning, it also turns on my Phillips Hue lights and slowly increases the color temperature and brightness.

( and does the usual things like telling me the time, weather report and traffic to work )

StavrosK64• 5 years ago

Oh that's a good idea, I do have a WiFi LED bulb in the room, I could use that! Why didn't I think of that...

maroonmed• 5 years ago

Awesome! The world needs more NTP-powered (alarm) clocks. If you want a self-setting clock traditionally that meant an atomic clock, but those are expensive. Google Home / Alexa based smart devices (like the Lenovo Smart Clock) are cool but are a bit overkill (and a bit questionable from a privacy aspect). It'd be nice to see more NTP clocks that do little more than show the time and have basic alarm functionality.

StavrosK64• 5 years ago

Agreed, I guess people don't prefer them so much because they need WiFi. Another interesting suggestion from this thread was to use GPS to always have accurate time, but that would probably ~only work outdoors and be fairly battery-heavy.

2Gkashmiri• 5 years ago

i have a thing, if i have the same alarm "audio" for more than one day, my brain ignores it and next day i hear nothing. i have tried "music" ones but they waste battery a lot more than resident apps

bleuarff3• 5 years ago

Shameless plug: I too made an alarm clock, although quite a different one, since it's for my kids: https://github.com/Bleuarff/teddy-clock

StavrosK64• 5 years ago

I really like yours too!

tasuki3• 5 years ago

Looks very nice! I wonder why blue is "sleep" and orange is "wake up". That seems flipped from what it should be?

bleuarff3• 5 years ago

Well, I think blue light less disturbing if the kid sees it in the middle of the night, and more likely to get back to sleep. Also, orange looks more energetic and more appropriate for when the kid can get up. But that kind of perception is culture-dependent. I'm from Europe and this scheme seems natural to me.

russh2• 5 years ago

I am also an amateur Horologist and made one for my Dad: https://penfold.owt.com/panel_meter_clock_v2.1/

Fnoord• 5 years ago

Cable management and requirement of power are not my cup of tea. Nor is a 24/7 requirement of internet connectivity. I would instead only manually sync time (with a button), or once a day at (what it believes is) 3 AM. User replaceable battery is also a big plus. Thing is, we already got all these features in 'dumb' clocks.

Show HN: I made an alarm clock

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