A survey of wake up alarms for those who stay up way too late.

This usually starts in college, as that is the time when most people move away from the parent that used to wake them up. And this is also the time when people start to stay up way too late partying, even when they have to work the next day.

The usual alarm is the radio that is timed to go on ten minutes before the loud insistent beeping alarm. This is what wakes me up and works just fine now that I am not staying out until 2AM on a weeknight and live in a room with translucent shades that let the sunlight in.

One of my roommates after college built, what he called, his "Tertiary alarm system." The first two levels were the radio and alarm clock buzzer. The third level was a Tork 120 volt timer hard-wired and bolted to the outlet box and locked shut with a combination lock connected to a surplus school fire horn. Something like this Tork timer and a Fire Horn similar to this one. The ONLY way to turn it off was for him to wake up enough to enter the combination. When it went off, I would levitate out of bed and my room was one floor up from his. I still don't understand how he functioned at work on so little sleep.

What used to work best for me when I did stay out too late was a bright, middle of the ceiling, light turning on, then the radio and finally a loud alarm. The company, that I worked for at the time, tested a wall light switch replacement that had a built-in timer and gave me one of the spares after the project was finished. It was meant for people going on vacation so that the room looked lived in by the lights going on at about the same time every evening. What I would use now would be a Honeywell timer wall switch replacement. The bright light followed by the radio and finally the loud insistent beeping that I had to get out of bed to turn off worked very well.

Then there was the fraternity brother who could only wake up if someone called his name or shook him. When he lived in the fraternity house, all you had to do when you heard his alarm go off was to open his door and yell "Bill" and he would get up. After he got his mechanical engineering degree and moved out, he made a plan to make a bed that one side would rise up and roll him out onto the floor. He put two pieces of plywood under his mattress hinged together by a piano hinge along one side with the hydraulic lifter from a junked convertible car attached to the other side. A Tork timer and a 120 volt to 12 volt converter was all he needed to complete the project. Alas, his girlfriend moved in and she didn't relish the idea of waking up by falling out of bed and having him land on top of her on the floor, when she could just poke him and say "Bill, time to get up". So this method hasn't actually been tested. And it would be dangerous if used on the upper bunk of a bunk bed.

I was prompted to write this because a friend had sent me a link to "B.R.A.D.", the Berkeley Ridiculously Automated Dorm room. and it had an X10 controller that would automatically open the curtains to let sunlight in and wake them up.

Copyright © 2012 by Mike Beirne
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