I love sleeping.
More to the point, usually, I really don’t love waking up.
I drag myself around and it usually takes until I arrive at work before I am really what you might call awake.
Alarm clocks are annoying. Clock radios are better but depend on what’s on the radio that day. Winter is worse than summer due to the lack of daylight filtering through the windows.
So I thought: why not try to experiment with light and sound in order to design a customized wake-up call. The idea of a sunrise lamp isn’t particularly new (1890) but I was excited to create my own platform for experimentation.
The basic idea is simple. Recreate a sunset with light and sound during those short winter days when the real deal is hours away. I guess this could be even more useful to people who have to get up really early.
About half an hour before the wake up time the lamp will start to go through it’s color cycle, starting from deep orange and ending up at a warm, bright white. All the while generating a soundscape that also increases in intensity. Birds, waves, wind, depending on the current theme. I’m still experimenting with the optimal duration of this fade, currently around 40 minutes.
In fact, I find it is so much fun to build these ‘themes’ that I can’t seem to stop coming up with new ideas. It’s incredible fun to wonder what it would be like to wake up on a tropical beach, in the rain forest, African savanna, etc. and then being able to try it out.
Makes it quite a bit easier for me to get out of bed every morning (with a silly grin on my face). It’s really surprisingly effective and hard to describe. Rather than being resentful that it is already time to get up, I am now more inclined to be eager to get going. If someone had told me that this actually works I would have put a sunrise lamp in my bedroom years ago.
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Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!