The Early Bird: Natural Alarm Clock
Fall 2022
Developed for ENGR 1716: The Art of Hands-On System Design and Engineering
Why would you want one?
Waking up is the hardest part of the day. However, with Early Bird, it doesn't have to be!
Early Bird creates a peaceful and serene atmosphere each morning by imitating natural sunlight and providing the sound of birds. Instead of an agressive alarm, the Early Bird changes colors and gets brighter over a span of 30 minutes to emulate a real sunrise. The lighting is coupled with a calming sound of birds that also gradually grow louder, both helping to ease you into your day.
How does it work?
Early Bird would be set to go off roughly 30 minutes before the time that the user needs to be awake. Once the set time arrives it triggers a LED matrix that slowly but surely runs through a progressive color sequence that imitates that of a sunrise. By the end of the 30 minutes the whole space should be well illuminated by a white light. The user has the ability to end the light sequence at any time by turning the power switch off (located right behind the LED panel).
Team Members: Tyler Hansen, Alex Hascall, George Spann, and Piper Toto
littleBits
Above, you can see a simplified version of how we created this prototype using the littleBits system.
The p4 power bit sends power to both the w26 codeBit and the i3 button. The button controls the i25 mp3 player, which is pre-loaded with an hour-long audio clip of birds chirping. This audio file is then played by the o24 synth speaker, which has onboard volume control.
The codeBit controls the o28 LED matrix. After a delay specified in the code, the LED matrix will begin to light up 1 row at a time. These colors will progress from a dark red to orange to yellow to white, simulating the sunrise.
Turning the power off turns off the LED matrix and the synth speaker.
In the future, we would like to control the mp3 player with the codeBit as well. We would also like to modify the audio file such that it increases in volume over the course of the alarm being active.