
Show HN: Deaf? My iPhone app wakes you up if it hears an alarm - alexvr
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/deafalarm/id845405123?ls=1&mt=8
======
brudgers
In the US, visual alarms are pretty much standard under all the life safety
codes for commercial buildings including apartments.[1] When they are not
provided, both ADA and the Fair Housing Act [1] both dictate that owners
provide them to accommodate the disability. If there's a problem, the fire
marshal is a good person to call. They've typically pulled enough bodies from
tragedies to last a lifetime, and this shapes their attitude toward non-
compliance.

[1] Life safety codes as distinct from building codes apply to all buildings
not just those newly constructed.

[2] Likewise for ADA and the Fair Housing Act. There are also state
equivalents of both of these in many states that may be more restrictive.

~~~
tlrobinson
Can visual alarms wake a person up?

~~~
brudgers
Appropriately placed, almost certainly. A 75 Candela strobe in a bedroom is
pretty much impossible to sleep through.

~~~
baddox
Even if you sleep with a mask (which is pretty common), or sleep with your
head under the covers (which is even more common)?

~~~
brudgers
Not sleeping with one's iPhone is far more common, despite the belovedness of
Apple products.

In design terms an alarm strobe has removed everything unnecessary for its
purpose and its sole purpose is to save your life on the rare occurrence of
fire. It won't be on a charger or in your pants or sitting on the table by the
TV or off with your spouse on a business trip.

It will be hanging on the wall, with power or backup power, hardwired to the
alarm panel because that's what field experience has shown works.

Don't get me wrong, the sentiment behind the product is admirable. But the
alarm industry is already deadly serious and has robust proven solutions based
not on theory but on close attention to the causes and consequences of actual
fires.

US Fire
Administration[http://www.usfa.fema.gov/statistics/index.shtm](http://www.usfa.fema.gov/statistics/index.shtm)

NFPA: [http://www.nfpa.org/](http://www.nfpa.org/)

Firehouse.com: [http://www.firehouse.com/](http://www.firehouse.com/)

~~~
Retric
It will however not be there if your sleeping somewhere else.

Not that I think an iPhone is the correct place for such a life saving device,
but redundancy is rarely a bad thing.

------
alexvr
Hey everyone, I really appreciate all of the positive feedback. This is quite
thrilling as a college student. It's the first thing I've made that people
actually understand and consider useful.

If any of you download Deafalarm, please let me know how it works for you and
what you would like to see improved.

I could also use pointers on getting the word out to people in this niche
market.

Thank you very much,

Alex

~~~
roberthahn
As someone who's deaf (not Deaf) thank you for making it. Sadly, the vibration
the iPhone makes isn't strong enough for me but this is an awesome idea and I
hope you succeed with it!

~~~
alexvr
You're welcome, and thank you for the comment. I noticed this as well; I'm
definitely searching a way to make the vibration more noticeable. Someone else
suggested abandoning the mobile phone platform altogether to make a more
robust product in general. If not me, maybe Nest will do something like this
with their smoke detectors. They're already connected to wifi, so it would
just take a wifi-enabled vibrator do the same thing, perhaps more reliably.
Still, it might be a while before every smoke detector is as smart as a Nest
;)

~~~
ryanhuff
What about a specialized device that operates off of low energy bluetooth for
communicating to the iphone? Something like this could be built with Arduino
or Raspberry Pi.

John Muir, the American environmentalist of the 1800-1900's, built an "alarm
clock" in 1862 that would dump the occupant off the bed at the defined time.

~~~
pndmnm
I really wish that the Fitbit Flex was more hackable -- if I could get a low-
power bluetooth fob that could vibrate and display a few lights embedded in my
watchband, that would really be all the smartwatch I need.

------
dang
This post fell in rank because it triggered the flamewar detector. I've just
restored it. If you see things suddenly reappear on the front page, it's often
because a moderator saw a case like this.

~~~
swalsh
Curious, how does the flamewar detector work? Is it looking at velocity of
commenting? Specific language perhaps?

~~~
dang
We're committed to increasing transparency, but the HN algorithms will
probably remain an exception to that; certainly for the time being.

------
fredleblanc
I'm not deaf, and I have virtually no experience building things specifically
for those that are, but this seems like a great idea. Nice work!

~~~
alexvr
Thank you! I'm a college student with an early class (so I have to go to bed
earlier than most people), and my dorm can be pretty loud, so I often sleep
with earplugs. I didn't like the idea of possibly not waking up in a fire, so
I made this to cure my paranoia :p

I don't know how many people will find it useful, but it seemed like something
that should exist.

~~~
herokusaki
Great idea for an app! I sleep with earplugs occasionally and I can see myself
using your app in that situation. That said, I've been wondering lately if
using earplugs often is a healthy thing to do in the long run. I couldn't find
any pertinent research about non-professional users.

Edit: phrasing.

~~~
alexvr
I wonder the same thing. I find that I dream more when I can hear rain on the
roof, so maybe ambient sounds (or a lack thereof) have a real effect on sleep

~~~
dannypgh
Humans aren't good judges of how often they dream. You have REM sleep several
times a night and generally if you're woken up during REM sleep you will say
that you were dreaming.

It is probably more likely that you are simply remembering dreams more when
you can hear rain on the roof - either by power of suggestion, or because the
stimulus of the rain noise is noticeable and memorable in your dreams, or
because the rain itself is waking you up.

This isn't to say that you're wrong - there most certainly is an effect - but
whether that effect is positive or negative is unclear.

------
wunderlust
It's a good start, but it may serve best to remind us of the limitations of
basic technology. Instead of an X detector, what we have is an X detector
detector. From a design perspective this is obviously odd.

On the other hand, in a sense it's a multi-detector, since in theory it should
respond to detectors of many sorts. There are some upsides to that.

~~~
htk
You can also see this tool as a sense translator. It is translating hearing to
touch, and maybe sight in the future (if the camera flash is also used).

This way we can let the detectors do what they do best, and translate the
physical phenomenon used by the signal, if we don't have the physiological
capacity necessary to detect it.

------
thejosh
Awesome app, can see this coming in handy... you need to promote this and also
have an android client before a clone comes out. :)

How is the battery consumption if it runs in the background? I'm guessing it
isn't really a worry because if you are in bed you might have a charger, but
the best use would be a in a pocket where it be awkward to use a charger,
unless you place it under your pillow?

~~~
alexvr
Thanks! It uses around a quarter of your battery overnight. Maybe less. The
ideal place is somewhere close to you, like under your pillow or in your
pocket, but pillows and covers may dampen the noise.

Any suggestions on getting the word out? I'm psyched that it's on the front
page of HN, and never would have thought it would be, but it would be great if
anyone knows of places to reach more of the target market.

~~~
tlrobinson
I'm not familiar with online deaf communities, but blogs and forums would
probably be a good start.

------
marpalmin
Hi alexvr, a bit out of topic question: How did you manage to get the
background sound analysis approved? I have an app that does also sound
analysis in the background for a different purpose and it gets constantly
rejected because of that.

Thanks!

~~~
alexvr
I think audio recording is one of the few things you're allowed to do in the
background. I didn't do anything special. Did they give you any specific
reasons?

~~~
marpalmin
This was the message after the appeal: "We still found the app is
inappropriately using background audio because it is recording audio in the
background for an indefinite period of time, which is not appropriate."

~~~
alexvr
Maybe they don't think it's necessary or appropriate to what you're doing with
the sound?

~~~
simias
Maybe marpalmin was recording and storing big audio files, which might be a
privacy issue I assume (if the user forgets the app is running in the
background and ends up recording sensitive/private info).

On the other hand I assume that you don't need to keep long audio samples to
run your alarm-recognition algorithm and just discard the audio almost right
away.

That's just a wild guess of course, it would just seem reasonable to me if the
Apple reviewers saw it that way.

~~~
marpalmin
I'm not storing audio. Just audio analysis, of course I have a small buffer
but that's normal for realtime audio anaylsis. I'm using it to detect
footsteps.

~~~
cdcarter
Likely that the use case for this app includes it being plugged in/charging.

~~~
marpalmin
Well at least is not the idea to use it being plugged. In fact I even added
code so that the app leaves background after 1 hr if it did not go to the
foreground in between.

I also found other people with the app being rejected for the same reason
after asking about it in the apple dev forum.

------
mcculley
This is very clever.

The fact that it has to analyze audio makes me wonder if anybody is trying to
standardize broadcasting of local emergency signals. For example, a
standardized way to broadcast a fire alarm over WiFi or Bluetooth. There's
more than local humans that could be alerted. Local systems could use it a cue
to shutdown and remote service providers could be alerted that they have to do
something.

~~~
alexvr
Yeah, I think Nest is actually doing something similar with their smoke
detector, which is great.

~~~
mcculley
Ah, I didn't know that.

A specific use case I was thinking of is some local hotels that my company
does IT for. Hotels have lots of third party systems embedded locally and
service providers doing stuff for them. If the fire alarm sounds, I'm sure
they would love to know about it so they can react faster, either for
assisting with the immediate crisis or facilitating the recovery. As far as I
can tell, the fire detection/alarm systems are stovepipes that don't tell any
other systems (other than 911) what is going on.

~~~
farber
One example of an existing use of this sort of thing, is that fire alarm
systems commonly notify the building's lift controller, which sends the lift
to the ground floor and opens the doors.

------
ggchappell
In light of a recent HN discussion on the incomprehensibility of many product
pages and "Show" posts[1], I think it's worth noting that this is a very clear
page that lets me know exactly what the product is, how much it costs, and how
to get it.

:-)

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7489870](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7489870)

~~~
alexvr
Thank Apple for that ;)

------
prateek_mir
I like the idea, and the objective it aims at fulfilling, I am not aware of
the US regulations, but I think if you can hack a wristband like wearable
gadget to work with it (of-course it needs to have a vibrator in it), then you
can overcome the problem of keeping the cell phone close to your body.

------
sdrothrock
As a hearing-impaired user, I'd actually love something like this if I could
"train" it to specific sounds, like my doorbell. Since my phone is almost
always in my pocket or hand at home, it would be very easy to feel the
vibration and I'd know someone rang the doorbell.

~~~
Houshalter
That's a cool idea. I'm not sure how reliable machine learning on audio would
be with only a few samples though.

~~~
sdrothrock
I'm not sure either, but I want to say that since the sound will be at a given
frequency in a given pattern, you could probably pick it out relatively
reliably...

Also, unlike fire alarms, I think I'd be less worried about false positives or
the thing not working -- it would be an annoyance, not something that could
potentially endanger my life.

~~~
Houshalter
Unsupervised learning to extract high level features might work. Then get
examples of the kinds of sounds people are training it on and use that to
extract even better features.

------
ahoy
This is fascinating. What do deaf people normally do in lieu of alarm clocks?

~~~
primitivesuave
My girlfriend is partially deaf in one ear, so sometimes she will oversleep if
she is lying on her good ear. A while back I built her an Arduino-powered
alarm clock that uses a servo to repeatedly poke her with a foam finger (those
big hands you wear at football games). It was a shoddy prototype, but the cool
part was it synchronized with her iCal calendar.

So, to answer your question, some [partially] deaf people use a makeshift
Arduino robot that is duct taped to the wall next to their bed.

~~~
gms7777
Oh my goodness, that's brilliant. My boyfriend is partially deaf and also the
heaviest sleeper I've ever met, and oversleeps pretty regularly even with the
loudest blaring alarm I've ever heard, a wake-up light, and a vibrating alarm
under his pillow. As a relatively light sleeper with normal hearing this
combination nearly gives me a heart attack every morning, while he barely
rolls over until I hit him enough times to actually wake him up and turn his
alarm clock off, but if I'm not there he tends to oversleep a lot.

To answer GP's question, some partially deaf people use grumpy significant
others as an alarm clock. But I might have to look into a similar robotic
setup.

------
wavesum
Very nice! Reminds me a bit from our effort to try to help deaf people dance:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CT_RmvKTUYc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CT_RmvKTUYc)

Unfortunately we could not make the app really work as the precision of timer
on Windows phone is horrible, and on IOS you don't have api to properly
control vibration...

maybe some day.

------
Aardwolf
If you're deaf, how do you transfer the vibrations of the phone to your
senses? Sleep with the phone on you somehow?

~~~
sizzle
under the pillow

~~~
burntwater
I used to keep my cellphone under my pillow when I was on-call, but I don't
like the idea of zapping my head with direct radio signals for 8 hours at a
time.

Unfortunately if I keep my iPhone to the side of the mattress, the vibrations
aren't strong enough.

~~~
sizzle
I've been using an old android phone on airplane mode for the same reason. I
just end up snoozing it and sleeping so the bed shaker sounds great.

------
befuddled
"...listening out for loud and repetitive noises like fire alarms, and
vibrates to wake you up when it hears anything similar" Would that include dog
barking? And do you plan to offer it for iPad/Android at any stage?

------
Aardwolf
Am I the only one who can't view the website? It is briefly visible for a
second, then redirects to a "itmss://" URL and says "The address wasn't
understood".

~~~
larrik
It's an iTunes link, if you don't have iTunes installed it doesn't really
work.

~~~
Aardwolf
It does work, if you press "stop" within the second before it redirects.

Not very user friendly.

------
Jemaclus
I'm confused. iPhones have an alarm clock already, and you can already set it
to vibrate. Why do I need this app?

(Serious question. I'm hard of hearing, and I do this with my iPhone already.)

To answer some other questions I see in the thread, they make alarm clocks and
doorbells specifically for deaf people. I personally own an alarm clock that
has an attachment that you slip under the mattress. The vibrations from the
attachment shake the bed, waking me up. I don't use it anymore, since I share
the bed with my girlfriend, but it worked wonders for me in college.

Here's a website with some deaf-centric things like alarm clocks and
doorbells: [http://www.harriscomm.com/](http://www.harriscomm.com/)

~~~
OlivierLi
From the description : " It stays up all night, listening out for loud and
repetitive noises like fire alarms, and vibrates to wake you up when it hears
anything similar."

------
QuantumChaos
Great idea. I just hope this sort of thing isn't over-regulated.

~~~
davb
I had a similar thought. Less about the regulation, more about liability.

If I'm deaf and I pay for an app to tell me when an alarm is sounding, I have
a certain expectation that it has been rigorously tested and will work without
fail. And I'm a software engineer who understands the limitations and failure
modes of such applications on non-real-time, commodity kit.

Please be extra careful about how you market this. I absolutely applaud your
ingenuity, but I'd feel differently if I found out my elderly, hard of hearing
gran was relying on any app on her smartphone to wake her if she left the
stove on and went to bed.

I expect a proportion of your customers may be less technical users (or well-
meaning relatives) with little understanding of the limitations and risks.

However, it is indeed an interesting idea. There may already be something on
the market, but what about developing it into a physical device running on
dedicated hardware? Crowd-fund an "alerter badge" or pin or whatever, and
budget heavily for testing & verification. You could be onto a winner.

EDIT: Please don't be put off altogether by the comments. It's simply that
non-real-time, non-failsafe smartphones aren't built for life-critical
applications like this. The idea isn't a bad one - you're just targeting the
wrong platform.

~~~
jballer
This. There's a reason there are regulations for this sort of product–people
need to be able to rely on life-saving devices completely and with 100%
certainty.

At the very least, I'd suggest researching brudgers' post and adding a notice
that the ADA requires accommodation visual alarms.

edit: You really can't add enough disclaimers to something like this. The last
thing you want to do is leave someone thinking this is going to save their
life. Maybe as a tertiary failsafe, but you can't guarantee that's how it's
being used.

------
sbjustin
This sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen. I think it's a great idea, but
at 2.99 I don't think it's going to be profitable enough to take on the
lawsuit risk.

~~~
MrMeker
What exactly would the author be sued about? I can't see anything obviously
inviting a user to sue.

EDIT: I think it would be a good idea to remove the language about fire alarms
etc. and only mention alarm clocks and the like. It would be much harder to
sue if the app didn't claim to respond to fire alarms.

~~~
alexvr
Yes, I will consider removing the stuff about emergency protection unless I
can make it super reliable.

~~~
tcheard
Or instead you could put a warning removing liability and stating that it is
not a guaranteed protection and standard emergency protocols should still be
performed. This is a helpful tool, not a be all end all guarantee of
protection.

------
beenpoor
Meaningful app. You are charging 2.99$ - but I still don't feel bad. It's a
useful app and we need more of such apps, even though the price is > 0.99$.

------
ycmike
This is so useful. I am an extremely deep sleeper - when I do that is - who
never hears his multiple alarms. God bless you.

------
blux
Why not set a vibrating alarm on your phone directly...?

~~~
varikin
It doesn't look like an alarm to wake you in the morning, but an alarm to
listen for fire alarms and other such things and vibrates to wake you in the
case of an emergency.

------
devanti
Vibrating for it to wake you means you need to keep it close to your body. I
wonder what health implications it may have -- In general its really bad to
have a cell phone touching your body for prolonged periods of time because of
the radiation it emits.

~~~
DangerousPie
I would _really_ like to see a citation for that!

~~~
devanti
Google it. It's all over the internet

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone_radiation_and_heal...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone_radiation_and_health)

~~~
DangerousPie
Because if it's all over the internet, it must be true?

The wiki page even says: The WHO added that "to date, no adverse health
effects have been established as being caused by mobile phone use."

As far as I can tell there has, to date, not been a single proper study that
actually showed any effects. Just a bunch of fearmongering and cases like
this: [http://retractionwatch.com/2012/03/26/rabbits-neednt-
worry-a...](http://retractionwatch.com/2012/03/26/rabbits-neednt-worry-about-
cell-phones-effects-on-their-sperm-count-say-three-retractions/)

