

Ramos alarm clock - dzlobin
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2074185253/ramos-alarm-clock

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martinkallstrom
It is probably a mistake of him to let the beautiful nixie tubes and the
elegant wooden finish pull so much weight in the promo video and then reveal
that the final product will feature very bland LED numbers and an equally non-
attractive plywood finish. He should sell the product, not the one of a kind
and too expensive to manufacture prototype.

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paulsammut
Yup, I'm selling the Nixie Ramos also. The thing is I really want to make the
Ramos alarm clock available to people, and the nixie clock costs a lot to
make. That's why I'm also offering the cheaper LED model, so that more people
can benefit from the Ramos alarm clock functionality.

EDIT* Oh and by the way, the wood in the prototype is the same as what will be
used in $160 LED Ramos, it just has a darker stain. I'm glad you like it :)

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devmach
@paulsammut

i think you're missing one important point : ramos alarm clock doesn't/can't
solve the wake-up problem ( people just have to go to the bed early and have a
purpose to wake up early ) and just another alarm clock screaming at 6 o'clock
in the morning isn't "sexy".

If one would buy it, it would be because the nixie tube and remote control. It
looks retro (=good ) but you can remote control it and it wakes you up by the
"super hipster nerd" way ! I think you should remove LCD model or if you
insist to keep it , give it a modern look ( aluminium case etc ).

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veyron
tl;dr: this addresses a fundamentally different problem, which would exist
even if you went to sleep early

The problem with the alarm clock is that people traditionally put the clock on
a night stand or somewhere easily accessible from the bed. At that point, if
you can hit snooze from the bed, you most likely will doze off. Most of the
time, even if you went to sleep early, there will be some internal resistance
to actually leaving the bed (it's warm :)

If you put the alarm far away, then you are forced to get up, and by that
point you've already fought most of the resistance to actually getting up.
Problem there is that the visual clock is too far away from the bed.

The real problem that this solves is decoupling the physical clock presence
from the alarm silence mechanism, forcing you to physically leave the bed.
Even if you get up early, you still have to overcome the desire to leave the
bed.

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xxqs
I keep my alarm about 10 meters from my bed, and I got up and put it for 20
minutes later... about 4 or 5 times this morning. Can't remember for sure :)

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todd3834
Buy cheap alarm clock from Amazon $5 - $10. Put it far from your bed so you
have to walk over to it to turn it off.

I love the look of the Ramos, especially the nixie tubes but I just don't see
much of an improvement over placing the alarm clock on the other side of the
room.

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gallamine
Pro tip: Get a outlet timer and put a bright lamp on it. The lights in my
bedroom click on at the same time each morning and make it much nicer to wake
up.

Edit: I use this one: <http://amzn.com/B000NBCEM8>

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joe42
I have one of the Philips wake-up lights[0] which gradually brightens its lamp
over 30 minutes before playing some optional bird-chirping. The gradual light-
up feature gives it an edge over the sharp turn-on of a lamp plugged into a
timer, but I'm often lying on my side with my back to the lamp, in which case
the bird-chirping wakes me instead of the light. I'm thinking of running a
cord from the Philips's bulb socket to the bulb in a floor lamp which I can
position _above_ my head (instead of to one side, like the Philips).

[0] <http://amzn.com/B003XN4RIC>

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duths
I've recently connected my bedside lights (on each side of my bed) to a
dimmable X10 socket. Using the programmable controller, they gradually
brighten over 20 mins when all lights in the room turn on and my alarm goes
off.

Felt it was more fun, less intrusive, and as cheap (ish) to roll my own
solution.

It's a long way from the old days of a radio on full-volume static or alarm
clock thrown under the middle of my bed!

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radley
Zen clocks are far more easy to wake up to:

<http://www.now-zen.com/>

"the acoustic chime bar is struck just once … 3-1/2 minutes later it strikes
again … chime strikes become more frequent over 10 minutes … eventually
striking every 5 seconds until shut off"

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zargon
I've been using a Now & Zen timepiece for about 5 years now. It is far more
pleasant to wake up to a gentle gong than electric buzzers that shock you
awake. You can adjust the strike force to control for loudness. I keep it set
fairly soft. When I first got it, it would take a several gongs before it
gradually woke me. Still no need for snooze though. These days I usually
become aware of it on the first or second gong.

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radley
Yeah, I bought mine 17 years ago and still use it.

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jmonegro
It looks very nice in theory, but for me, this is a terrible idea. It looks
like a great way to wake up stressed and upset. Adjusting your sleep schedule
is better for your body and sanity than any complicated alarm clock systems.

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tejaswiy
A much more elegant way (I believe) is to have it in software as an Android /
iOS app. There are quite a few apps that force you to solve a simple math
question / puzzle. You could always put your phone somewhere away from your
bed.

At one point, I was working on an alarm app that had some game mechanics built
into it (points for waking up on time, waking up on time for 5 days in a row,
waking up before 6am etc.) and had various types of puzzles to turn off the
alarm. I gave up on it because I decided it was more of a sleeping habit issue
than an inability to wake up. You can't consistently sleep at 2 in the night
and expect to wake up by 6 in the morning ..

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javert
At one point, as an alarm clock, I had a headless box under my bed that would
play loud music. To turn it off, I had to ssh into it from my laptop - and the
password was extremely long.

Ultimately, the long password wasn't enough to "wake me up," and by then I had
a smartphone, so I got an Android app that made me solve math puzzles to turn
off the alarm.

Ultimately ultimately, I realized that it was really a behavioral problem. Now
I just get up when my alarm goes off. :)

(That makes it sound like the "behavioral" solution was simple, but believe
me, it was extremely far from simple. And I still think the product being
advertised here is an extremely cool idea and potentially very useful.)

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Sakes
What is great about this product? If used properly, once you turn it off you
have no excuse not to start your day. (brush your teeth or hop in the shower)
Very cool.

What sucks about it? I don't have any desire to buy it. I just don't need
another alarm clock yelling at me in the morning. Plus it will only be a
matter of time before I learn how to ignore it, like I have done with every
alarm clock before it.

What is my pain that I would like a new alarm clock to solve? I want an alarm
clock that wakes me up in a natural way. I want it to pull me out of my REM
cycles gradually so I am ready to get out of bed, not jarred out of bed.

If you told me that you had done research on REM cycles and that it takes x
amount of time to move from one level of sleep to the next. And that your
product plays music softly, then increases in volume in natural increments for
the human mind. If this was the problem you were solving, accompanied with the
wireless kill switch, then I would be very excited about this product and
would consider shelling out my hard earned money for it.

I would even be okay if you couldn't solve this problem, so long as I knew
that this is the problem that your alarm clock will eventually solve. I would
expect the alarm clock's software to be updatable, so as you get closer and
closer to perfecting waking up, my $135 alarm clock will get better at it as
well.

I hope this feed back is useful to you. Good luck to you. It looks cool, and
it is a neat idea.

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paulsammut
Thanks for the feedback! I thought about this, and I wanted to do it.

A really effective way to measure REMs cycles is to have an accelerometer on
your bed, just how the Sleep Cycle Iphone app does it. I designed a system
that would involve having a small wired puck that you put on your bed, under
your pillow, that links to the Ramos. The coding and interfacing with the
micro-controller is straight-forward, and it would work.

The issue I had with it is that it was extra "baggage" i'm adding to the
clock. I felt like to implement the puck system, it would take away from the
simple straight forward, 0 installation solution that I really wanted to
achieve. That wire really just like, irked me. And to make it wireless means
another radio which leads to more cost to the user. And with a wireless puck
you need to power it, which is again more cost to the user. I actually also
made this earlier alarm clock that used a heat sensor to detect if you're
still in bed. Hehe it didn't work real well though.
[https://s3.amazonaws.com/ramos_alarm/Paulsammut_BHS_alarm.pd...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/ramos_alarm/Paulsammut_BHS_alarm.pdf)

But still, i agree, it would be really really cool if it had that feature, but
it got to the point where I started trying to add all these little things, and
the whole Ramos idea started shifting. I didn't like it. And the remote panel
really does the job at getting you out of bed and away from it, which is key.

PS. from what I've noticed from using Ramos for a year, is that I've developed
a fear to it. Like, deep down in my head i know i'm gonna have to wake up, and
I usually will naturally wake up with the alarm time.

again, THanks for your interest!!

-paul

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Sakes
Wow, I can't believe you put sensors in the bed, that is awesome. You are
completely correct though, an alarm clock should be next to the bed not in it.

But you don't need to know what cycle your customer is in to implement a
gradual wake up process. You can just assume they are in the deepest sleep,
start incrementing, and eventually the alarm clock will be in sync with their
current state of sleep.

Again, the product looks great.

~~~
paulsammut
Oh there's ramp-up mode for that!

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bitsoda
There's no two ways around being able to get up in the morning. Go to bed 7-9
hours before you wish to wake up, that's it. I'm not sure what the obsession
is with over engineering alarm clocks, but the problem isn't the little gizmo
on your night stand that goes beep and bloop, it's a lack of a solid sleep
routine. Sure, every now and then you can will yourself out of bed if you're
unrested and need to get up, but you should really be getting good sleep most
nights of the week. Go to sleep earlier: the hard way is usually the easier
way.

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yock
And I think, ideally, most people follow this pattern. Problem is, my 4-month
old daughter (and, I suspect, many, many other 4-month old daughters) haven't
heard of this.

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bitsoda
Absolutely. Once you have kids you don't sleep through a whole night for at
least 18 months. Sometimes never again if you're the paranoid/caring kind.

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groby_b
Might be relevant to you and parent: There was something on NPR this morning,
about some mom adopting French parenting ideas - and one of the things the
French are supposedly good at is getting their kids to sleep through the night
at 4 months or so. Might be worth looking at :)

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lukifer
This looks very cool. However, I'm looking to go a different direction: an
alarm that automatically opens the room-darkening drapes and lets in sunlight,
for a natural and gradual waking process. Imagine my surprise that no such
product exists outside the expensive and complex home automation market. I
have no experience in hardware hacking, but I might have to see what I can do
with an Arduino.

Still, this looks like a very cool alarm clock, especially the top-of-the-line
nixie model. Good luck!

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nitrogen
Indeed, I wish I had the spare cash to drop on the custom model, just because
those nixie tubes and wood choices are so awesome.

One of the reasons I started my home automation startup was to make myself a
decent alarm clock. The first thing I did with my automation controller was
program my lights to ramp up smoothly in the morning.

Blinds and ramping audio cues are perpetually on the TODO list, but motorized
blinds are expensive and aren't all that useful during the winter, when the
cloud-obscured sun doesn't come up until late and the extra light is needed
most. Of course, leaving the blinds open all night isn't an option for most of
us because of light pollution and possible loss of privacy.

Anyway, good luck with your Arduino blinds project, and good luck to the
creators of the Ramos!

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jeromegn
Having purpose in life also helps. You'll feel excited to go do your thing
when you wake up.

At least that's what works for me.

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codesuela
If anyone is looking for a challenge buy one of these things and build a
snooze button app for this clock.

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jerfelix
With all this power and smarts built into this alarm clock, couldn't they just
put in an automatic adjustment for Daylight Savings Time?

I would love to have one less clock that I need to adjust two times a year.

Edit: It knows the day of week. All it would need is to know what political
zone you are in, and be able to predict the whims of the politicians. How hard
can that be? :-)

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edwardy20
I'm sure this will appeal to some people, but for the practical ones, Gentle
Alarm for Android has all of these features. And it's only $2.86 :)

[https://market.android.com/details?id=com.mobitobi.android.g...](https://market.android.com/details?id=com.mobitobi.android.gentlealarm)

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csomar
It's amazing how fast such tiny projects* can raise. I just watched the video,
and then refreshed the page and the funding jumped from $1,055 to $1,700.

* I mean here the actual size, and the idea (clock, ipad cover, watch...). Execution and build of the product can take a lot of time and experience.

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blhack
Holy shit $75,000? Are you kidding me? That is an astronomical amount of
money.

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DanBC
What? Why? Hardware production has a much higher capital outlay than software
production.

You'd be surprised at how much tools and equipment costs.

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jcromartie
Yeah. My wife will just _love_ listening to my alarm going off for a few
minutes as I stumble out into who-knows-where to find the defuse panel and
remember the code.

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ebiester
That's what courtesy mode is for. (from reading the article.)

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vishaldpatel
I have this habit of walking all the way up to both of my alarm clocks,
resetting the alarm to 20 minutes later, and then walking back to bed for a
bit more sleep.

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brunoqc
There's no way I'll spend 160$ on an alarm clock with a remote control.

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swah
Nice idea, if a little unpractical. I thought (or read somewhere) about doing
something similar using a bathroom scale (you have to put your weight on it
for some seconds for it to turn off.

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joelbm24
if you really want to get people up have them enter a code to defuse an actual
explosive

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dan_orange
WakeMate done right!

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gautaml
If you have trouble waking up to an alarm everyday (around the same time) then
you need to really re-evaluate your sleeping conditions and habits.

After having to wake up everyday around 7am my internal clock has pretty much
gotten used to just waking my body up around the time. Even on weekends
sometimes (eek).

Neat product but it's more of a novelty item than anything for me.

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xxcode
Kickstarter - such a good way to corner all the dumb money.

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deepakprakash
Great, now I can put the panel on the night table, key in the code half groggy
in the morning and go back to sleep. :)

Seriously, $135 for an alarm clock?

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deepakprakash
Why the down votes? Nobody has a sense of humour? :|

