This is great; being woken by a loud noise is horrible start to the day. Especially when it is the same loud noise every day. It’d be nice if someone made a ‘plug-through’ device that could go between any lamp and the wall.

I’ve read that when sunlight leaks through your eyelids, and your eyes see it, chemicals are released in the brain that encourage your sleeping brain to wake up.

Waking up through that method is likely to be much more peaceful and restful than some shrieking piezo speaker.

Neat idea, I like it.

With me I try and vary the sound that takes me up in the morning. Every few months I will change the alarm tone on my cellphone, and the file my computer plays. Seems to help since i’m not used to the sound. My standard radio clock alarm is pretty much useless since I have learned to tune it out.

This is a cool idea though, winter is the hardest time for me to get up as it’s pitch dark or grey. Even having your room light turn on would be useful.

Added bonus – with that 150W halogen bulb shining on you, it’ll feel like a war…burning hot summer’s day too ;-)

How about one for really heavy sleepers that replaces the halogen lamp with a strobe light and the buzzer with a klaxon.

@piku
When i was a kid, i connected a red strobe light and a siren to an alarm clock. It was terrible to wake up with that.

Cool project. I hate getting up in the winter.

@Chajtek – Chickens lay about an egg a day, they don’t care how short the day is. I have chickens. They lay the same amount all year.

@imsolidstate That information about tricking the chickens into thinking the day is shorter was in the documentary “Food, Inc.” Not sure if it is true or not, but I’m just adding to the discussion.

Shades of Derek Flint.

When I was a teenager I tried hooking my clock alarm to a relay that turned the room light on. When it clicked on, I started dreaming that somebody was shining a spotlight in my eyes, and I was screaming “Turn it off! Turn it off!”.

Never tried it again.

I am continually late so i used one of those digital timers to turn a lamp on that faced the ceiling, not gradual but does the job, reading this is good to know there are many ppl

Why LEDs ?

@ Ron Proctor

LEDs do not emit the correct spectrum generally, and in order to get a sufficient amount of light in the correct spectrum would take an incredible amount of LEDs. For the short amount of time this is on I would not consider the power consumption a tremendous factor…

Normal incandescent lamps are better for simulating a sunrise, when dim they have a more orange color, which is how the light is at sunrise before the sun is up.

LEDs don’t justify the expense because of the short operating time, unless you just want to use a bright LED pointed at your face.

I thought about doing this, but I didn’t think a single light would be bright enough. My solution was to get a lutron IR controlled light switch from home depot and an IR USB transceiver for my computer. A quick gnome alarm clock, lirc, and a quick bash script later and I’m slowly woken up over 30 minutes. If I’m not up by then, then a song of my choosing wakes me up to a bright room.

I had a bit of trouble reproducing the IR signal to turn up the lights because it wasn’t really supported by lirc, but a couple hours with an oscilloscope and I figured out a quick hack to make it work.

Why not just get a CFL with the right temp?

If you’ve ever gone camping – you know why this works.

As the sun comes up – and things get brighter – it’s a natural signal to your body that it’s time to wake up. Much more pleasant that the alarm clock.

I’d love to do something like this – but my wife wakes up about a half hour later than I do – and she’d kill me!

@imsolidstate they don’t just shorten the day – they shorten both the night and the day. For example an 8-hour day and an 8-hour night means 547 days in the year.

@Stu
In my case 150W for 20 minutes = 50Wh. But it is less than this, the lamp increases its intensity during this 20 minutes. Say it consumes 30Wh per day, that’s about 11KWh per year. Don’t know the price of electricity in Britain, here it’s about 0.8x euros/KWh. You could of course use a dimmable CFL but they don’t start lighting from 0.
I was thinking about someone calling your name idea too. It’s probably best not to have the voice of a person near you as you might develop some sort of adversity towards her/him because of those mornings when you wanted to sleep more.

I know I’m rather late to the party, but… I think this is a great idea. Though if you live in constant sleep debt, this probably won’t work for you without changing other areas of your life.

Light (especially short wave length, blue and green light) has a strong connection to the body’s circadian rhythms, inhibiting the sleep regulating hormone melatonin and stimulating serotonin production.
Many of us stay late staring at bright screens that may be actively suppressing melatonin production.