This is probably the most entertaining “application note” I’ve ever seen. These things are usually a bit dry, ok, they make your eyes turn to a previously unknown state of matter. This one involves making your alarm clock snooze when you beat it. The trick? Wire an accelerometer to the snooze button. It takes a bit of supporting circuitry, but looks do-able for anyone worth of their soldering iron. Thanks to [Andy] for sending it in.
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First Post!
Cool, but I just had to repair my alarm clock because shit came loose since I pound the snooze button hard enough already. It seems that this mod would be fun until you destroyed the entire clock in a short period of time.
I got a kick out of the videos of the mod in action.
or you could just wire in a mercury switch / tilt switch. would work just fine for this application and would save the time building the “supporting circuitry”. also the cost would be substantially less.
Regarding the problem of turning off your alarm clock in the morning–
Solution 1: Install an accelerometer.
Solution 2: Use a bigger mallet.
Most of my wrecking crew at my martial arts school would destroy that thing with their first blow. Cool hack if it can sustain brutal beatings.
If I am forced up by an alarm clock, I am extremely tired still. I won’t have the ability to aim my fist as I punch for the alarm clock. Most likely I’ll be punching my desk, or nightstand.
I can’t afford broken fingers…
Richtastic: yeah.. much more simple/cheap solution. Ya know, it might also be interesting to use a dual point mercury switch.. and a circuit to check for oscillation.. you have to shake the ever living f*&k out of it to get it to turn off!!! could easilly do that with an accelo too… but it just seems a bit over the top for an alarm clock. I guess im just still used to the idea that accelos should be expensive heh.
i’ll clarify what i meant.
take a $2 tilt switch from mouser.com and solder it to the same points the snooze button is soldered to.
hot glue the switch inside the case at just enough of an angle to not close the circuit. (use a battery and a led to get the angle right if you need to)
set the alarm and when it goes off a slight nudge should be enough to trip the switch, snooze’ing the alarm.
that will accomplish the same thing as this hack, shutting off the alarm by movement.
Regarding the durability question, you can set the level that it will take to trigger, so that a mere flick will turn it off. You don’t even need to hit the clock itself. Also, from the article: “The DE-ACCM is a good choice for this project because other vibration sensors such as mercury switches or reed switches only provide open or closed switch outputs, whereas the DE-ACCM provides a continuous analog voltage directly proportional to the intensity of the vibrations.”
Awesome project!
I hope the clock survives.
This Was already posted in April ’05 by vince:
http://www.hackaday.com/2005/04/30/the-punchable-alarm-clock/
Still a good project, though.
Pretty neat, but for the price of one of those accelerometers, you could just buy a dozen or more regular alarm clocks and a good heavy mallet.
instead of a hg switch one could simply use a scheme found in many toys that employs a spring (could come from a cheap ballpoint pen or something) with a stripped wire inside.
if i do this then i ll never wake up.:P