While it may sound like a dirty joke, turning off the alarm clock with a wiggle of your joystick is entirely possible here. [Sean] was inspired by the light gun alarm clock featured in Make magazine a while back and decided to build something similar. Instead of going the light gun route, he chose to use a joystick. You set the time on the clock using the joystick and the fire button works as a snooze button. Though it currently doesn’t have a snooze-waggle feature, it could without too much effort.
[Sean]’s server is small. He notes in his comments that he can’t handle the traffic from us. This is why we had to find it our selves instead of him submitting it. Tsk Tsk. To help, we have included the few other pictures of his build after the break. If you really want to overload his poor little server, you’ll find the link to his site here, instead of at the beginning of the article.
[via flickr]
most… useless… hack… ever.
Ok shoosh, I’ll bite.
Submit your own awesome hack.
Sweet – it’s what should be on every geeks bedside table. I wish I had one.
Take a working UI and fubar it with something completely stupid. Yeah, that’s a great “hack”.
oh come on guys, its entertaining. if you must have some productive purpose behind a hack, you can just pretend this is a proof of concept or something. the guy thought it would be entertaining to add a joystick to an alarm clock and he did it nicely, so chill out.
When I read the heading I figured it would be an alarm that could only be turned off by performing certain movements on the stick, which actually makes a lot of sense as remembering and inputting the movements would be a good exercise to pull you out of half-sleep.
While I imagine this system could be modified to do something along those lines…the current implementation is a little odd to say the least.
if you start playing battlezone in your sleep, you might never wake up or set off the alarm after 2 minutes, who knows. it would be better with the arduino that makes the hackaday.com/2009/10/11/nes-controller-storage-with-security/ work. you have to cognitive enough to enter the right code
Hacking is art. It stimulates the mind, nothing wrong with that. Cool concept and nice aesthetic to control an alarm clock with a joystick (especially a retro one).
I like this implemented on a wrist watch :)
Good Idea. Well implemented, but other than controlling the clocks time setting functions, it should be used to turn the alarm off. That way it helps wake you up by making you use your motor skills. I think something like this with an NES controller and a pic or duino to interpret button combinations to turn off the alarm would be kool. Konami code wake up anyone?
Nice use of the retro gear! The only thing that could have made it better is if the clock was an old flip clock. :)
The interface looks pretty good. I’m glad to see that the joystick isn’t used to disable the alarm at 6 am. ;)
Clocks not only make sure you are never late, but they also make every wall look great. Branded Clocks with your corporate logo or details are extremely effective at getting your message into the right heads.
http://www.promotionproducts.com.au/galleries/Desk-and-Office/Promotional-Clocks