As I was sitting in the bath last night I was hit by an idea...something which must have been rattling around and forming in there for quite a long time I suppose. Or perhaps I thought of it before and forgot. You see, back in my first year of college I had a roomate who always put on this apple scent in the morning when she got ready to go, which was qutie a while before I had to get up, and every morning I would wake up as soon as she sprayed that smell. SO! It struck me last night that if one could be trained to wake up to a smell rather than a sound, why couldn't there be alarm clocks that were set to spray some scent - I suppose whatever a person chose to fill it with - at a certain time rather than playing music. And then I realised that that would be a great alternative for the hearing imparied. I did a quick search for hearing impared alarm clocks and it seems that they have ones with flashing lights and bed shakers.
Being the loather of mornings that I am I should definately hate having to be woken in that fashion, hearing impared or not. In fact the liklihood of my actually getting up is related to how gently I am dragged from the mire, if wrenched from it I become doubly determined to return, and of course it puts me very out of sorts should I loose.
However, it seems like a scent sparyer couldn't be more difficult to make than bed shakers, and if one could choose a pleasant smell as a gentle signal that it's time to get up, I should think it would be a much easier way to wake up someone who couldn't hear, and certainly less of a harrasment for anyone sharing a bed or room with someone hard of hearing. Hmm.....I could make millions ;p
6 comments:
I feel your pain--I HATE getting up in the AM. I've been thinking abt getting this
http://www.hammacher.com/publish/70460.asp
but it's a bit pricey. I LOVE the "aroma therapy" aspect of the wake-up though!
I could, quite literally and without much trouble at all, make one of these for you if you should like.
REALLY??? That would be awesome! Ummmm...what sort of supplies would you need?
Oh I was speaking more to the author (who I sort of know); but what you would probably want to do to make one is open a regular alarm clock up, pull the alarm signal, and tie it to the input of a microcontroller or something to drive a solenoid. A solenoid of decent strength could push the top of one of those small spray bottles.
It might look a little rube goldberg-ish if it weren't mass manufactured but it isn't particularly complex.
There are also lots of other ways to do it -- servo motor, or it looks like the one in your link probably heats some pads soaked in oil and then drives a fan. Just have to be a little creative with it :)
=)
It's unfortunate (well, except in a humorous way), but what this reminds me of is a scene from a vampire novel I was reading. The heroine is dreaming, and wakes up when a smell doesn't match her dream -- rotting corpses -- zombies in her room, coming to kill her! Yeah... not a pleasant smell... I guess I just don't have a lot of "wake up through scent" associations, so it makes sense that the few I have would connect in my mind, despite...
mmm, yes...after I posted my comment I thought "I'll bet that comment was for the author, not me!" :) sorry about that. I'm not nearly handy enough to come up with an idea like that. I think I will just stick with my cell phone alarm :)
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