Almost no one enjoys being suddenly awakened by a loud, blaring alarm clock, as the sudden rush of panic can contribute to grogginess and stress. To alleviate this problem, Norwegian makers Applied Procrastination wanted to created a lamp that simulates a sunrise to give users a calmer, more natural waking up experience. They came up with a design utilizing an old LCD panel that has had its internals replaced by a string of LED lights to give a pleasant and diffused glow when activated, which they call the “Zom-B-Gone!”
The hardware for this project was based around an Arduino Nano, which continually reads the current time from an onboard DS3231 real-time clock module and sends out a PWM signal on one of its GPIO pins when the target wakeup time has been reached. This signal is further amplified by a ULN2803 transistor array to a voltage that the LED strip can be driven by.
With the hardware completed, the duo designed and 3D-printed a whole host of parts that clip onto the sides of the LCD screen to form a nice, smooth surface. They also added a small foot on the bottom that acts as a stand. After some brief testing, one user found that he enjoyed being partially awakened by the device, as he felt less like a zombie throughout the day.
For more information on how the Zom-B-Gone! was built, you can check out Applied Procrastination’s video above and see the code and schematics here on Hackaday.io.
