- Jan 4, 2001
- 41,596
- 20
- 81
It'd be the sort of thing that deaf people would use in place of an alarm.
Something like one of these.
I'm considering getting one of these things so that I can put in earplugs at night, but still be able to wake up for class the next day. I can't rely on myself to just get up in time, because when I have earplugs in, I stay asleep for anywhere from 8 to 13 hours.
My question about these bed vibrators:
1) How effective are they? How much shaking do they put out?
2) Do they make a lot of noise? I can take a few minutes sometimes to figure out, first where I am, what's making the noise (or vibration), and how it can be turned off. So I don't want neighbors in this apartment to be wondering what the heavy vibration is every morning. The walls here are also quite thin, and pass low-frequency noise quite easily.
Back story:
I want to use earplugs because I really can't get much sleep here on campus. My alarm is set for 6:50am, and I can't ever get to sleep until sometime after 1am because of people either talking in adjacent rooms, or who knows what going on upstairs - those guys walk around so loudly that the ceiling light fixture rattles, and they like to open and close drawers repeatedly.
No sleep means I'm doing poorly on quizzes, and soon tests. In a recent quiz after I had only about 4 hours of sleep, it took me almost two minutes (seriously) to figure out how to calculate the area of a rectangle. Needless to say, I did not finish the quiz, which had me finding the normal, bending, and shear stresses in one member of a 5-beam truss system.
I used a program called Goldwave to create some nice white noise (brown noise, technically, it's more low-frequency, like a waterfall), but it doesn't drown out loud thumping sounds or the low frequencies of speaking in adjacent rooms. The only solution that remains is to drown out all sound completely, which creates the one problem: how to wake up reliably.
Update.
I bought the clock suggested by fanerman91.
I've had the alarm clock since Friday. I tried using it to wake up each day since then (except Saturday morning). Thus far, the alarm hasn't waken me up once. Every day, I've been awake almost exactly 20 minutes before the alarm goes off. But I don't get up right then because I'm still tired. At the correct time, the alarm does go off. The vibration is pretty powerful and jars me quickly alert, enough to want to shut it off very quickly, so that's enough for me to recommend this clock to anyone needing something to wake you up.
The clock uses a 9V battery for a backup, and I assume it will also run the audible alarm, but I could be quite wrong. I haven't tested the audible alarm, as 1) I don't have any 9V batteries available, and 2) I didn't buy it for that feature. The clock comes with a 120VAC -> 9VDC power adapter. There's also a phone cord hanging out the side of it, in case you need it to alert you to when the phone rings. I might just open it up and permanently disconnect this from the circuit board, as I don't need it. It would have been handy for them to instead just have a jack on the outside of the phone, instead of a hardwired cable.
So, if you want this thing to work during power outages, you'll need a backup. I hoped for a cheap UPS after rebate, but the local stores were not obliging, so I bought a cheap APC UPS for $40. I also popped it open and desoldered the little beeper from the circuit board. No sense in having it beep and annoy neighbors, while I'm there with earplugs unable to hear it. Can't hook it up to my PC's UPS, because that thing will power down itself and the PC after 3 minutes.
Yes, I think a UPS is necessary, at least here. The power did in fact go out at around 5:20am on Saturday. I never did like owning an AC-dependent alarm clock, but to power the vibrator for multiple uses would probably require a bank of D-cells.
The vibrator part of the alarm clock is a smooth white circular disc, about ø3.75", and 1.25" thick. The wire runs from it to the alarm base, and looks to be 5' long. That just sits under your pillow, and your head will get a pretty good buzz in the morning. Or you can put it elsewhere, but then you might not feel like getting out of bed.
Thus far, it's given me peace of mind. Now I can just put in earplugs and not care what anyone in surrounding rooms is doing. Loud stomping on the floor, yelling, loud music, whatever, I can't hear it, I can get to sleep when I want to, and I can still wake up on time. Yes, the alarm + UPS were kind of expensive, but for one thing, the UPS can be used for other devices, and I'd call this a deal for the promise of adequate sleep.
Something like one of these.
I'm considering getting one of these things so that I can put in earplugs at night, but still be able to wake up for class the next day. I can't rely on myself to just get up in time, because when I have earplugs in, I stay asleep for anywhere from 8 to 13 hours.
My question about these bed vibrators:
1) How effective are they? How much shaking do they put out?
2) Do they make a lot of noise? I can take a few minutes sometimes to figure out, first where I am, what's making the noise (or vibration), and how it can be turned off. So I don't want neighbors in this apartment to be wondering what the heavy vibration is every morning. The walls here are also quite thin, and pass low-frequency noise quite easily.
Back story:
I want to use earplugs because I really can't get much sleep here on campus. My alarm is set for 6:50am, and I can't ever get to sleep until sometime after 1am because of people either talking in adjacent rooms, or who knows what going on upstairs - those guys walk around so loudly that the ceiling light fixture rattles, and they like to open and close drawers repeatedly.
No sleep means I'm doing poorly on quizzes, and soon tests. In a recent quiz after I had only about 4 hours of sleep, it took me almost two minutes (seriously) to figure out how to calculate the area of a rectangle. Needless to say, I did not finish the quiz, which had me finding the normal, bending, and shear stresses in one member of a 5-beam truss system.
I used a program called Goldwave to create some nice white noise (brown noise, technically, it's more low-frequency, like a waterfall), but it doesn't drown out loud thumping sounds or the low frequencies of speaking in adjacent rooms. The only solution that remains is to drown out all sound completely, which creates the one problem: how to wake up reliably.
Update.
I bought the clock suggested by fanerman91.
I've had the alarm clock since Friday. I tried using it to wake up each day since then (except Saturday morning). Thus far, the alarm hasn't waken me up once. Every day, I've been awake almost exactly 20 minutes before the alarm goes off. But I don't get up right then because I'm still tired. At the correct time, the alarm does go off. The vibration is pretty powerful and jars me quickly alert, enough to want to shut it off very quickly, so that's enough for me to recommend this clock to anyone needing something to wake you up.
The clock uses a 9V battery for a backup, and I assume it will also run the audible alarm, but I could be quite wrong. I haven't tested the audible alarm, as 1) I don't have any 9V batteries available, and 2) I didn't buy it for that feature. The clock comes with a 120VAC -> 9VDC power adapter. There's also a phone cord hanging out the side of it, in case you need it to alert you to when the phone rings. I might just open it up and permanently disconnect this from the circuit board, as I don't need it. It would have been handy for them to instead just have a jack on the outside of the phone, instead of a hardwired cable.
So, if you want this thing to work during power outages, you'll need a backup. I hoped for a cheap UPS after rebate, but the local stores were not obliging, so I bought a cheap APC UPS for $40. I also popped it open and desoldered the little beeper from the circuit board. No sense in having it beep and annoy neighbors, while I'm there with earplugs unable to hear it. Can't hook it up to my PC's UPS, because that thing will power down itself and the PC after 3 minutes.
Yes, I think a UPS is necessary, at least here. The power did in fact go out at around 5:20am on Saturday. I never did like owning an AC-dependent alarm clock, but to power the vibrator for multiple uses would probably require a bank of D-cells.
The vibrator part of the alarm clock is a smooth white circular disc, about ø3.75", and 1.25" thick. The wire runs from it to the alarm base, and looks to be 5' long. That just sits under your pillow, and your head will get a pretty good buzz in the morning. Or you can put it elsewhere, but then you might not feel like getting out of bed.
Thus far, it's given me peace of mind. Now I can just put in earplugs and not care what anyone in surrounding rooms is doing. Loud stomping on the floor, yelling, loud music, whatever, I can't hear it, I can get to sleep when I want to, and I can still wake up on time. Yes, the alarm + UPS were kind of expensive, but for one thing, the UPS can be used for other devices, and I'd call this a deal for the promise of adequate sleep.
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