[rsaarelm]

I use a lamp with a timer that gets gradually brighter. It turns itself on some time before I want to wake up. Instead of a single point of waking up, there's a window of around an hour when the light gets brighter for me to wake up. One can be rigged up with just a regular lamp and a power outlet timer, although that doesn't give the gradual brightening part.

Of course it's possible to just sleep through the whole thing if sufficiently sleep-deprived, so something like the WakeMate could still be better for waking up less painfully from a shorter than usual night's sleep.