[Supermighty]

When I started to get up early in the mornings I found it pretty hard. So I devised a plan to help me out.

I have three lights on timers. The first is a short string of blue lights, the second is a longer string of blue lights and the last is a 40watt bulb pointed indirectly at the wall.

First the short string turns on about 30 minutes before I have to get up, then the longer string 15 minutes later, and lastly the the white light.

I also have two alarms, the first is the radio followed by the oh so annoying standard alarm sound.

Most days I wake up with the white light and the radio. The alarm sound is my drop dead, get the heck out of bed, notification. If it goes off I need to get moving.

It's my own personal sunrise.

[rue]

Up here in the dark north, bright-light sunrise-simulating alarms are becoming commonplace[1]. Mine increases in intensity over 30 minutes and uses a bird tweet as the sound alarm (I have it set to 14/20 final intensity, brighter means a headache). This works quite well.

[1] And seem available in the US: http://www.usa.philips.com/c/light-therapy/hf3480_60/prd/

[Supermighty]

All of the simulated sunrise alarms I found before I cobbled my own together were out of my price range and limited to one bulb. I like my solution because it uses long strings of colored lights which politely brighten the room.

[Spyou]

This sounds genius. I'll give a go soon.

[herrherr]

Did you build that system yourself or is this a off-the-shelf solution?

[Supermighty]

Off the shelf. My alarm clock has two alarms. The lights are on standard power plug timers I got at the hardware store.

I'd like to custom build a system that uses LEDs. It'd be nice to have it fade transition from red, to yellow to yellow/blue to white. And it'd be nice to hide it all behind crown molding.