[grifball]

For me, if I see the time, I'm awake. Something about seeing the time makes me go into work mode and I have to get up. I think I'd like something like a "color clock" so when I wake up early, it'll show a blue screen, meaning I should go back to sleep, but if it's close enough to when I should wake up, it shows a yellow screen or something.

[jedimastert]

Sunrise alarms are definitely a thing. They slowly turn up a lamp when it's time to get up.

What you're describing is a toddler alarm. MAde for children that can't yet tell the time, but you put in the room and they show one color for sleeping and another for awake. Look up "toddler alarm" or "ok-to-wake clock" Here's the first one I found via google (non-affiliate link)

https://www.amazon.com/Hatch-Baby-Night-Light-Machine/dp/B06...

[sokoloff]

As he was learning numbers, we taught our 3 year old that he could only come into our room once it was 6 AM.

Along the path, we got woken up at 4:46 (there’s a 6!) and once to “Mommy, Mommy, it’s not 6 yet in your room either!” as he excitedly learned that time was the same everywhere.

Kids are exhaustingly awesome!

[StavrosK]

That is more fundamental than we realize, as there is literally no other value in time except the fact that it's the same everywhere. The entire concept is that it's something we can all agree on, but we've lived with it for so long that we don't really realize that.

This reminds me of the following:

Imagine you had some items, and you gave each item a unique name, and then used the unique name you gave to the last item to describe their amount.

That's what numbers are, a commonly agreed upon way to label items so the last label indicates how many you have.

[dbrgn]

When boiling eggs or making tea, the fact that time is the same everywhere is definitely not what makes it useful.

[StavrosK]

"Boil your tea for thirty of my minutes"

[dbrgn]

I'm not saying that having standardized time isn't important for its usefulness (although if I know that my tea tastes well after 30 of my minutes, that's already useful to me).

But you wrote "there is literally no other value in time except the fact that it's the same everywhere". This is wrong.

[jffry]

I kind of have this already, using the "Sunrise Alarm" feature built into Google's stock Android clock app.

15 minutes before my phone alarm goes off (not configurable sadly), the whole screen comes on a very dim red, and slowly fades through medium orange to a bright yellow at the time of the alarm.

With the phone laying flat on top of my dresser, this provides a great lighting cue.

[kiddico]

Wouldn't you want the opposite color progression? To avoid blasting your eyes with blue light when you need to go back to sleep. That's why operating systems have the night light feature.

I like the idea though... I think I've got an RGB light strip I pulled out of a pc case (not a fan of rainbow vomit styling...) around here somewhere. I'll put it on my growing pile of projects I should probably do.

[mckirk]

Check out Andrew Huberman's podcast, I cannot recommend him enough.

Turns out it's not really the color that is the most important factor for wakefulness-shifting, but the amount of light your eyes perceive. Yes, the cells responsible are more sensitive to bluish light, but a ton of not-so-bluish light would keep you awake just the same, and just a little blue light wouldn't be that harmful.

That being said, 'blue for Go' still makes more sense to me instinctively :D

[kiddico]

Interesting. Thanks for the recommendation, I'll check him out!

[fassssst]

There are tons of “wake up lights” out there. I use this one and it does just that:

https://www.usa.philips.com/c-p/HF3520_60.amp/wake-up-light

[DrSiemer]

An older version of this lamp didn't work for me. My brain got used to the increasing light within a week, so that I'd only wake up when the gradually amplified bird chirping got to the "screaming flock of ravens" part.

[Cthulhu_]

Same, I still have mine and the light itself is nice, but the light never woke me up, always the shrill / tinny sounds. I hope they've built a newer version with better speakers / sound. Still an improvement over the old clock radio though. Those things would already be improved with a gradually increasing volume over just startling you into waking up.

[StavrosK]

How about an eyeball-seeking laser

[kchr]

Yeah, after losing an eye you've probably Pavlov'ed yourself into waking up by pure instinct :-)

[StavrosK]

Yep, that's what the LED functionality was supposed to do (no light for sleep, light for "wake up"), but the lack of a good UI option deterred me from adding it.

[herbst]

Did that with simple light bulb, as long as it has a specific color i know there is no reason to get up

[wryun]

Perhaps just having your room lights on a timer would solve this one... fake 'sun'.

[mattmar96]

I like this idea