Dec 20, 2010 Analarm: Vibrating Alarm-Clock Watch
Industrial Facility’s discrete, vibrating alarm-clock watch is perfect for couples who never rise at the same time.
We know that sounds totally absurd, but hear us out. The watch, Analarm, has a vibrating alarm — just like what’s in your cell phone — so when it’s time to rise and shine, it pulses against your skin. No more ear-splitting beep, beeeeeeeeeeeep! that could wake up half of Texas and most certainly wakes your S.O. who, jarred from a happy slumber and none-too-pleased, spends all morning passively aggressively cooking the eggs. Six months later: Divorce. Get us a watch, pronto!
Industrial Facility’s Sam Hecht says it’s plenty effective, though getting the vibrator right wasn’t easy and involved multiple prototypes and lots of self-experimentation: “I would use it during the day to remind me of things, and also at night, to wake me up,” he says. “The first vibration prototypes were too subtle. They worked during the day, but not enough to wake me up. So we increased the motor speed, but this was too jarring. The engineers also calculated that the stronger the vibration, the [shorter] the battery life. So we introduced a pulsation — a kind of on/off sequence of vibrations. I used the prototype while traveling to wake me up without waking my partner, to remind me when to go to the airline gate, etc. It worked very well.” (link)