Boing Boing: When I travel I often use earplugs at night (E.A.R foam are my preferred brand) to mute the sounds of strange places and get a good night’s sleep. Only problem is, the pathetic “eep eep” sound of a typical travel alarm cannot penetrate the earplugs. For years I have searched for a truly heavy-duty portable alarm, and finally found a good candidate at the Petro Truck Stop in Kingman, Arizona: The Screaming Meanie.
7 comments:
Holy crap! I would have a heart attack everytime I'd wake up. It would also give all the other residents in the motel a heart attack as well, which wouldn't be very nice for them. Wouldn't an easier solution be to just not wear ear plugs when you sleep and set a normal alarm? This seems a bit overkill. Just wait until a law suit turns up because someone died of a heart atack from waking up to this thing. Another problem is, a lot of people wouldn't be awake enough to hit the three buttons even when they are actually getting up. I think this is worse than the police siren alarm. It has knocking and people yelling "Police! Open up!" at you with sirens wailing and such. That's freaking scary.
Jesus. 110 decibels is an ambulance siren passing you on the street. I have a hard time believing in the 220 decibel version. That's the level of noise produced by a Saturn 5 Rocket (that's a big rocket), and easily capable of rupturing eardrums. If those little speakers and two double A batteries can duplicate that, it would be a miracle of energy efficiency. That being said, I'm sure it's loud.
I've long envisioned a smartphone enabled sleep-aiding device that would be a better alternative. It's essentially a soft blindfold with ear flaps covering the ears and emitting an external noise cancelling "white noise." That way the same thing that's helping you sleep would also gently wake you up. I imagine the deluxe version that has LED's over the eyes that wakes you up with a gradually increasing light source, which is supposedly a more beneficial way to start the day. Certainly more beneficial than actively destroying your hearing.
I'm afraid to say this, but I actually had to use an alarm clock similar to this in high school. My parents were sick and tired of my habit of sleeping through alarms so hey bought the "wake-assure" clock for me. It's very similar in volume however there's a few extra features such as pitch adjustment, and a more precise volume adjustment, and to make things better, a plug to flash a desk lamp and a vibrating disc to place in your bed to vibrate it. Its helped me significantly and I've been able to go back to a simple alarm after being frieghtened to wake up to a siren and earthquake. However, I still occasionally use it for harder weeks, my roommate tends to hate me.
This sounds like a serious alarm. As someone who will often sleep through his alarms I can see how an alarm like this would be useful. With a standard of 110 dB this thing is about the same volume as the average rock concert! Thats insane! I'm sure after this you'd have no problem waking up on time. And then there is a 220 dB version! I honestly can't believe that! There is no way something this small could produce that much noise! Not only is it improbable, it is much passed the threshold of instant hearing damage. Within one week you could do more damage to your hearing than sitting through a Metallica concert for 3 hours.
This thing looks terrifying! While I have difficulty waking up sometimes from my alarm (I usually use my clock, and sometimes my phone), I don't think this would help me to wake up faster or better. For people who can't and don't wake up even at the loudest of alarms, I think this could potentially be a good idea, but I'd still be concerned about hearing damage. Something that I've had help me to wake up the first time is that I've put my clock out of reach of my bed so that I have to physically get up in order to turn it off. This alarm just seems like overkill.
This is ridiculous. Does anyone really need 110/220 decibels to wake up? If you do, I don't see how you would need earplugs in order to fall asleep in the first place. It's one thing if you've got grumpy teen Sam Stark trying to wake up for hight school at his parent's house. But this has been marketed as a travel device. Who has the guts to wake the entire hotel with their 220 decibels, then put on a suit and face the world. It's inconsiderate. The world has enough noises in it as it. If all those noises keep competing for space, travelers are going to need a truck dropped on them in order to wake up. I really hope this alarm clock does not meet any success beyond being featured on "boing-boing.net"....
While yes ... It does seem like it would be able to wake you up even with ear plugs in, It also seems unnecessarily loud. 1) If you are traveling and the hotel that you are in has thin walls, the noise complaints might be more trouble than its worth. 2) If you forget to put your ear plugs in, whenever the alarm goes off, your room becomes a noise environment that is not acceptable by OSHA standards.
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