I was wondering if anyone had a good experience with a fully functional alarm clock with modern technology. It seems too much to ask for:
A disc (CD/MP3) player
An FM Radio
Wireless Internet Radio/Pandora/Etc
Configure-able alarm clocks (M-F settings as well asone time settings)
USB Stick capacity
Bluetooth capacity
The closest I was able to find a year or so ago was a by Grace Digital, but it’s clunky in size and as well as difficult in menu functionality. It’s also missing a few of the components that would make it useful.
I don’t think I’m asking too much, but it seems there aren’t many options.
Never seen one with that many features. For about two years I had a pretty nifty alarm clock with USB stick capacity and an ipod dock. The iPod dock was kinda sad and froze up my iPod nano several times before I stopped using it, but the USB port was pretty good. The only thing it wouldn’t do was play a shuffle alarm from the USB stick. Still used it until it completely died.
Now I’m back on the CD player alarm clock radio which will do shuffle alarm from the CD, even if it doesn’t have MP3 capability. But I can get woken up with an unexpected selection from 21 of my favorite songs if I use a mix CD, and that’s good enough.
I want an alarm clock that stays dark until you tell it to light up, and then goes back to sleep so that I can go back to sleep. Most clocks are waaay too bright.
See, the problem is that, with modern computer technology, you can create hybrid products with various functions in almost any arbitrary combination, so it’s a crapshoot if you’ll find just exactly the combination of functions that seem most useful to yourself.
It used to be, for example, that you got a clock to tell you the time and wake you up; a calculator to do your arithmetic; and a radio to play music and news; and, say, a desk lamp to shed light in the darkness. Now you can get a single device that combines all those (maybe) or some other combination of functions that some product designer thinks would sell. Think, for example, of how many functions your modern car does besides just transporting you.
Now, see, I’ve got this nifty alarm clock that also massages my feet on a pre-set schedule, controls the hot-water heater for maximum efficiency, it’s also my phone answering machine, calendar and organizer application, and it waters and mows my lawn, and has a built-in Roomba too. As it happens, I live in an apartment and thus have no use for the lawn care functions, but I could really use a built-in link to my bank account to pay the rent automatically. Alas, I couldn’t find a model with that particular combination of functions. (ETA: I wish it would do my laundry too.)
So it goes. You find the product with a few functions you like, according to your priorities, and buy the one with the best evaluation in terms of functions it has that you like, price, and functions it’s missing that you wish you had.
OK, first off, the concept of a clock/radio is an anachronism.
As was mentioned upthread, because of our tiny embedded processor tech, we can make a thing do just about any normally discrete function. The limitation is the I/O. The user interface more precisely. You have to have a smart display that can project and be dimmed programmatically. The command interface can’t be too difficult and should be as simple as can be because we are, after all, talking about something you use when you are sleepy or disoriented from awakening. You want the ability to read audio from a variety of digital and physical formats, and that sounds like a main console from a home stereo system. Think about a tricked out Bose system. Voice annunciator to announce the date and time and current temperature (if you have a remote sensor unit). Steaming audio from the Internet.
Ideally, you would build these units in a modular manner to construct as many different configurations as would be possible to store in the complete framework.
Start with that and build in audio inputs from discrete components. Add a projector. The voice interface is already in some Android apps. All you would need then is good programming.
I agree that it ‘could’ be built, but I’m befuddled as to why there aren’t more options on the marketplace. There are truly slim pickings for a wifi enabled alarm clock.
I was hoping I was just missing something, and I suppose I am as I should be looking more for a phone dock and work with different apps for the phone.
I definitely need a separate alarm clock from my phone. I like just being able to turn my neck to look at the time without having to reach over, find my phone, press the button and recoil in pain as the bright light blinds me.
I like my room to be as dark as possible while I sleep. That means no blue or green glowing clocks, either. Red is the only acceptable color for the numbers on an alarm clock.
My current alarm clock is great. I would just love for it to have weekend alarms. I always leave my alarm set for 5:00 am. That’s when I need to get up for work. I’m afraid to turn it off on Friday because I know I’ll forget to turn it back on Sunday night. So every Saturday and Sunday morning, my alarm goes off at 5:00. Usually I can go back to sleep, but sometimes I can’t. Those are the mornings I lay there wishing I the clock had better alarms.
Which music and programmability features an alarm clock has is a lot less important to me than controls that are easy to use and make sense. We’ve had a couple of generations of clocks based on fairly shitty common chips that did all the familiar functions by press-this, hold-this, close one eye while doing this. I have a Boston Acoustics table radio/clock that allows very simple setting of times and functions, but it was expensive and is not great as a headboard alarm clock.
I wish someone would design a new general-purpose alarm clock chip that supports simple, discrete controls and a modern display - then you can hang all the Pandora, net, MP3 inputs on it you want.