This is my proposal for the major project portion of the Physical Computing course. The project idea has the working title of “You Snooze, You Lose” and can be described as a anti-snooze alarm clock.
The basic premise of the project is to create an alarm clock with the added feature of having a simple built in game. Initially I am thinking of implementing a Snake like game, but that may change. One requirement of the game is that it must be controllable by two buttons or less. It is also my intention for the inclusion of the game to not simply be a gimmick but to form the key feature of the project which is to force the user to play a few minutes/levels of the game after pressing the snooze button on the alarm a set number of times.
Why would I want to do this? Well I feel that the temptation to repeatedly hit snooze on your alarm is high and even when the alarm is fully off, it can still be slow process in waking up. The benefits this project has are two-fold. One, the number of snoozes are limited, though changable via programming (which could be an extra feature, the allowance of updates to the program). The second benefit is that I feel playing a game for a few minutes as you’re waking up can help get your brain ‘booted up’ to full speed in a faster time than normal.
I hope to finish the project with a fully working prototype although the shell of the device may simply just be functional, depending on how much time there is to design a better box for the prototype near the end of the project. My plan for the next few weeks, over the break between terms, is to begin pre-production on the project, selecting and ordering parts; practicing and testing the parts; learning how they function and how they work together. Future blog posts will cover these steps.
Bits & Bytes 