Does anybody want a "Glowing Sleep Box"?

[oregano]

Facebook’s Zuckerberg Builds His Wife a Glowing ‘Sleep Box’

Mark Zuckerberg, yes the Facebook billionaire, apparently built (or had built for him) what he describes as a "glowing sleep box". His wife was losing sleep over trying to remember to get up at 6:30 am to awaken the couple's two young (toddler age, I think) daughters, and the alarm on her smartphone was not cutting it. So he came up with a box that gradually lights up when Priscilla Zuckerberg needs to get up and get the kids up. Mrs. Zuckerberg apparently is not a fan of traditional alarm clocks, so the box does not display the time.

I know that when I was on my own at 18 for the first time and couldn't get myself up for college classes, I would have traded an arm for one of these. During my HS years my mom would come in my room and turn on the lights to get me up. After HS, no mom to turn on the lights. I bought a cheap lamp and cheap, crude timer at Wal Mart and tried that for a while, but it didn't work well.

Zuckerberg may have posted plans somewhere online, but I don't know where. Selling sleep boxes sounds really cool!

 

[onlything]

I just put my phone to vibrate when I need to wake up. But then, I have a light sleep.

 

[NothingToSeeHere]

So it's one of those alarms that gradually wakes you up with light? I've had one of those for years... no need to make one, just buy one on amazon (or your shop of choice)

 

[Fino]

Is that a reliable way of being woken up? It sounds awesome because I love lights and boxes.

 

[oregano]

So it's one of those alarms that gradually wakes you up with light? I've had one of those for years... no need to make one, just buy one on amazon (or your shop of choice)

I presume that the light alarms available commercially weren't sufficient for Mrs. Zuckerberg for whatever reason. I know the ones I've seen either go from zero to "yikes!" at once; or also display the time, usually with a LED display, which as the article notes was a deal breaker-apparently she is bothered by LED clock displays. (Some of the LED clocks available today are EXTREMELY bright, so bright that it makes getting to sleep difficult.) I will have to hit Google and see if there is any further info out there beyond the short article linked to in my OP.

 

[oregano]

Daily Mail article with more info, including MZ's Instagram post about the box:

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg builds his wife a glowing 'sleep box' | Daily Mail Online

Apparently the idea behind the box is that it emits a faint light from the bottom of the box between 6 am and 7 am Pacific time, thus giving a gradual wake up call to Priscilla Zuckerberg. MZ also notes that he omitted the LED display because if Mrs. Zuck wakes up in the middle of the night she won't start worrying about how much time there is until she has to get up. The couple's daughters are ages 1 and 3. (Cute pix of them in this article, btw.) I was only able to find a couple basic versions of this story, and apparently the only thing the outside world has to go on about the box is MZ's single Instagram post.

I'm thinking that it might be possible to use a Raspberry Pi or Arduino module with a Real Time Clock module and a GPS or radio control clock module hooked to a low light LED bulb such as a blacklight or other "party light" bulb in a box. I am currently mapping out a project that consists of an Arduino based clock that shows both GMT/UTC and local time for a ham radio application, based on the W8BH clock plan, so this sort of thing has been on my mind lately.

 

[oregano]

MZ's original Instagram post:

Mark Zuckerberg on Instagram: “Being a mom is hard, and since we've had kids Priscilla has had a hard time sleeping through the night. She'll wake up and check the time…”

To be honest, I'm really intrigued with this idea. As I noted, my mom would turn on the overhead light in my room during my high school years to wake me, since I was using an old hand-me-down clock radio that had an intermittently working alarm. Zuck says in his Insta post that the light is just the right intensity so it won't wake the Mrs if she's sleeping, but if she does wake up she will know it's time to get up and grab the kids. The problem apparently was that she was stressing out over when to know it was wakeywakey time for the little ones, and once she checked her phone she couldn't go back to sleep.

Mark Zuckerberg strikes me as a true out of the box thinker, and my opinion may be strange considering we're talking Silicon Valley, but I think he is one of the few true geniuses in the Valley. Most zillionaires in the Valley simply got in on the ground floor of the internet in the 90s, or realized "hey, why don't I put this real world idea online?" and made their fortunes that way. With the loss of Steve Jobs, the collective megawattage of the Valley went down. There's Larry Page who came up with a workable search algorithm while at Stanford, something nobody else could figure out. Yes, Google and Facebook function today simply as data mines that sell data to advertisers, but in the beginning the founding ideas were truly innovative.

 

[Progster]

I alsready have one of those, it's called 'natural daylight'. But it does tend to wake me up at inconvenient times

 

[Fino]

I alsready have one of those, it's called 'natural daylight'. But it does tend to wake me up at inconvenient times

And during seasons of cloudiness and other such weather changes, your work stops expecting you to be on time.

"Ah, it's Winter, Progster won't be here till noon "

 

[Progster]

And during seasons of cloudiness and other such weather changes, your work stops expecting you to be on time.

"Ah, it's Winter, Progster won't be here till noon "

Or in summer, on the other hand, I'll be there bright and early

I guess I need a job with flexitime

 

[FreeDiver]

I do something similar with my bedroom light. I have an home automation system and one of the things I do is when I need to get up early in the morning. Instead of using an alarm clock. I just tell my HM system to showily fade my bedroom light up from off to full brightness in a one hour time. I can't use the morning sun to wake up with because I have all my bedroom windows covered up with blackout curtains.

 

[NothingToSeeHere]

Mine gradually increases the amount of light over about half an hour, it's a great way to wake up in winter. I put tape over the clock bit as it annoys me when I wake up in the middle of the night.

 

[WildCat]

I use my smartphone now which can play any tune known to mankind (along with doing just about everything else). Plenty of glow coming from that thing, probably a bit too much in fact. Before those came along, I had to rely on the good ol' buzzer to rise and shine. Had a digital alarm clock with a faulty readout that couldn't display the second hour digit properly, so I had to remember to get up at 'F:50' instead of '6:50'. Good times, but times are changing aren't they?

That does sound like a nifty project though. If you happen to build a glowing box or some similar contraption, be sure to post some pics!

 

[Tom]

If you really want to make sure you get on time I find the 'Screaming Drill Instructor' pretty effective.

 

[Pats]

It took me months working nights to learn to sleep with daylight so I don't think the light would help me. I always preferred waking to up my favorite music - clock radio cd player. But a few times I kept sleeping thinking, "wow, that's really some cool music". lol The phones I don't think are very good alarm clocks.

 

[Fino]

It took me months working nights to learn to sleep with daylight so I don't think the light would help me. I always preferred waking to up my favorite music - clock radio cd player. But a few times I kept sleeping thinking, "wow, that's really some cool music". lol The phones I don't think are very good alarm clocks.

Do you find at all that it ruins the song for you? I've been wary of doing that because I was thinking it might then trigger thoughts of having to wake up when I hear the song in other circumstances.

 

[Pats]

Do you find at all that it ruins the song for you? I've been wary of doing that because I was thinking it might then trigger thoughts of having to wake up when I hear the song in other circumstances.

No, it didn't. But just in case - I didn't set it to any of my top ten.

 

[Xerces Blue]

If you really want to make sure you get on time I find the 'Screaming Drill Instructor' pretty effective.

View attachment 53871

Gotta say I woke up more to "fire watch" walking past my bunk than the drill sergeants yelling at me.
I don't use a cell phone alarm, tried that in a barracks environment multiple times, woke up before the alarm when people start moving around.
At home I use a SUPER annoying load alarm clock - I hate it and IT WORKS.
my roommates either work from home or get up 3 hours after me so I can't count on them moving around to wake me up like in the barracks - if they're moving around or being loud at that time it's because they're drunk and been up all night - not something to count on.
They know how pissed off I get when they keep me up at night and so try to keep it down - making them pay for it the next day helps too.
Use both the carrot and the stick.
Had a 3 week trip to Germany, woke up every day at 4 am when the sun came in though the window, the fire alarm would then go off at around 6 am due to bad wiring.

 

[Yeshuasdaughter]

Sounds nice