Homegrown alarm clock tests your math to gauge alertness

We've seen some fairly sinister alarm clocks in our day -- ones that fly around, nearly make you go deaf and "explode" if you don't get up in time, for starters -- but this DIY creation is definitely lobbying for top honors. The Turing Alarm Clock, which has admittedly been making the rounds of late, starts making racket just as any other alarm clock when the time comes, but rather than letting you smash the snooze button, it forces you to answer math questions with varying levels of difficulty before quieting down. Evil? Sure. Effective? You betcha. Check the video after the jump.

[Via Hack-A-Day]

[phanbouy @ Feb 26th 2008 4:43PM]

Meh. SnūzNLūz - Wifi Donation Alarm Clock FTW

[Les @ Feb 26th 2008 4:49PM]

I need one

[Jherez @ Feb 26th 2008 5:28PM]

This would be THE perfect alarm clock, especially if it were permanently attached to something

[soviet_vexxer @ Feb 26th 2008 9:18PM]

holy crap engadget is slow. giz had this 5 almost 6 days ago. i swear most of engadgets posts are re-writes of everything on gizmodo.

http://gizmodo.com/359085/home+made-alarm-clock-beeps-until-you-solve-a-mathematical-problem

[jmiday @ Feb 26th 2008 4:49PM]

I'd be too nervous to sleep

[insertAlias @ Feb 26th 2008 4:57PM]

Because of a math problem in the morning?

[ethana2 @ Feb 26th 2008 5:25PM]

Quick! ∫(5x^3-sin(4x)+7) !

[Kero @ Feb 26th 2008 5:37PM]

The answer is 42

[Farris @ Feb 26th 2008 6:35PM]

Where's the dx? Where's the dx????

[r3loaded @ Feb 26th 2008 6:36PM]

Kero fails.

Answer is (5/4)x^4 + (1/4) cos(4x) + 7x + c

[LiQuiD_FuSioN @ Feb 26th 2008 6:40PM]

r3loaded, I'm pretty sure he was referencing "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Answer_to_Life,_the_Universe,_and_Everything

Besides that, I wouldn't even know the real answer. :s

[dantaylor08 @ Feb 29th 2008 4:34PM]

really really old

[Tim @ Feb 26th 2008 4:58PM]

The last thing i need when i wake up on monday morning, still drunk, is a math test.

perhaps that is the point, but if i am going to be woken up out of my drunken slumber by a novely alarm clock, its going to be the one with wheels that runs away from you while squealing.

I mean, I am not going to be happy to be awake as it is, might as well make it fun for the roomates. I don't think there is anything funnier than watching a half-asleep, drunk, angry guy chasing a little alarm clock around a two bedroom appt while screaming something about the three wise men stearing him wrong and being late for work.

[Tim @ Feb 26th 2008 5:00PM]

advil ftw, btw

[Ryan Trevisol @ Feb 26th 2008 5:09PM]

Your self-deprecating logic is undeniably bulletproof.

[mex1cola @ Feb 26th 2008 7:33PM]

Ive read some funny comments on the internets, but that just about takes the cake (which is lie). Kudos.

[NakedOldGuy @ Feb 26th 2008 4:59PM]

OK so lets build one of our own using a PIC16 microcontroller! Best alarm clock in the "not affordable for college students who need it" category goes to this thing!

[NakedOldGuy @ Feb 26th 2008 5:02PM]

Ok nevermind that... theyre cheap as hell.

[Duncan @ Feb 26th 2008 5:15PM]

Well if your being cheap then you can order a suitable sample PIC from the microchip website which is free (www.microchip.com/samples).

[Bob @ Feb 26th 2008 5:02PM]

forcing me to have a calculator by my bed

[Steve Calderon @ Feb 26th 2008 5:05PM]

Maaaaaan... As if it wasn't enough trouble to convince girls I'm not too much of a dork to sleep with, now I want them to see me doing math problems first thing in the morning? Why not just have it spew Monty Python quotes too?

[Les @ Feb 26th 2008 5:11PM]

it's in the morning, you already have them. being good a math, is a plus once they are looking for commitment

[ethana2 @ Feb 26th 2008 5:30PM]

Just use your tablet. Link festival to fortune or something and load up the quote database with a monty python quote list. Remember to put it in the right format:
(quote)
%
(quote)
..and so on.
...guess what scripting language you should use!
*ahem* python.

[Kate @ Feb 27th 2008 7:57AM]

But the Python quotes could be a reward for correct answers!

Or, for a wrong answer...."Nee!"

[Kate @ Feb 27th 2008 8:01AM]

...or was it "Ni?" I just woke up (really).

[Nubaeus @ Feb 26th 2008 5:12PM]

OLD

ON hackaday like last week

[Tim @ Feb 26th 2008 5:13PM]

YOU were on hackaday like last week.

[ethana2 @ Feb 26th 2008 5:27PM]

Your mom was o--

..nevermind, wron-

...nevermind.

[phanbouy @ Feb 26th 2008 5:52PM]

sin f(x) = FAIL^x

[computer.dude.28 @ Feb 26th 2008 7:10PM]

Actually, it was Gizmodo, and it was last month.

[Joseph @ Feb 26th 2008 5:28PM]

I do this with my roommate all the time. Unfortunately he's learned to answer math questions without waking up. It's kinda freaky.

[Tim @ Feb 26th 2008 6:10PM]

Joseph, your post raises some questions...

1) Why do you ask your roommate math questions in his sleep?
2) Is he getting paid for his ability to do math in his sleep? He sounds like NASA material...
3) How fast can he solve a rubiks cube?
4) Is your roomate that cat?

[Joseph @ Feb 26th 2008 6:36PM]

1) Because I'd tell him to wake up, he'd say he's up, then wake up later not remembering any part of the conversation.
2) Nah. If chimps are going into space, he could probably be NASA material...
3) He's not a genius. I don't ask him anything he can't answer while he's awake. He's bad at math.
4) No. Everyone seems facinated by my choice of cat icon.

[Jason @ Feb 26th 2008 5:33PM]

(5/4)x^4 + (1/4)cos(4x) + 7x + C?

[Jonny @ Feb 26th 2008 6:03PM]

Eleventy three (yawn)

[phanbouy @ Feb 26th 2008 8:39PM]

best. reply. ever.

[ZeroCorpse @ Feb 26th 2008 6:05PM]

Some people would never be able to turn it off!

[Rob @ Feb 26th 2008 6:20PM]

Next up on engadget,..

"Homegrown calculator automatically answers questions that your homegrown alarm clock asks you"

[Cedric @ Feb 27th 2008 5:09AM]

And I bet that dog is your roommate.

[m @ Feb 26th 2008 6:46PM]

it looks durable, which is a good thing, since it's going to get thrown against a wall.

[Reader @ Feb 26th 2008 9:30PM]

Seriously:

Option 1) Solve math problem while brain isn't functioning beyond breathing and making it to the bathroom.

Option 2) Destroy alarm clock while not thinking of the consequences in your half-awake rage

I think Option 2 will win every round, but I still want one.

[Ethan @ Feb 26th 2008 8:10PM]

Brilliant, brilliant idea.

[John Stracke @ Feb 26th 2008 9:08PM]

I did something like this once. Some time back in college, when I really needed to get up early (to get to GenCon, not to get to class), I wrote a program on some nearby Macs to start beeping at 4:00 and refuse to stop until I answered a multiplication problem.

Unfortunately, I wasn't that good a programmer those days, so (a) I stayed up late getting written, and (b) I didn't test it. (Looking back, I can't really reconcile these two statements. Maybe I took a lot of time looking things up in Inside Mac?) So, at 4:00 in the morning, three Macs started clanging at me, and I jumped up and discovered that there was some sort of bug that meant I had to answer the question within 2 seconds, or some such, or it would think that I had clicked OK, with the wrong answer, and make me start over. Oh, and I had set it to pick two-digit numbers in a range I could multiply fairly quickly--I think it was [10..50]--but multiplying 47 by 35 within two seconds, with three machines clanging away, turned out to be harder than I'd thought. I had to keep giving wrong answers until it came up with an easy one.

[Dave @ Feb 27th 2008 12:29AM]

type in "the answer to life, the universe, and everything" on Google...

[Dave @ Feb 27th 2008 12:31AM]

sorry this was supposed to go up higher in the thread

[Dave @ Feb 27th 2008 12:31AM]

type in "the answer to life, the universe, and everything" on Google...

[Ikonomi @ Feb 27th 2008 3:42AM]

Seriously? I can barely READ when I first wake up... The "snooze" button turns into the "random mess of numbers and letters" button.