Cuckoo clock loudspeaker kicks out the jams, you out of bed

And you thought The Shining cuckoo clock was terrifying -- imagine waking up to this. Designed by French artist Stephane Vigny, the loudspeaker clock does exactly what you'd expect it to. When the time comes, the doors flip open, the bottom woofer extends out and a cacophonic emission of sound is heard as you angrily wake from your slumber. We can't imagine that outstretched woofer surviving too many mornings of you waking on the wrong side of the bed.

[Via MAKE]

[broli @ Dec 9th 2008 8:47AM]

Is this meant for waking up giants?

[BlackB @ Dec 9th 2008 8:54AM]

no this is meant to wake up an entire neighborhood

[Flashpoint @ Dec 9th 2008 9:07AM]

and if you happen to be in front of it when it goes off, you get a face full of woofer!

[NHAnimator @ Dec 9th 2008 10:47AM]

"no this is meant to wake up an entire neighborhood"

...of giants

[brickwood @ Dec 9th 2008 8:47AM]

That's the best!

[Kris120890 @ Dec 9th 2008 9:00AM]

Wake everyone in you neighbour hood at the same time.

[Macca @ Dec 9th 2008 9:13AM]

Meh, it takes quite a lot from an alarm clock to annoy me. As it currently is, I have an alarm clock on full blast, placed on the other side of the room; so that every morning I have to lunge out of bed to turn it off, no time for slow wake-ups. This would only be a tad more annoying.

[Richard Lai @ Dec 9th 2008 9:24AM]

I can only imagine this ingenious design scaring the crap out of the elderly.

[Chris Are @ Dec 9th 2008 10:06AM]

I'm so ashamed of myself for laughing at that image. That's really horrible. Yet amusing.

[SubGenius @ Dec 9th 2008 1:15PM]

I believe it was Arthur C. Clarke who said "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic and will scare the elderly."
It is also the hallmark of good design.

[AMiSH PiRATE @ Dec 9th 2008 9:31AM]

Some engadget reviewed novelty products make me smile or laugh. Others I'll spend a night with and forget about within a week. This is the first I could see myself spending the rest of my life with. Cuckoo clock loudspeaker, will you marry me?

[wako @ Dec 9th 2008 9:32AM]

that looks like would be a shortlived cuckoo clock. Ill throw something at it in the morning and probably will fall over

[kb8urr @ Dec 9th 2008 10:05AM]

Sad thing is, the sound level of the woofer would drop by 75% once you remove it from the cabinet. It would be a heck of alot louder if the woofer stayed put. Other than that, clever.

[Patriks7 @ Dec 9th 2008 10:19AM]

If you live in an apartment, you can definitely wake a lot of people up with this.. but you can also loose your apartment really fast..

[Salman R @ Dec 9th 2008 10:26AM]

Finally something that could wake me up.

[THJ @ Dec 9th 2008 10:31AM]

Check out the Atomic Alarm clock from thinkgeek - it has a piercing alarm, bright LEDs on the front, and a vibrator (omfg u said vibrator lol) attachment that you can tuck under your pillow at night.

[Kali4 @ Dec 9th 2008 11:31AM]

"under your pillow..."

*Ahem* uh-huh, suuure. ;)

[RD. @ Dec 9th 2008 11:02AM]

This is awesome.

[Davin Black @ Dec 9th 2008 11:14AM]

This is so legit. Anyone giving this as a gift would be obligated to set up the speaker's in the intended person's room to wake them up.

[johnzilla @ Dec 9th 2008 11:22AM]

RTFA

It has nothing to do with waking people up. All the guy did was put the accordion-mechanism on the woofer. It extends out of the cabinet when the bass is "loud" and back into the cabinet when the bass is "quiet". ZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

[ran @ Dec 9th 2008 11:54AM]

Finally, I may have an alarm clock that can wake me up... or this cuckoo clock goes off every hour?

[collin @ Dec 15th 2008 4:39PM]

kb8urr is right, there would be very little sound heard once the driver leaves the box. the reason the box, on the very first order basic simple level, is to separate the sound waves from the front of the driver from those coming from the back of the driver. Since the driver moves back and forth, the front and back waves are 180 degrees out of phase, or, in simple terms, the reverse of each other. If the front and back waves are not kept separate, then they just cancel each other out and very little can be heard. So the mechanism that moves the speaker out when and loud and in when quiet will basically mean that the speaker does nothing in terms of sound.