Sonic Bomb | Wake Up Call!

Hey all, 

Kinda random, but I am a pretty heavy sleeper and have a har time waking up in the morning. I am also now engaged and my future wife is quite the opposite and is not keen on the idea of the current ~20 alarms I set on my phone right now. 

So today, I ordered the Sonic Bomb. 

Hopefully it is effective in waking me up, and hopefully I can train myself to wake up at the first alarm rather than with many snoozes. And hopefully it won't bother her either, but I won't find that out till August. 

Will let you all know how it goes!

113 decibels!

Hell no. Berk that.

Getting up in the morning shouldn't risk permanent hearing loss.

In reply to Jumper K Balls :

My hope is to use just the vibration alarm and no sound, which it can do.

My wife is my alarm. Shes a light sleeper and i dont wake up unless im touched or hear a door. Still weird that doors opening wakes me so easy.

There's a free app called "I can't wake up" you can set it to be super annoying, and the only way to shut it off is through a setting. Mine is math problems, but there's pictures, bar code scans, all kinds of crap to MAKE you get up. Honestly it's the best alarm I've ever used because I have to wake up enough to think to make the noise go away, and at that point I'm awake. 

Before that, I put a old school brass alarm clock in a metal roaster in the hall. Why? Because I would get up, shut the alarm off, and go back to bed if it was anywhere in my room, never even know it went off when I woke up later. And the metal roaster hurt my foot enough when I kicked it trying to find it half asleep that I'd wake up. Plus echo. 

Although I'll give an honorable mention to the coffee pot with a timer. As long as you remembered to fill it the night before, fresh coffee smell works very well. 

The bed shakers do work well for some people, but I think that the noise (really 113db?) might frustrate the woman some in the morning

I think that bed shaker alarm might end up waking the SWMBO also.  For the past couple of years, my alarm clock has been my Fitbit - it has been great for maintaining a happy marriage, as my wife doesn't need to be up as early as I do. Perhaps try a Fitbit or similar?

Set your alarm so that you have no time left for anything but the necessities before leaving. Like set it so you're already late. You will learn to get up right away.

RossD said:

Set your alarm so that you have no time left for anything but the necessities before leaving. Like set it so you're already late. You will learn to get up right away.

I know, it's just hard to do that when I know how many alarms I am capable of sleeping through, to leave it up to just one.  

Also, try to de-stress your life. I find that when I am working too much or staying up way to late or in general running too fast, my body will react by making me sleep through alarms.  

I'm probably really lucky because of that specific stress reaction (and not one of a host of other much worse ones) though.

I don't think an audible alarm is going to do it for me, so we'll see how the shaker works. 

You need to train yourself. I'm hearing immpaired. I can sleep though a dump truck crashing into a nitroglycerin plant. I've trained myself that that specific alarm sound means get up or death. I never thought it possible until I had to make it work. 

I have one. It works for me just fine with vibration only. I have a memory foam bed and pillow. It only wakes me up and not the wife. I do wake up quickly enough to turn it off. The 113db will WAKE up everyone in the house on full volume.  Not recommended unless that is your intent. Plus the red lights on the alarm also flashes in the room for further distraction. Previously I was using the iPhone as my vibrating alarm but it did suck keeping it my pj pockets all the time. Now, it’s a lot more comfortable sleeping without it. Good luck. 

I feel 100 times worse if I hit snooze than if I just get up when the alarm goes off. Setting your alarm early, so that you can hit snooze a bunch seems crazy to me. Why not just sleep soundly until you have to get up? I'm the light sleeper in the relationship though. After 4 or 5 hours of deep sleep, a pin drop can wake me up.

STM317 said:

I feel 100 times worse if I hit snooze than if I just get up when the alarm goes off. Setting your alarm early, so that you can hit snooze a bunch seems crazy to me. Why not just sleep soundly until you have to get up?

I know it doesn't make sense! That's why I'm trying to get better at this. ;)

I have a Garmin fitness tracker with a vibrating alarm that works great at waking me up without disturbing my wife.

dj06482 said:

I have a Garmin fitness tracker with a vibrating alarm that works great at waking me up without disturbing my wife.

I tried using my Pebble for a while, but now the battery barely lasts through the night... :/ Not to mention the fact that at 1:05am last night I set a test alarm on the Pebble for 1:07am, closed my eyes and never noticed it... I'm really bad at this. 

I may consider a Garmin or similar if the Sonic Bomb is too much. Maybe the fancy sleep cycle / sleep tracker alarm function in those would help.

My wife has the same problem. Her alarms start an hour early and go every several minutes, plus snoozes. Basically it wakes me up and I kick her out of bed. Or if I leave first, I turn on the lights and take the blanket away. 

113db, no. All known expletives no. 

I had a really hard time with waking up for a while too. I found a wake-up light really helpful - it basically simulates sunrise, so you wake up in a slower, more natural way.

Then we had a baby. He's a very effective alarm.

I was a terrible waker until my mid 30's. Appallingly terrible. Never lost a job over it but angered everyone who had anything to do with me. Making it to something that started at 10AM was a monumental task.

I was once stranded in NC for 2 days because I slept through the hotel wake up call and missed my flight back to the west coast.

I started setting my alarm in the living room so I would have to walk a good distance and turn on lights to get to it. I still do that.

At 42 I am usually awake at 5:45 waiting for the alarm to go off at 6. 

Sunshine alarm.  And go to bed earlier.

Streetwiseguy said:

Sunshine alarm.  And go to bed earlier.

I've tried the sunshine/sunrise alarm, didn't work. 

Now the going to bed earlier... That would probably help, but is easier said than done. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Udj-o2m39NA

AWSX1686 said:

dj06482 said:

I have a Garmin fitness tracker with a vibrating alarm that works great at waking me up without disturbing my wife.

I tried using my Pebble for a while, but now the battery barely lasts through the night... :/ Not to mention the fact that at 1:05am last night I set a test alarm on the Pebble for 1:07am, closed my eyes and never noticed it... I'm really bad at this. 

I may consider a Garmin or similar if the Sonic Bomb is too much. Maybe the fancy sleep cycle / sleep tracker alarm function in those would help.

And we have found our problem. Unless you're waking up at 9AM, you're not getting enough sleep. Go to bed earlier. Turn off the internet and the TV and the cell phone at 10PM. Go to bed at 10:15 and read a real paper book. Put it down and lights out at 10:45. Assuming you fall asleep at 11, you should be waking up at 6:30 or 8 (you want 5-6 sleep cycles which are typically 90 minutes). 

mtn said:

AWSX1686 said:

dj06482 said:

I have a Garmin fitness tracker with a vibrating alarm that works great at waking me up without disturbing my wife.

I tried using my Pebble for a while, but now the battery barely lasts through the night... :/ Not to mention the fact that at 1:05am last night I set a test alarm on the Pebble for 1:07am, closed my eyes and never noticed it... I'm really bad at this. 

I may consider a Garmin or similar if the Sonic Bomb is too much. Maybe the fancy sleep cycle / sleep tracker alarm function in those would help.

And we have found our problem. Unless you're waking up at 9AM, you're not getting enough sleep. Go to bed earlier. Turn off the internet and the TV and the cell phone at 10PM. Go to bed at 10:15 and read a real paper book. Put it down and lights out at 10:45. Assuming you fall asleep at 11, you should be waking up at 6:30 or 8 (you want 5-6 sleep cycles which are typically 90 minutes). 

I know, I know.... Normally I'm midnight to 6am ish.

So you're getting about 4 sleep cycles. You need 90-180 minutes more sleep. 1.5 to 3 hours more.