Earlarm Could Help End Morning Annoyances Beth Snyder February 5, 2014 Extras If you share a bed or a room with someone else, you are probably overly familiar with the alarm clock conflict. Unless you’re very lucky and both of you have to get up at the same time daily, one or the other of you is always awakened before you would like to be, which can lead to not just annoyance but actual fights. And who wants to start their day off with a fight? That just sets a tone you really don’t want, and you might as well just give up on being happy until you get to go back to bed and start over. Earlarm could well be the answer to part of the problem. It looks like an old-fashioned alarm clock, but the “bells” are actually ear buds. Which means only the person for whom the alarm is set will hear it, leaving the other person in the room to enjoy uninterrupted sleep. As you know, this means the odds are very good said other person will be a lot less cranky, especially if the one who gets up earlier is prone to hitting the snooze button repeatedly. Each ear bud is constructed of noise-cancelling foam (like ear plugs you would wear to protect your hearing), and each connects to the bedside clock via Bluetooth. The alarm itself is set with a smartphone, and the “clock” is really just a countdown timer that shows time remaining before the alarm will ring. The ear buds are charged by plugging them back into the clock when not in use. The bonus here is not only that the alarm only sounds for the person who needs to get up, but the noise-cancelling properties of the ear buds will be invaluable in getting to sleep where there is a bunch of ambient noise (like someone who snores). It’s pretty much ideal in a roommate situation, where often one person is a night owl while the other is an early bird. Using Earlarm, both people get their sleep at the times they need it without unduly disturbing each other. Earlarm was designed by Kyungmi Moon with help from friends Doyun Kim and Jinyong Park. It’s just a concept piece at the moment, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it made its way to the consumer market in some form or another. The project is currently up on Red Dot Award Design Concept 2014, which means if it wins, this will appear in stores sooner rather than later. Source: Damn Geeky Share This With The World!