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I’ve not seen an alarm clock like this as old meets new with the digital hourglass.  This was a project created by Susann Hamann and Fabian Hemmert from Germany for a “Interface Design” course at Potsdam University of Applied Science.

With this hourglass you decide on the amount of sleep that you need and don’t worry about the actual time that you will be waking up.  In keep with the use of an hourglass one tilts the unit to make changes to the settings.  An hours sleep is show by one LED and you “fill” the hourglass up by holding it with both hands and tilting it through 45 degrees.  Thanks to the LED display you can see how much sleep time is actually left.

To activate the unit simply drop in on a flat surface at a 90 degree angle.  No alarm clock would be complete without a snooze function so turn the hourglass upside down once it’s gone off and you will be given an extra 5 minutes sleep.

To turn off the hourglass, it has to be put down horizontally - it rolls onto its display then (because of the batteries’ position) and goes into stand-by.  Since this was just a class project it’s not commercially available but you can follow the how-to here.

Technorati Tags: Hourglass, Alarm, LED, Interface Design