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Alarm Clock view

This is the first tab of WakeUp, and usually the most used.

Overall:

The Alarm Clock view expresses WakeUp's most basic features through the appearance of a conventional tabletop alarm clock. It is functionally made up of two sections, the display (with the black background), and the controls (the blue buttons). If the colors are already affecting you, don't worry, they can be changed, and we'll tell you how in this document.

The Display:

The display conveys the time, date, and day of week like any decent clock should (these are in red above).

The upper green line denotes the next (or currently active) alarm condition. Many alarms can be programmed, each with its own description, timing, associated sounds, and other options. In this example, the name of the alarm is "Morning Coffee Alarm", and we see it was programmed to start at 6:00 am.

The lower green line shows the name of the sound currently playing as part of the alarm. The example above depicts the sound as "Monday Monday.mp3", and adds it is sound number "79 of 342". This is an extreme example, but demonstrates an alarm can be made up of virtually as many sounds as you like, played consecutively. Obviously, if you need 342 sounds to wake up in the morning, you need more than coffee. Another sign of the same condition is playing the song Monday Monday on a Friday.

The yellow status line doesn't usually show on the display, but pops up and scrolls from right to left when there is an important message to convey. In this example, the important fact is that the alarm has been "Snoozed", also indicated by flashing the Snooze bar, and counting down the Snooze time. In another example depicted below, a new alarm is waiting to sound after the "Morning Coffee Alarm" finishes, also an important message only shown in the scrolling yellow status line. This example also clearly demonstrates 342 songs for one alarm is fairly excessive.

As a final note on the personal side, we wouldn't suggest a "Friday Happy Hour" for anyone hitting the Snooze bar for over 11 hours straight. Note also in this last example that another alarm is pending (waiting to sound), and as a result, the Off button changed its name to Next. This is done to intuitively convey what takes place if that button is pressed. Because a second alarm is waiting, that "next alarm" will start sounding when the button is pressed. That makes more sense than Off in this condition. While the button is a control, and not a display feature, this aspect of the button is more appropriately documented as a display feature than control operation.

The Controls:

The controls (the light blue buttons) operate similarly to those on a tabletop alarm clock, but with a little more intuitive reason behind them. If you've ever forgotten to turn your alarm back on Sunday night for a Monday wakeup, you'll understand what we mean here.

The rather large Snooze button is more-or-less like a Snooze bar on a conventional clock. If an alarm is sounding, you can press the Snooze bar for a bit more sleep. As seen two pictures back, the Snooze bar flashes when activated (we couldn't actually make it flash in this document, but we could show its different colors). Unlike standard clocks, the number of minutes this Snooze bar will let you sleep can be set (under a different tab described later). Also, when WakeUp is already in snooze mode, pressing the Snooze bar a second time queues up and plays the next sound in the alarm's sound list (cancels the Snooze).

A sounding alarm can be turned off using the Off button, of course. If a pending alarm is waiting to sound after the current alarm, this is seen as the Next button, and will clear the current alarm and start sounding the pending alarm. If no alarm is sounding, the same button is seen as the Skip button. In this case, whatever alarm is the next to fire can be skipped. A skipped alarm will simply reschedule itself for its next interval. For example, an hourly alarm about to go off at 4:00 will reschedule itself for 5:00 if skipped.

Unlike most alarm clocks, leaving WakeUp's On/Off buttons in the Off position won't make you late for Monday morning's pre-management-status-meeting story-straightening-meeting. As soon as an alarm is ready to fire, WakeUp will turn itself back on, so you don't have to remember. You may even arrive early enough to get one of the good donuts. If you really want your alarms turned off, that's why we gave WakeUp an Exit button. Pressing Exit will close the WakeUp application, and no alarms will sound again until you start a new WakeUp session.

The nifty slider (numbered 0 - 100) at the bottom of the controls lets you set WakeUp's volume. This volume setting only applies to WakeUp, not your entire system. This means you can set WakeUp's volume to a comfortable level without affecting the volume of any other sounds on your system. A default volume level (initially set when starting WakeUp) can be set in the Settings view. WakeUp's volume control will effect the level of any audio file it plays (WAV, MP3, AU, SND, AIF, EIF), but it does not control the volume of MIDI file playback. So far, that is beyond our control but we're seeking a work-around to include MIDI as well.

Back to the top: WakeUp Next to Alarms view