Show HN: Jolt Alarm – Wake up to a new song every day | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Jolt Alarm – Wake up to a new song every day

jolt.rocks

49 pointskuczmama84 comments

I like this! just downloaded the app and will give it a whirl tomorrow morning.

Ever considered adding a feature to let strangers wake up other users? So it would work like this... ten minutes before your alarm is set to go off another user is chosen at random from a different time zone, he/she get's a notification to either pass or accept the task of waking you up. When it's time for the alarm to go off a VOIP session is opened and the user will then shout or speak softly, or strum a guitar or use an airhorn, etc... to wake you up. implement a rating system so each "waker" and each "sleeper" would be able to promote feedback to refine the system. fun!

I feel like that would lead to pranksters screaming, or worse playing some ridiculous pitch and frequency that could cause hearing damage.

I'd deff give one star feedback to anyone waking me up using the brown note.

It sounds like that could be part of the fun. lol.

yeah totally! question: If I connect the headphone jack to my stereo system will the Jolt music play through when it's time for the alarm to go off?

Now I can reply to this question. I guess we can't have too many nested replys. I actually haven't tested having the alarm go off with an external speaker like that. But, when I'm using headphones it will actually play on both the headphones and the phone's speaker. But when I pair my phone through the Amazon Echo Dot that I have, the alarm plays on the dot and not on the phone. I'm actually not entirely sure why that happens, but I think that has to do with how android manages audio. But anyways it should be fine, but your mileage may vary.

Also, what if the user waking the other one didn't make any noise, so the other person doesn't wake up? I'd think that'd be worse.

The app could intervene with a loud alarm if the user didn't press "stop/snooze" within five minutes.

It's like the alarm clock version of ChatRoulette. I like it haha. That's actually a pretty cool idea, it's different enough that it could be a completely separate app.

Nothing wakes better than a loud cock-a-doodle-doos!

Or an electric "jolt". But that might be a 2.0 feature. lol.

I've certainly heard of this already existing as a product, but don't remember what the name was.

Another product to allow strangers to wake you up, or something similar to Jolt?

Wakie: https://wakie.com/

That's actually pretty cool. I don't think it's an alarm clock though. Maybe they could add that feature.

Hey guys I created Jolt Alarm because I was sick of waking up to the same song every day. This is a cool new way to discover new music and to replace your boring ringtone. I'd love to hear what you think.

I haven't used it, but here are a few thoughts from looking at your site and the app store...

• Your website doesn't say anything. No information about music genre, settings, etc. You need to say _something_.

• I suggest having a configurable fade-in time for the song. I'm a light sleeper and can startle easy. Without the fade in I'll jump out of bed with my heart racing.

• I suggest either omitting explicit songs by default, or add a setting to filter them out.

• Your privacy policy states that an account may be required for some features (please no, I'd rather pay than register...) with personally identifiable information. AFAIK you have no reason to need that. Also, it references GPS data, a 2 year retention period of data linked to PIA (after closure/deletion of app), etc. Either this is boilerplate that needs to be revised, or you need to rethink what you gather (IMO) because it's overblown for an alarm clock.

• Clicking your logo goes to: http://www.jolt.rocks/sudo%20apt-get%20install%20ruby-fullsu...

I probably won't install the app. But I did want to share my thoughts. Good luck!

Hi trebor. Thanks for the really helpful feedback. I created a link to the website to go to IOS and android. I never really thought about having much of a description. I will try to add one in the future. This is a good point.

Regarding the configurable fade-in, the good thing about a lot of the songs that play on Jolt is that they are a lot more pleasant to wake up to than most ringtones.

For the privacy policy it was required for android so most of it is boilerplate. There is no login accounts. But I will update it soon.

Thanks for the feedback on the logo. That's just embarrasing. I will fix that soon.

About the fade-in... the click from the alarm clock wakes me up. It's not enjoyability, it's volume and how sudden the music comes on.

Just consider it.

I see what you're saying. I will definitely consider it. It could be a nice additional setting to add.

I sometimes take 3+ alarms to wake up in the morning. How does this handle snoozing, etc?

You can set as many alarms as you need to wake up in the morning. It works just like any other alarm clock with regards to snoozing. You can snooze it as many times as you want. You can have repeat alarms. I made it so you can edit the snooze duration as well. I've been using it as my main alarm for awhile now and I haven't run into any issues yet.

Thanks! I'll give this a try.

Does no one buy alarm clocks that use the radio as an alarm anymore? I hear a different song everyday as it is.

But this is on your phone...

Almost every single phone out there is capable listen on standard radio frequencies. It depends on the manufacturer whether or not this functionality is enabled though.

Yeah I heard about that. I tried the Next Radio App, but it said it wasn't supported on my device. Waking up to the radio is a good solution too. But hopefully you'll like the music on jolt enough to keep coming back.

I've had three phones where I could listen to the radio -- all three required headphones, so the cord could be used as an antenna. (On my Sony Z3, the "FM radio" is on my home screen; if I don't have headphones plugged in, it displays an "Insert Headphones" message.) I guess you could plug a speak into the headphone jack.

I have one, and we leave the radio on the same channel. I wake up to the same thing every morning anyway, because the radio does traffic at 7:45 every morning, and play one of a handful of songs straight after it.

My wife wanted one, it wasn't easy to find...

Yeah that's true. There are a lot of low quality alarm clocks out there. I have been personally using the android version for a few months now and it works pretty well for me. I haven't used the ios version as much so it's possible it could be a little buggier, but it's mostly bug free. Jolt is worth a spin, you might like it.

Mine is a few years old but they're still around.. Amazon or Best Buy for online, and I'm willing to bet you could find one at a Walgreens, Rite-Aid or CVS or some kind of pharmacy type convenience store.

The one I have even has an AUX feature to hook up an external source for audio and a few other interesting features (dual alarms, etc)

There are a bunch of android alarm apps that will launch spotify/pandora stations as an alarm in the morning. I used one for a long time until I had a kid.

Sure there are plenty of apps that can do that for you. But, I think that this has "better" music. Plus I can personally guarantee there won't be too much swearing. Most of the songs don't have too many lyrics.

I love the Idea, but even spotify needs over 20 attemps to show me one song I don't know and like.

My goal is to hopefully cut down on that number. I hope you'll like all the songs. But if you don't like it you can always try tomorrow. That's the fun :)

Even if you don't like it, at least you'll get woken up :)

How would you have any clue about my taste (if not an even better one than spotify)?

I don't. I just pick the songs I like from what the artists submit. Or I reach out to the artist directly to get their permission to feature it. Hopefully, you'll like them too. Everyone listens to the same song for a 24 hour period. Most of the music is EDM.

That sounds like it might be difficult to sustain, but this kind of hand curation is the surest and easiest way to consistent quality. Thanks for doing it!

You might want to considering billing this as part of the product's description. My biggest question coming in was how the music was selected because I wanted to know if there was some mechanism to avoid genres that I'm sure to hate. I had to come here to find my answer.

I'm looking forward to trying out Jolt tomorrow.

It's my pleasure. That's true. But it's "only" 365 songs a year. I have no issues curating the content as long as people are using and enjoying the app. You have a good point, I need to write a better description of the features of the app. Luckily, a lot of artists are really excited to have the opportunity to get featured, so it's been relatively easy to find new music to play.

I really hope you enjoy using it.

make the "undiscovered artists" a selling point. It's certainly "music you never heard before". In any case some example songs might be nice.

That's actually a good idea. I will definitely need to update the description to reflect that. Thanks for the feedback :)

This, I think, is the most important feature off the app, and should be the first paragraph of the value proposition.

Waking up to a random new song every morning is not very appealing (many alarm clock apps can do that) but knowing that the song is manually selected, picked to be suitable for waking up, and knowing that every other user of the app will wake up to the same song on that day, makes it infinitely more interesting.

Waking up to a song I dont like I think is more unpleasant than an alarm. Is there anyway you can tap into Spotify, Pandora or Youtube api?

Finally, it's like have a clock with a radio...

Yeah but this is "better" music. And it's on your phone... so there's that.

I'm still surprised popular music services don't have this feature. I ended up implementing it using Tasker to start Google Music at my wake up time, with a snooze option.

Yeah, it is kind of surprising. I didn't do a ton of research into the competition, but as far as I know there isn't really much like this.

Just downloaded the app. Can't wait to try it tomorrow morning.

Some feedback, you should use the AppCompat dialog https://developer.android.com/reference/android/support/v7/a... so your dialogs implement the material design instead of the holo design you're currently using.

Thanks! I hope you like it. Also, thanks for the feedback. I will look into updating that for the next release.

I really like the idea but I do see one problem with the premise. I've been programmed to jolt awake from the sound of my alarm. I've been listening to the same alarm for years and my body just knows it has to GET UP NOW when that noise is made. Hell even if I hear it halfway through the day it's like I feel a static shock.

Perhaps it could play a base line noise that's guaranteed to wake you up and fade into the music?

That's a good point, I think a lot of people feel the same way. One option as a "workaround" for now until I have time to build something out, would be to use your current phone's default alarm and then use jolt on top of it. For example if you woke up at 7AM. You could set your normal alarm at 7AM and then Jolt at 7:01AM. Now you just doubled your chance of getting up and you have some cool music to listen to too.

That's funny, I think I'm the opposite. If I use the same tone too often my brain begins to ignore it. I've gotten around this in the past by using my ringtone, but I don't like starting the day with a feeling of panic.

I'm the same way. That's why I built jolt.

Or play a classical opera overture that has the "Wake up!" built in to it.

For example, Mozart's Magic Flute: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2Gedb05J5M

Aha, always start hating my alarm clock music, no matter how much I liked it before. Hopefully this will counteract that.

I hope you like it.

Just check your logo is directing to "http://www.jolt.rocks/sudo%20apt-get%20install%20ruby-fullsu...

Other than that nice twist on boring alarm clocks.

This made me chuckle.

That's embarrasing. I just switched over from wordpress to Jekyll because I was worried about getting too much traffic from HN. I think I didn't work out all the kinks. Edit. It should be fixed now.

How is the iOS version? I thought it wasn't possible to create an app running in the background that would ring an alarm even when the phone is in silent mode and present a snooze UI, how does this app deal with that?

Yeah unfortunately, if the iOS app is in silent mode, the alarm won't sound. (As far as I know silent mode is the orange toggle switch on the side of the phone). That's just an apple thing. But, as long as you're not in silent mode the song will play in the background. The iOS version isn't quite as good as the android version in my opinion because of the apple restrictions, but they're fairly close.

Cool app. Mind sharing what language you wrote them in? I'm always interested when app developers release both iOS and Android apps together.

Both apps are native. I wrote the first app in Android, and then once I got that hammered out the way I liked, then switched to ios. On IOS it's written in Swift 3.

Wow it's rare and also great you know how to write for both platforms. I'm focusing more on React Native because I don't know any Java...

Thanks. React Native looks like a great platform. I haven't really done much with that yet, but it looks really interesting. Unfortunately, android and IOS both have pretty big learning curves, but I think knowing both is pretty helpful. I think you can make better apps when you write it natively.

Does this app synthesize a new song everytime it alarms you? Not exactly clear how it works from the playstore description.

It's actually a new hand-picked song every 24 hours. If you're curious, on how exactly it works. I have a rails server which I host all of my songs, which updates once a day. Then I pull in the song data from the server into the ios and android apps. So everyone who has the app listens to the same song.

Do you use it to showcase your music? Do you push/pull the media to everyone at the same time? Does it fallback to the last song if it can't reach the server for whatever reason?

It's not my music. Actually, I get artists to submit their songs, and I pick the ones I like. Or I reach out to artists I like and ask for permission to use their songs.

No, all the phones will pull the data at a different time, so it should keep the load down from the server. Plus there is a bit of randomness thrown in for good measure.

It doesn't actually fall back to the last song. It caches the current song, but if for some reason the cache doesn't save for some reason. Or if you are offline. Your phone's default ringtone will play.

question: what happens when I'm offline? what happens when I'm offline like for a month and use this app with 3 different alarms per day?

the big questions: do you (kinda) guarantee that the alarm clock will go off, even in these extreme circumstances?

If you're online, in wifi, it will play the song. But if you're offline it will play your phone's default ringtone. I did it that way so it wouldn't eat your data. Because downloading a new song everyday can add up if you have a limited data plan. So in theory you could be offline indefinitely and the alarm should just work. And then when you come back online, you'll be able to hear the song again.

alternatively you could use an mp3 from the users audio library and play that one, but well it could be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4%E2%80%B233%E2%80%B3 so then the user would have an issue.

Haha that song would not be good for an alarm clock. It's interesting, I actually allowed people to choose a song for a backup ringtone before, but I ended up taking out the feature. Everyone I showed it to found it kinda confusing. So now I just use the first default ringtone in the phone.

How about preloading of songs over wifi only. Another way could be to automatically enable wifi a few minutes before the alarm time.

Defaulting to standard ringtone if no song was downloaded.

That's a good suggestion. Right now it actually does cache the song when it's on wiFi, so it often works correctly. But, I find when my phone gets low on memory, the cache is sometimes cleared, and if I'm not in WiFi, it will go back to the default ringtone.

Actually automatically enabling wiFi is a good idea. I just assumed most people would try to be in wiFi as much as they could be, so I assumed the user would do their best to make that happen. Maybe I shouldn't have assumed that.

It wouldn't be much of a deal to me either, as I'd just use a Wifi-enabling task. Though I'd say many users would appreciate such feature.

Yeah I like it. That sounds like a relatively easy thing to implement, which could "fix" having your phone's default alarm sound instead of the song of the day.

This is a sweet idea... I can imagine this becoming a staple in the EDM community

How 'bout addin' Rusty's Random Rooster feature

That will need to be a separate app. There isn't a place for it in jolt, but I do think it could be another fun side project to work on...

The "jolt" when opening the app was a nice touch!

I'm glad you like it. :)

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