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Comment by alexvr | Hacker News Reader

Hey everyone, I really appreciate all of the positive feedback. This is quite thrilling as a college student. It's the first thing I've made that people actually understand and consider useful.

If any of you download Deafalarm, please let me know how it works for you and what you would like to see improved.

I could also use pointers on getting the word out to people in this niche market.

Thank you very much,

Alex

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As someone who's deaf (not Deaf) thank you for making it. Sadly, the vibration the iPhone makes isn't strong enough for me but this is an awesome idea and I hope you succeed with it!

You're welcome, and thank you for the comment. I noticed this as well; I'm definitely searching a way to make the vibration more noticeable. Someone else suggested abandoning the mobile phone platform altogether to make a more robust product in general. If not me, maybe Nest will do something like this with their smoke detectors. They're already connected to wifi, so it would just take a wifi-enabled vibrator do the same thing, perhaps more reliably. Still, it might be a while before every smoke detector is as smart as a Nest ;)

What about a specialized device that operates off of low energy bluetooth for communicating to the iphone? Something like this could be built with Arduino or Raspberry Pi.

John Muir, the American environmentalist of the 1800-1900's, built an "alarm clock" in 1862 that would dump the occupant off the bed at the defined time.

I really wish that the Fitbit Flex was more hackable -- if I could get a low-power bluetooth fob that could vibrate and display a few lights embedded in my watchband, that would really be all the smartwatch I need.

wi-fi enabled vibrator sounds like an entirely different product. ; )

Maybe an iPhone case developed to magnify the vibration sensation?

That would be useful to the use of the phone in general, not just to wake up. Actually, it would be useful for me - and I am not deaf. I keep my phone on vibrate all the time and when on the streets I can only feel the vibration about 20% of the times someone calls me. And I usually i HEAR the vibration, not actually feel it.

Becoming a hardware company is a little to far from you? :)

You may want to consider adding Pebble support -- vibrations on my wrist are way more noticeable than vibrations from my phone on my bed.

there are already products built for the deaf to notify them, they integrate with doorbells, smoke/fire alarms, clock alarms, i think you would have better luck on tailoring it for the deaf person that wants an alarm when they travel to friends homes, etc.

No thank you, its great to see such lateral thinking and particularly around something thats the potential to be quite beneficial to people who have live hard enough as it is.

You put a smile on a jaded mans face with this app, and towards tech news thats a rarity for me these days :)

This might be a nice accompanying app for a Pebble watch. Seems like it would be a pretty easy integration.

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