Thread: A Prototype & idea - The Dream Clock

I am a third year student of interactive media, currently undertaking a class where we are to make our own project (with interactivity and UI as the main focus).

Seeing as how I have a profound interest of dreams & lucid dreaming I came up with the idea to make a product that interacts with our sleep and the fascinating dream world.
I got the idea worked out after two recent events in my dreams where sounds from the "real world" crossed into the dream-world. After a bit of research it seems as sound quite easily transfers into the dream state and that this is not at all a unique occurence.


First quick sketch/design idea

I've decided to create an Alarm clock where the main purpose is to induce feelings and events in our dreams and perhaps even aid the lucid dream state by sound recognition. This clock would be fully interactive, and the user would pretty much control everything except for the shape of the clock itself.

I will update this thread as the project progresses, but the reason for even posting it is that I need your help!

It would be greatly appriciated if you could spare a moment or two to answer the following questions, and share any thoughts on my project, positive or negative!

• What functions would you implement if you were given the opportunity to design an alarm clock?
• What do you think would be neccesary functions for the clock to interact with your dreams?
• What are your experiences with real life sounds interacting with your dreams?
• What are the flaws of alarm clocks on the market today, what do they lack?
• Would you be interested in a product like this if it existed?

If great interest is shown I intend to program a computer-based "beta version" of the alarm clock's interface to further experiment on a broader scale, and who knows, perhaps one day this can actually become a tangible product?

As for sounds from the real world crossing over into dream land (with a view to them making you lucid) I think you would have to do a lot of experimentation to find out what stimulus is most likely to transfer over to dreams. Would it be sounds, spoken words, abstract noise etc.

I would want the alarm sound to be totally changeable, so that you can vary the volume, choose multiple times when the alarm sounds, choose different intervals between those soundings of the alarm, have an option for the alarm to start out quietly and increase in volume.

The sound from R/L that most often features in my dreams is rainfall on my roof. And (of course!) my alarm.

Modern alarm clocks lack a feature that would allow me to be woken up at any time of night without waking my wife. I have searched online and found vibrating alarm clocks, but many who give feedback say that the vibration is so loud that it wakes other people in the house. I am pretty sure there is a gap in the market there. Actually, if you could find a way to wake just one person without waking others then you may have designed a product that will also appeal to people not interested in dreaming and lucid dreaming features (shift workers etc).

I will buy the alarm clock like a shot if it has an alarm that will wake me and not my wife and has the options for me to experiment with "alarm related" induction methods, like CANWILD.

Thank you for your input Bobblehat, most appriciated!

It's hard to put my ideas into words, as they change, twist and turn all the time, but I intend for the clock to be fully programmable by the user, eg through a USB cord that you would connect to your computer and put your own recordings/sounds into the alarm clock and set alarm times and other parameters to your liking.

Also, Thank you for your suggestion of an alarm clock that wakes only one person, I can see why there would be a market for something like that!



Please keep coming with ideas and suggestions, anything to help me solidify this concept and turn it into something beyond my own ideas would be very appreciated!

Come on guys, 49 views and only one of you anwsers, please help me out, I would really appriciate it!

If you take your time to anwser the questions and swing by Perth any time in the near future i'll buy you a beer out of gratitude!

Originally Posted by inkSheep

[*]What are your experiences with real life sounds interacting with your dreams?

A cat. When i was meditating or half awake/asleep. I heared a cat meow inside my head. With my eyes closed i saw one image of a cat standing outside my window. And i saw a cat made of white light walking "inside" my head. The cat's meow also seemed to be originating from my own head. But i checked outside and there was a cat looking at my window. It went away when he saw i noticed it.

I woke up in afternoon and commercials on a TV that was too loud gave me visuals of newspapers and other stuff like that.

Delta brainwave sounds gave me quite intense visions of seeing mechanical tubes with spiders moving in synchronisity. Or large kind of spaces that i was moving trough. Like giant hallways. But undefined. Like moving trough machine tubes . as in the movie the matrix. But i don't think that's what it was.


I am curious to know if recorded cat sounds make it into ur dreams. Or if it works better with actual cats.
And about ur actual idea/invention ^^ . I think it's a good idea. This might just work really well.

Ok, so what I would do is have a default setting. This would be set to wake the person up just REM. So I think 4.5 hours after going to sleep is the best time.
Then the next REM period after that would be 6 hours (I think) and then 7.5

I can't even find the average times right now. But I know there is data somewhere.

So what I would want in this clock is it to have those time set automatically.
So you would need to be able to set the clock like a normal clock. Set the time and pm or am etc.
Then when you are going to sleep, there would need to be a button to press which starts the timer to wake you up just before REM periods.
So if I go to bed at 12. I would push the button, and the clock would wake me up at 4:30, 6:00 and 7:30. Oh and one at 8:00 so it wakes you up after that dream so you can get up lol

This is helpful because you don't have to change the times the alarm wakes you up every day if you go to bed earlier or later.
But it would also need an option for people to change the set default alarm periods because not everyone is exactly the same regarding when they start dreaming.

Originally Posted by inkSheep

• What functions would you implement if you were given the opportunity to design an alarm clock?
• What do you think would be neccesary functions for the clock to interact with your dreams?
• What are your experiences with real life sounds interacting with your dreams?
• What are the flaws of alarm clocks on the market today, what do they lack?
• Would you be interested in a product like this if it existed?

If great interest is shown I intend to program a computer-based "beta version" of the alarm clock's interface to further experiment on a broader scale, and who knows, perhaps one day this can actually become a tangible product?

In answer you your questions inksheep;

- Functions i would implement would be;

• recordable/customisable alarm tones, so that one could train him/herself to respond to certain sounds
• ability to set the alarm to only go off for a certain amount of time, IE 3 seconds, etc.
• customisable display.

There are more but, mind block. lol
To interact with dreams will be the most difficult part, i cant think of what to say if im honest... I would say it needs to be sounds that can be heard without totally distracting you and waking you up. Like soft/soothing tones etc.

The flaws of the alarms on the market today are the fact they they are specifically designed to wake you up without question, not designed to aid dreaming. Most have a snooze button that can be programmed for a certain amount of time but like mentioned above i haven't seen many with an alarm timer so you could set the alarm to go off for 3-5 seconds and switch off automatically.

HELL yes i would be interested!!!

Sorry if i rambled

An autosnooze function would be helpful for deilds. =)

Thanks for all the response, it's mighty helpful for me!

I've been spending some more time fleshing out this project in the past few days, and have come to a few conclusions:

The clock will most probably be a "normal" alarm clock in how it looks and functions, except for the advanced mode (for Lucid Dreamers or other sleep experimentation), accessible via a flipswitch on the back of the clock: This mode would turn on the user customized settings (Which the user has defined using his/hers computer and the interface provided) These settings would be accessible via an application on a SD memorycard/USB stick that fits into the clock.

The actual settings within this interface I am still working on, but amongst them (clearly) are custom alarm sounds (as specified eg. uploaded by the user) long or short, but also custom alarm cutoff times, custom snooze, LED light, and a customizable settings for every day of the week.
This would be fully open source, and customized user created scripts to control any function of the watch would be allowed and encouraged, these could also be shared on a web based community for the users of the clock.

Any more input/ideas/suggestions or thoughts would leave me very greatful!

I've had a similar idea for a few years (I was an electrical engineering student), and it's really hard to make it in hardware. You will put a lot of effort, and the product may not work at all! This spring I was finally able to make a lucid dreaming android app, using a lot of the features I thought of over the years.. You can find the source code (java) here: android-lucid-dreaming-app - Using Android phones to induce lucid dreaming - Google Project Hosting . It does quite a lot of things that you mentioned, although the success rates have been pretty disappointing.

-customizeable alarm tones
-autosnooze
-custom timers
-ability to mark up dreams
-Digital clock in any color!

What it is missing is a solid method of detecting if the user is dreaming or not. Without it, TOO much effort is needed to estimate when to play reminders.

Thank you Ev,

I will take what you have said into consideration, It however seems incredibly hard to find a proper and simple way to detect dreams.
The clock could feature a mattress sensor of some sort, but it still seems quite an unreliable method to me, I will have to further my research on the subject of detecting dreams.
Perhaps there is some to be learned from sleep labs other than eye REM sensors (which I guess would be pretty uncomfortable to use more than, perhaps, once a week)

And thank you for the source code, that could prove mighty helpful!

Ah yes, a simple way to detect dreams. Thoughts of how to do that have kept me awake many nights.

This may be a bit of a tangent, but I've been thinking about how much movement it would take to break sleep paralysis/end a dream/wake you up. Obviously some degree of movement is possible without stopping dreaming - I've slept on bumpy car and coach rides before and had dreams. The idea I'm toying with is, instead of using light signals to cue you to the fact you're dreaming, a device would move a part of the body - probably a hand? - in some way, in a simple movement. Perhaps moving up and down the hand by a centimetre? Would this be detected in a dream and thus you'd become lucid? I don't know! But food for thought maybe.

Sounds possible Bobblehat,

I think all outside elements, (Sound, Movement & Light) could be transfered into the dream realm, but it would probably be highly individual as to how much is needed for you to notice it and get lucid or to simply wake you up.

I had an interesting experience on that note: A few weeks back I had a neck-ache and used tiger balm to make it a bit more bareable, and shortly after took a nap, in the nap I dreamt and was in a winter landscape with a constant cold feel to my neck, somehow i did not connect the dots and get lucid, but upon awakening it still was pretty damn awsome to me (This is one of the experiences that has driven me to this project)

My little brother had his first lucid on a plane from bangkok to perth, and he got lucid because he could hear the humming of the plane-engines even though he was not on a plane (in the dream) and thus realised that he was dreaming (Which further accounts for outside elements being helpful in LD).

The problem at hand, however, is one step further along the path; how to (from the real world) detect that 'the subject' is dreaming, possibly a feat so hard to accomplish it could be considered impossible

Originally Posted by Bobblehat

Ah yes, a simple way to detect dreams. Thoughts of how to do that have kept me awake many nights.

This may be a bit of a tangent, but I've been thinking about how much movement it would take to break sleep paralysis/end a dream/wake you up. Obviously some degree of movement is possible without stopping dreaming - I've slept on bumpy car and coach rides before and had dreams. The idea I'm toying with is, instead of using light signals to cue you to the fact you're dreaming, a device would move a part of the body - probably a hand? - in some way, in a simple movement. Perhaps moving up and down the hand by a centimetre? Would this be detected in a dream and thus you'd become lucid? I don't know! But food for thought maybe.

This just reminded me of the movie The Science Of Sleep. He has some straws taped to his eyelids, so when he goes in to REM sleep, the straws move and it makes music play (I think that's what it did, or it may have done something else to make him lucid).

But I think you could probably do this in a bit more sophisticated way. Like have some sort of detector on your eyelids, which sends signals to a computer which could play music or tell you you're dreaming, or a device which moves your hand up and down etc.

Originally Posted by Bobblehat

The idea I'm toying with is, instead of using light signals to cue you to the fact you're dreaming, a device would move a part of the body - probably a hand? - in some way, in a simple movement. Perhaps moving up and down the hand by a centimetre? Would this be detected in a dream and thus you'd become lucid? I don't know! But food for thought maybe.

I have performed a few experiments with a vibrating bracelet. It is connected to a phone by Bluetooth, and when the bluetooth link is severed, the bracelet starts to vibrate, indicating theft.

I asked my phone to turn off bluetooth for a few seconds, then turn it back on, producing a series of 1 second on, one second off vibrations.

So far, the results have been inconclusive. Maybe I need a lot more attempts per night to see if that works.

Originally Posted by Bobblehat

One idea I was toying with was, instead of trying to detect REM, trying to detect a response (or lack of response) to a certain stimulus. Would the response be different in REM to how it is in non REM? For example (bad example, probably) if you applied a slight electric shock to a finger, would the movement be greater in REM than it is in non REM? Or maybe a response to a stimulus wouldn't occur in deep sleep, but would in REM sleep.

There are measurements of EOG (electro oculogram) and EMG (electro myogram) during sleep. There's a very comprehensive sleep scoring manual which lists all these parameters AASM Manual for the Scoring of Sleep - American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) I've never had a detailed look at that, just read a few papers based on the book. Most of the signals are really tiny and take a lot of filtering to capture and process correctly.


Here's a hypothesis of mine: movement during sleep is a result of mental activity. Try to sit still and notice how some urges and thoughts make you stand up or start doing something. During sleep they might act in a similar way, except that the body is paralyzed and there are no major body movements...

One idea I was toying with was, instead of trying to detect REM, trying to detect a response (or lack of response) to a certain stimulus. Would the response be different in REM to how it is in non REM? For example (bad example, probably) if you applied a slight electric shock to a finger, would the movement be greater in REM than it is in non REM? Or maybe a response to a stimulus wouldn't occur in deep sleep, but would in REM sleep.

Interesting idea, I'll be sure to take that into account, it could very well work!

However it would probably take years of research and hundereds of test subjects so a "real world" dito I'll leave that to mr LaBerge and his associates

I wish there was further research and experimentation on dreaming, It seems to me as one of the biggest mysteries of mankind, yet it is treaded upon so lightly by most people, and rarely mentioned in modern science/psychology (mostly just in reference to the dusty old freudian perspective that everyone seems to be using as a "get out of jail free card").
Imagine what one can achieve with dreaming! I sure hope there is a future other than neglect and the unrightful dismissal to the "Pseudoscience/New Age" cabinet.