One of my first posts on this blog was a description of my idea alarm clock: Dreaming about an Alarm Clock. One of my key desired features was to set a separate alarm for each day of the week. Every time a new iPod radio alarm has been released, I eagerly read the online documentation, just to be disappointed again. Today I saw this article about a new rather strange “gadget’: The Chumby. The article by David Pogue quotes one feature which caught my attention:
Finally, the Chumby serves as an excellent alarm clock. You can set up multiple alarms – a different wake-up time each day, if you like, and each with a different Snooze interval. You can also specify what audio source wakes you: various beeps, plus podcasts, Internet radio or MP3 music files on a flash drive attached to one of the Chumby’s two USB jacks. (The Chumby can also play music on most iPod models, although not as a wake-up sound.)
At this point it’s a little hard to evaluate how many other of my desired features it has. One thing is for sure, it always requires to be plugged in, so it probably won’t work during a power failure. Then again, it supposedly boots in 30 seconds, and must somehow remember its settings, so that’s still better than my Sangean clock which won’t work if the power outage lasts longer than 10 minutes.
I will try to find out more about this and report back at a later time.
UPDATE – May 19, 2008 – Early Review in the Gadgeteer
I found another detailed review on The Gadgeteer. According to this description, only 2 alarms are available. Note however, that this review is 7 months old, and the alarm clock may have been updated since then. Also, the boot-up time is reported as 45 seconds. On a positive note, there seems to be a special night setting to turn off the display.
UPDATE – May 19, 2008 – Feedback from David Pogue
In reference to the above mentioned review by David Pogue, I e-mailed David today and asked him, if he knew more about the alarm clock feature and why most online sources only refer to two alarms. Here’s his reply:
The early versions had only 2 alarms, but they’re constantly updating
this thing via free software updates. The alarm module was dramatically improved.