How to Make the Alarmo Clock Spontaneously Work with it? A Story With Tetsuya Akama

Another prototype, which looks more like the Alarmo you can buy now, sat on a pedestal. “The system that serves as the brain of the alarm clock is in the base, and the LCD screen and speaker are built into the upper part, with one dial on the top, and a second on the side,” according to Tetsuya Akama, the director of the Alarmo project.

The dial was on the right and it was hard for left-handed people to use it. We wanted it to be stable even without the base part, so we placed all the controls on the top.

Nintendo just announced its new Alarmo clock with a motion sensor, and even though we’re still soaking in the $100 device, the company also shared a look at some interesting early prototypes that reveal how the project changed during its development.

The Alarmo team didn’t use gesture controls, but there is a lot of other interesting information in the full interview, which is broken into four parts.

The research project was one of the in-house ones. We wanted to look at what we could do with the sensor since it doesn’t use a camera, so we started the project to see what we could do with it.

The Nintendo Sleep Experience: Alarmo and the Motion Detection on the Large Diagonal Dilaton for Nintendo Switch Users with a Switch Online Subscription

You can see a lot of the colors on the top dial within a few minutes of using Alarmo. You can doze off to sleep sounds that Alarmo has. Nintendo plans to offer new sounds with a Nintendo Switch Online subscription. (When you access this menu, a prompt advises younger users to seek out a parent or guardian.)

A project that resulted from a joint project between two sides of the business was that of an in-house project, which was aimed at supporting people during their sleep.

Is this thing absurdly expensive for what it is? Certainly. But for its demographic, it’s very cute, and there are small, thoughtful Nintendo touches throughout the experience — and I’ve barely dug in.

You have the Alarmo buttons up top. The large dial can be turned to navigate menus and pressed to make selections. There are two buttons to the right and left. I’ve barely used the clock, but presumably, this is where you might get notified about your sleep metrics. (There’s no serious health monitoring or anything like that; don’t expect Mario to warn you about snoring or potential sleep apnea.)

There is a display that is not a touch screen. (And I feel like Nintendo’s promotional video exaggerates its size a little.) It adjusts brightness based on the ambient lighting. One fun little detail is that the clock screen and typeface will change depending on the alarm you’ve chosen. Whenever the regular clock is showing, the character onscreen will also move from left to right based on your own movements if you’re within range of the motion sensors.

It turns out you don’t have to worry about that. I was worried about the sound of Alarmo, but the Super Mario Bros. theme that plays during the setup process eliminated my fears. That setup routine is actually quite lengthy and might prove to be a bit much for a child. You choose the date and time, of course, but you’re also led through configuring the clock’s motion-detection features, which takes a bit of time, and I didn’t see any way of skipping it. Alarmo’s millimeter-wave presence sensor works with bed sizes ranging from twin to king, and the screen is meant to face the middle of your bed.

I am a sucker for instant satisfaction. It’s often one of my favorite things about living in New York City. This morning, Nintendo announced its $99 Alarmo clock, and when the company’s store in Rockefeller Center opened a couple hours later, I walked in and picked one up. Is it weird that I have to pay $108.91 after tax for a plastic alarm clock? You’re right. This is an expense that counts as a work expense in my field. No one will refer to the product as “Nintendo Sound Clock: Alarmo” because that’s not what it is. It is Alarmo.