Photograph by Matty Sallin
Waking up to the smell of bacon in the morning was the inspiration for this creation of a New York graduate student. Matty Sallin engineered an alarm clock that wakes up the user with the smell of bacon rather than a sound. He calls this device Wake n’ Bacon.
On his website he said that he wanted to create this because, “everyone hates to be jarred awake by noise, but that’s what nearly every alarm clock does (even your favorite music or radio can be jarring first thing in the morning). This clock gently wakes you up with the mouthwatering aroma of bacon, just like waking up on a Sunday morning to the smell of Mom cooking breakfast.”
Constructing the clock[]
His version of the alarm clock is simply a modification of a normal alarm clock. It is important to understand how a normal alarm clock works to understand the modification. Sallin explained, “When the alarm goes off in an alarm clock, the clock is sending a signal in the form of a wavelength along a wire to a small speaker to generate the alarm sound. We cut that wire and re-routed it to a pin on a microchip, and programmed that microchip to respond to that particular wavelength input by triggering a relay (essentially an on/off switch) to send power to a pair of halogen light bulbs that safely heat the bacon to crisp.”
Sallin began by using frozen bacon so that is stayed good overnight and was defrosted for cooking in the morning. He soon discovered pre-cooked bacon and since it is salt-cured and smoked it will not go bad while you sleep.
Using the clock[]
To set the clock for the morning all one has to do is put a piece of bacon in the sliding drawer, set the cook time for 4 minutes and then set the alarm. If the alarm is set for 7 am that is when the bacon will begin cooking. Four minutes later the room should smell like bacon.
With the pig-shaped box design and the aroma of bacon this unique alarm clock is a bacon lover’s dream.