Not one for rising with the sun, and getting more and more skilled at throwing their watch across the room to snooze their alarm, Reddit user ravenspired decided to hook up a physical bell to a Raspberry Pi and servo motor to create the ultimate morning wake-up call.

Wake up, Boo

“I have difficulty waking up in the morning” admits ravenspired, who goes by the name Darks Pi on YouTube. “My watch isn’t doing its job.”

Therefore, ravenspired attached a bell to a servo motor, and the servo motor to a Raspberry Pi. Then they wrote Python code in Raspbian’s free IDE software Thonny that rings the bell when it’s time to get up.

“A while loop searches for what time it is and checks it against my alarm time. When the alarm is active, it sends commands to the servo to move.”

Ouch!

While I’d be concerned about how securely attached the heavy brass bell above my head is, this is still a fun project, and an inventive way to address a common problem.

And it’s a lot less painful than this…

Have you created a completely over-engineered solution for a common problem? Then we want to see it!