If you're deaf, how do you transfer the vibrations of the phone to your senses? Sleep with the phone on you somehow?
Show HN: Deaf? My iPhone app wakes you up if it hears an alarm
61–70 of 144 posts
Re: Show HN: Deaf? My iPhone app wakes you up if it hears an alarm
#62Vibrating for it to wake you means you need to keep it close to your body. I wonder what health implications it may have -- In general its really bad to have a cell phone touching your body for prolonged periods of time because of the radiation it emits.
I would really like to see a citation for that!
The problem is that it is VERY hard to do a conclusive study on this. Never mind that a low dose radiation study would take many years: the hard part is that you need to randomly select half of your group to use only non-radiating (non-functional) cell phones. Good luck finding a group of volunteers for that.
Re: Show HN: Deaf? My iPhone app wakes you up if it hears an alarm
#63This sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen. I think it's a great idea, but at 2.99 I don't think it's going to be profitable enough to take on the lawsuit risk.
What exactly would the author be sued about? I can't see anything obviously inviting a user to sue. EDIT: I think it would be a good idea to remove the language about fire alarms etc. and only mention alarm clocks and the like. It would be much harder to sue if the app didn't claim to respond to fire alarms.
Yes, I will consider removing the stuff about emergency protection unless I can make it super reliable.
Re: Show HN: Deaf? My iPhone app wakes you up if it hears an alarm
#64I'm confused. iPhones have an alarm clock already, and you can already set it to vibrate. Why do I need this app?
(Serious question. I'm hard of hearing, and I do this with my iPhone already.)
To answer some other questions I see in the thread, they make alarm clocks and doorbells specifically for deaf people. I personally own an alarm clock that has an attachment that you slip under the mattress. The vibrations from the attachment shake the bed, waking me up. I don't use it anymore, since I share the bed with my girlfriend, but it worked wonders for me in college.
Here's a website with some deaf-centric things like alarm clocks and doorbells: http://www.harriscomm.com/
Re: Show HN: Deaf? My iPhone app wakes you up if it hears an alarm
#65I'm confused. iPhones have an alarm clock already, and you can already set it to vibrate. Why do I need this app? (Serious question. I'm hard of hearing, and I do this with my iPhone already.) To answer some other questions I see in the thread, they make alarm clocks and doorbells specifically for deaf people. I personally own an alarm clock that has an attachment that you slip under the mattress. The vibrations from…
From the description : " It stays up all night, listening out for loud and repetitive noises like fire alarms, and vibrates to wake you up when it hears anything similar."
Re: Show HN: Deaf? My iPhone app wakes you up if it hears an alarm
#66This post fell in rank because it triggered the flamewar detector. I've just restored it. If you see things suddenly reappear on the front page, it's often because a moderator saw a case like this.
Re: Show HN: Deaf? My iPhone app wakes you up if it hears an alarm
#67This is fascinating. What do deaf people normally do in lieu of alarm clocks?
iOS has a built-in accessibility setting to flash the camera LED for alerts and calls: http://www.cnet.com/how-to/ios-5-tip-how-to-enable-led-flash... (Anecdotally, I don't actually know any deaf people, so I don't know how effective this is as a way to wake people up...but some of my friends who have perfectly good hearing use this feature because they prefer it to having their phone make loud noises for calls and n…
I've seen this feature touted before, but I don't get it. For 99% of my use, my iPhone is either face-up or in my pocket, making this useless since the camera LED is hidden. If it's face-up, I can already see the alert, including the actual content of the notification.
Re: Show HN: Deaf? My iPhone app wakes you up if it hears an alarm
#68This is fascinating. What do deaf people normally do in lieu of alarm clocks?
My girlfriend is partially deaf in one ear, so sometimes she will oversleep if she is lying on her good ear. A while back I built her an Arduino-powered alarm clock that uses a servo to repeatedly poke her with a foam finger (those big hands you wear at football games). It was a shoddy prototype, but the cool part was it synchronized with her iCal calendar. So, to answer your question, some [partially] deaf people us…
Oh my goodness, that's brilliant. My boyfriend is partially deaf and also the heaviest sleeper I've ever met, and oversleeps pretty regularly even with the loudest blaring alarm I've ever heard, a wake-up light, and a vibrating alarm under his pillow. As a relatively light sleeper with normal hearing this combination nearly gives me a heart attack every morning, while he barely rolls over until I hit him enough times to actually wake him up and turn his alarm clock off, but if I'm not there he tends to oversleep a lot.
To answer GP's question, some partially deaf people use grumpy significant others as an alarm clock. But I might have to look into a similar robotic setup.
Re: Show HN: Deaf? My iPhone app wakes you up if it hears an alarm
#69This post fell in rank because it triggered the flamewar detector. I've just restored it. If you see things suddenly reappear on the front page, it's often because a moderator saw a case like this.
Ah, thank you for restoring it!
Re: Show HN: Deaf? My iPhone app wakes you up if it hears an alarm
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bright light ones seemed quite popular in the deaf flats at my university.
Great idea. OP: Why not allow the app to use the camera flash as well? I (am not deaf) would prefer to have it on my desk so it can actually listen rather than under a pillow where I'm more likely to knock it out of reach
Thanks. Everyone seems to want a visual cue as well. I'll definitely look into using the flash!