Waking up in the morning can be a painful experience, but research seems to indicate that using light instead of sound will wake you up more pleasantly. There haven't been that many light-based alarm clocks, and the Philips Wake Up Light was one of the most effective and popular ones available. Here are some alternatives, including some that will require some hacking.
1. Sunrise Alarm Clock: Holly Hudson from NYC Resistor built an analogue to the Philips Wake Up Light and it looks like a good, DIY, alternative. An Adafruit Monocrhom clock keeps track of the time and activates a RGB LED light strip when it's time to wake up. It starts up with a dim blue light which increase in intensity before triggering a regular, bright floor lamp. That ensures that you wake up. If you're paranoid about missing your alarm and sleeping through it, you can always program a backup alarm on your phone.
2. Mad Catz AmBX Cyborg Gaming Lights: These lights are supposed to add an "Ambilight" feel to your computer workstation, and they be used in many different ways. With any computer, programming these lights to wake you up is feasible. Simply work through a music player and a task scheduler and you'll be able to make it work.
3. Programmable Sockets: While this won't be the most elegant solutions, hooking up a couple of lamps to a programmable power strip or light switch timer will allow you to test how much light you need to wake up. The testing is probably best done on the weekend, and staggering the lights within a couple of minutes, say 15-25, should do the trick.
4. Philips Wake Up Light: An alternative to the Wake Up Light is another Wake Up Light? Yes, because the original Wake Up Light was expensive, but these days, you can find a version for a lot cheaper. The HF3470 retails for $99.99 but it can be found online for as low as $67.
5. LIFX Smartbulb: Although this is still only a prototype, controlling an LED light bulb through your smartphone offers a wealth of possibilities. You can program a light-based alarm that will use any lamp to wake you up gradually.
MORE LIGHT-BASED POSTS ON APARTMENT THERAPY
Using LED Light Strips Behind Your Monitor
Philips LivingColors
Make Your Own Ambilight
(via Make & NYC Resistor, Sunrise Alarm Clock images by Holly Hudson)
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I use the"Sunrise" from Lighten Up (windhovermfg.com). Plug your regular lamp in to the timer and it slowly dials up your lamp over half an hour before you want to get up. I've had it for several years now and it works like a charm. Love that it's only $20, the size of a charger, and lets me use my regular lamp. Best to use a secondary lamp, across the room, and not your bedside table lamp.
My favourite way to wake up: alarm set to vibrate on my iPhone, then I check my e-mail, Facebook and read the news headlines with the phone on a dim light setting. I spend about 15-20 min doing this and it's a nice gentle way to wake-up.
I have the Big Ben Moon Beam...the light comes on 5 minutes before the alarm sounds. Plus, the retro styling is very cool.
I just plug my bedside light into a programmable timer, and set to go off in the morning 15 mins before I need to be out of bed. Between that and my alarm (which is set to NPR) it works just fine for me!
I set my phone to the Roots 'Act Too'- great (gentle?) intro, builds perfectly...it's been my wakeup song for 2 years and still going strong...
though- i'm moving to a basement apartment...i might need the light wake up....
Regular alarm clock works for me. I am programmed to wake myself up about five minutes ahead of the clock on most days, so actually hearing the alarm is kind of the emergency backup. I seriously doubt changing light levels would wake me up, considering the light level fluctuations I have anyway with neighboring yard lights, the full moon, and other factors...
We've been using a $5.00 timer I bought at a big box store last winter. It's not a replacement for an alarm; we use both and love it.
http://1500sqft.wordpress.com/2011/10/11/can-you-buy-a-better-morning/
I love my BioBrite SunRise clock. We sleep in a completely blacked out room and the slowly increasing light is all it takes to wake us up naturally, which is so much better than a blaring sound or music.
http://www.biobrite.com/products.php?category_id=1
Ok, so i've gone a little crazy on this topic... While I originally started with a light connected to an electrical timer (like what you use for christmas lights), i've DIYed something much nicer...
It all started with this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZG2opASF0U
I bought 8 of their LED clusters and 8 lanterns of varying size and got to learning how to code in Arduino to be able to control them. It will fade up lights through any set of colors I want as soon as it gets pinged by a PC, then turns them off when pinged again.
Next I built a program (using the same new knowledge gained from the lanterns) that would actually be the alarm clock. It enables the fade in of the lanterns and fades in randomized bird sounds from the PC speakers in my room.
I've been using a random set of yellows that cycle through the lanterns and it's very nice to wake up too. Birds chirping louder and louder, lights getting brighter and brighter... I've been working on some time lapses of sunrises that would let me play back an actual sunrise through the lanterns, but it's not a hard goal. As it stands, it's a pretty, graceful way to enter the day... that I built myself for $100 or so.
My daughter stayed in a German home. They had timers on all the window shades -- or shutters -- don't remember which. She said it was very nice and wished we could do that here. Seems more natural.
I second KARI_ALTADENA's preference - the BioBrite SunRise clock works really well and is pretty inconspicuous on my bedside table.