Nintendo Announces “Alarmo” Interactive Clock, Alarms Based on Breath of the Wild & More
Posted on October 10 2024 by Nick Miller
Five months after the highly anticipated Switch successor was officially acknowledged, Nintendo has finally announced new hardware and it’s… an alarm clock? That’s right, the Nintendo Sound Clock: Alarmo — or just “Alarmo” for short — is the latest project to come out of Nintendo as a collaborative effort between their Technology Development and Entertainment Planning & Development Departments.
Alarmo features familiar tunes from five Nintendo Switch games to help you rise and shine each morning. The sounds included at launch come from Super Mario Odyssey, Pikmin 4, Splatoon 3, Ring Fit Adventure, and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Alarmo has multiple sound effects and seven songs from each game. More sounds will be included via free updates, with Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Animal Crossing: New Horizons scheduled to be the first new additions to the lineup.
Alarmo also has built-in motion sensing technology that will cause the clock to make noises every time you move after your alarm has rung. The sounds will start pleasant and get more intense if you choose to ignore them and stay in bed. The example used in the promotional video shows the alarm starting with sounds from Super Mario Odyssey‘s New Donk City Festival and working it’s way up to evil Bowser music. The alarm will automatically stop when you get out of bed.
This motion sensor technology will also be used to track your sleep cycles. You’ll be able to view a record of how often you moved during the night and how long it took you to get out of bed after the alarm went off, among other things.
In an Ask the Developer interview, developer Yosuke Tamori said this unorthodox project was born out of their research into the application of motion sensor technology that respects the user’s privacy by not using a camera. The project didn’t even start as a clock. It came about after a series of trial-and-error tests with how this technology could be used.
Alarmo Director Tetsuya Akama elaborated:
“It’s generally known as a “radio wave sensor.” To put it very simply, it uses the reflection of radio waves to measure the distance from and speed of an object. Self-driving cars, drones, and robots are equipped with sensors like these to help avoid collisions. The key feature is that it can recognize very subtle movements, and unlike cameras, it doesn’t need to film videos, so privacy is better protected compared to cameras. Since it uses radio waves, it can be used in dark rooms. It can also detect movements even if there are obstacles, as long as the radio waves can pass through.”
Tamori further explained:
“This sensor can detect the movement of a person in bed even when they’re covered with a comforter, and it doesn’t need to use images or video like a camera. Due to those characteristics, we’d been discussing internally for some time that a motion sensor could also be suitable for use in a private space, such as a bedroom.”
By testing the limits of this technology, developers were able to find creative ways to implement it within Alarmo that have broader implications for their use in other devices. These include ideas such as stopping a device without touching it, performing music by moving your body in time with the rhythm, or recreating “Daruma-san ga koronda” (a Japanese variation of the game “Red Light, Green Light”).
Tamori said:
“We [the development team] were so fixated on the idea of not touching the device that there was a time when we challenged ourselves to make the user interface, such as setting the alarm time and music, controllable with hand gestures. Gesture controls made things a bit cumbersome, so we nipped that in the bud.”
If you share a bed or room with another person who may be irritated by these features, or sleep in such a way that may disrupt the motion sensor’s functionality, Alarmo comes equipped with three settings to accommodate different sleeping arrangements. One mode, Button Mode, functions more like a typical alarm clock.
Tamori explained:
“The motion sensor is designed to be at its most responsive and function best when Alarmo is used by one person, but I’m sure there are many families who sleep together in the same room. Because of the nature of the sensor, even if one person gets out of bed, the sensor may detect that other family members are still in bed and continue to play the alarm. Of course, if everyone gets out of bed, it will stop. However, the situation varies depending on the household, so in order to accommodate a variety of circumstances, we added a mode that will stop the alarm when you press the dial button.”
The other two settings, Gentle Mode and Steady Mode, utilize the motion-activated alarm but vary in how they awake the user. Each is tailored to accommodate the intensity at which people like to be awoken.
Yosuke Tamori said that he’d like to see Alarmo become a “new convention in everyday life.” Akama expressed this same ambition, saying:
“I hope this product will establish a new convention for waking up. You wake up, enjoy listening to the game world for a while, and just by getting out of bed, a fanfare will play automatically and the alarm will stop. I hope that being able to change how waking up that day feels by choosing a different alarm sound will become a global standard in the future.
“Just as touch screens and automatic doors are commonplace for today’s generation, I’d be excited to see a new generation that’s grown up with Alarmo and thinks of an alarm clock as something that makes a sound when you roll over, and stops automatically when you get out of bed.”
While Alarmo’s motion-sensing technology may only be implemented here as an alarm clock, a reasonable speculation may infer its use in other Nintendo devices. It is unlikely that Nintendo invested resources into finding applications for radio wave sensors just to use it in a one-off accessory. As such, the research behind Alarmo may hint at some features of the Switch successor. Some of the applications expressed in the Ask the Developers interview draw striking similarities to Xbox’s now discontinued Kinect, though with added privacy by not relying on a camera. Will we see something similar from Nintendo in their upcoming console?
The Nintendo Sound Clock: Alarmo is available now as an early release to Nintendo Switch Online members in US and Canada through the My Nintendo Store website. It is also available now at the Nintendo New York store while supplies last. It costs $99.99 USD.
So, what do you think of Alarmo? Will you be picking one up? What does this technology mean for the Switch successor? How could you see it used in a new home console? Let’s hear your thoughts in the comments below.
Nick is a writer for Zelda Dungeon and a longtime fan of the Zelda franchise. In his free time, he enjoys fishing, archery, skateboarding, and some good ol’ fashioned family time. He’s an advocate for physical media and an avid video game collector. His favorite Zelda game is Ocarina of Time, though Breath of the Wild and the Link’s Awakening remake are close contenders. His other favorite video games series include Kingdom Hearts, Fallout, and Ratchet & Clank.
