Bacon-Cooking Alarm Clock

Created by Matty Sallin of New York, it graces pages 48 and 49 of a book entitled MAKERS, a compendium of the very best of MAKE magazine.

Sallin calls it the "Wake n' Bacon," which is a very nifty name.

I'm hiring him to lecture at the next bookofjoe Naming Seminar™®.

But I digress.

According to the book's write-up, the clock cost $90 and took five days to create.

Here's the book's description:

Best Part of Waking Up

Growing up, Matty Sallin spent summers in a rural Idaho cabin. He lived in Los Angeles during the rest of the year, but his parents hoped he and his sister would "appreciate the country" from the experience. For one thing, he remembers rolling out of bed for country breakfasts on Saturday mornings.

When he first powered on his Wake n' Bacon alarm clock — which cooks a piece of bacon instead of sounding an alarm — everything came back to him again. "The big sense memories are bacon, waffles, and cinnamon rolls," says Sallin, a web designer for top advertising agency R/GA and a grad student. "When I used it to wake up, my first thought was 'Mom's in the kitchen,' soon followed by 'The apartment's on fire.'"

Sallin, now 33, says he can't believe his "ridiculous contraption" actually works. It cooks the meat by activating two 100-watt halogen lamps inside the wooden case when the alarm goes off. He created it for fun over the summer as an improvement on a similar bacon clock he designed for a class project. The beginning electronics student takes circuit-building classes at New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program.

Wake n' Bacon is constructed from a gutted Wal-Mart alarm clock and a PIC microcontroller. The chip receives the alarm signal from the clock, activating a series of relays to bring the electrical load up to regular wall current for the lamps. All the regular controls for the inexpensive digital clock are intact: because of cooking time, users are encouraged to set the alarm ten minutes before they plan to get up, allowing time to enjoy the smells and sizzling sounds.

Sallin is good at creating the consumer products you wish existed. He hopes to be a designer who bridges software and product design at a company like Apple or IDEO. One art installation he created, called ChitChat, uses a video projector to show graphical bubbles above the heads of two people in conversation. As the people talk, microphones in strategically placed beer cans pick up their voices, which are processed for volume and intonation. The person droning on the most earns a bubble that reads "Blah, blah, blah."

It's a little surprising that this student has decided to start at the bottom of a new field after attaining such high standing in web design. For five years, he worked as a creative director and lead programmer for such companies as Harmon Kardon, Mattel, and Levi's. It was the little "sleep" light on the Macintosh computer, however, that inspired him to create projects that interact with people in their daily lives. "It delights people and has a little bit of soul," he says.

Many of Sallin's projects are very high-touch — a lamp that captures your heartbeat and then slowly throbs when you pick it up, an internet-enabled picture frame that lights up when his sister in California walks past. But the most attention so far has come from Wake n' Bacon, dismaying its designer just a little. Everyone loves it, even the vegetarians. "I always point out to them that you can put Fakin' in there," he says. "Though it probably won't smell as good when you wake up."

....................

Though he doesn't advertise the fact on his website (www.mathlete.com), he might consider building one for you.

As Jack Kent Cooke said, "Nothing is for sale — but everything can be bought."