ADHD is hard; they lack motivation to do the best thing (see link below for more info).  My daughter is not a morning person, and she will turn the standard alarm clock off and lay back down before thinking about the consequences.  Turning on lights or loudly telling her to get up only starts her day off grumpy.  She needs to want to get up.  She is motivated by music, but a clock radio would allow her to listen to music all night long when she should be trying to sleep.  She could easily set the time wrong because setting the alarm every night is too boring to stay focused, but she needs to practice the skill of setting the alarm or she’ll never get better at it.  

My daughter is responding well to the prototype.  An HTML page running javascript on an old android phone locked in a plastic box so that the phone buttons and other apps are not available.  Around 6:30PM, the Alarm can be set.  (Only the first time the page is loaded, settings like min and max alarm times can be set).  Once the alarm is set, only the time remains visible until the alarm the next morning.  

The alarm starts with a cute gif image and music fading in from 0 volume to full volume by the end of the song.  A more up beat song plays next.  Lastly, 10 minutes of different roosters crowing plays at full volume.  So far, she’s only let the roosters crow one morning, and hated them so much she never lets it get that far again.  

Some days the GPS is received by the phone well enough so that she simply has to bring the phone halfway across the house to the dining room table, and the location data read by the webpage can tell she’s no longer in bed and turns off automatically before the dreaded roosters.  Other days the “8.00 meters to quiet” never drops low enough, so she has to enter a code once at the table.

This prototype works well enough, but I’d like to improve it.  The webpage can not identify charging status.  An android app could check for charging and also verify location in others ways including a bluetooth station, RFID tag, etc that would be more consistent that GPS.  But is it worth the time invested?  Would anyone else benefit from such a creation?  I’m imagining a locker stand with an easy, snap in charging in the bedroom that would hold the phone hostage until morning, and then allow it to be transported to the breakfast table; required interaction and/or audible reminders would ensure she stayed awake and returned it to the charging station by the end of the morning.  With gifs and sounds, it could be like a digital pet with parental controls to encourage the desired behaviors.

Is there something with all the necessary features already available?  I’ve seen a lot of fancy clocks and phone lockers, but none that couldn’t be easily defeated by an ADHDer and also not turn them into a grumpy monster for the rest of the morning nor allow them to get super distracted by playing with all the settings.