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Toddler clock update 2

Posted on February 01, 2009 at 22:12:34 by chris

I've now swapped in a 2G X10 module, which works; when set to off, the night light really is off.

I was back at work last week so set the time (on the X10 alarm clock) for Oscar's night light to 7:00 (it had been 7:30 while I was on paternity leave). I've been using Oscar (combined with the night light) as my only alarm clock.

The first day, Oscar slept through until 7:30 anyway. This is good in a way - it means the night light (or the loud clack as the X10 module switches) doesn't necessarily wake him up when it comes on. The rest of the week he's been waking at 7:00 with the light, so he obviously adjusted.

At the weekend I disabled the ON signal at 7:00, so that we could "lie in" a bit until Oscar was naturally ready and starts asking to get up (the plan being that I'd then turn it on manually). He's been waking up at 7:00 nearly on the dot, so it's made no practical difference to the amount of sleep we get.

So lessons learned:

• Oscar has a highly accurate internal clock
• Just because a system is more elaborate and flexible than another doesn't make it more useful!

On the plus side, it's now easier to power-cycle the cable modem when the broadband connection stops working (this seems to happen a lot during Skype video calls - enough so that when the "call dropped" bong happens Oscar will say "The network's gone silly again!"). It used to be that I had to shift a heavy bookcase at the bottom of the stairs, remove a triangular panel, reach in and unplug it, plug it back in, replace the panel, and replace the bookcase. Now I just have to run up the stairs (opening and closing the stair gate if necessary), go around three sides of the bedroom, press a couple of buttons, and go back downstaairs (past the stair gate again). Isn't technology marvelous?