Sandman : The Ultimate Sleep Manager

Ever wondered why it is that despite all that processing power in your PC/laptop, it can never beat a simple old alarm clock? Simple stuff like waking you up in the morning? Well, there is now a solution – Sandman. Yes, I’ve had to make up a word or two to describe this software. What it does is simple – sing you lullabies or rudely awaken you at the appropriate time. And it does this with music. And the best part is, I made it!

Using this program you can create a playlist of alarm songs, set the time you want to wake up, set a snooze timer (optional), leave your PC on, and go to sleep. Rest assured, if you’ve set the volume right, you’ll be wide awake by that time.

The program is designed to present you with a series of simple (?) maths problem at the time you’ve set. At this point, all the controls will be locked, and you have no option but to answer the problems to shut off the music i.e. you’ll be wide awake in no time. If you enabled the snooze timer, the snooze button will be enabled, which will tone down the volume, only to present you with another question after the snooze timer goes off. You need to answer 3 correct questions to switch off the alarm.

There is also an optional sleep timer, which means you can create a playlist of songs, set a sleep timer, and go to bed, knowing that the music will stop. You have the option of letting Windows shutdown after the sleep timer, or leaving it on, for the alarm to wake you up.

I’m working on a module which will allow the PC to go into standby/hibernation and switch itself on at the appropriate time to wake you up. This bit will take some time to develop, but till then, this is a relatively stable release I have here.

To download, click on the icon below.

Just unzip the files, and run setup.exe.

This program was written using Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2, in VisualBasic. Also, you need to have Windows Media Player installed, otherwise the player won’t work. It uses .NET Framework v4, which most of you might not have installed. Don’t worry, the setup will automatically download the stuff for you. It’s a bit large, so you might have to wait a while, if you have a slow internet connection. But please, please do try out the program.

For developers: I used the AxWMP library to reference Windows Media Player i.e. create an instance of a WMP ActiveX control. Apart from that, all of it is pretty much my own work. There are still some niggles to be sorted out, but I hope that you guys can point out the more glaring errors. Thanks.

I’d really appreciate some feedback on this application.