Sunrise Controller

I've had my Biobrite Sunrise Controller for about 10 days, and I can truly say that I love it. I'd been having a hard time waking in the morning because the sunrise has gotten later and later. My alarm clock would wake me but with it still being dark out, I would groggily hit Snooze and go back to sleep (multiple times!!), so I was getting up later and later each day putting me at risk of being late to work.This is my first ever product of this type, so I cannot provide any comparison to similar items. I researched every available sunrise lamp that I could find, and I liked the features of this one the best and especially being able to use my existing bedside lamp.For me, this product works great. And despite what the other "engineer" reviewer said, I thought the clock was simple to set up! You just have to press the program button to "scroll" through each different setting option, so you press it multiple times, and if you bypass something you needed to set you just keep pressing the button until you get back around to that item. It's not a big deal. I had the whole thing set up in just a few minutes. It was nice not to have to juggle trying to hold down an "alarm set" button and another button to change the hour/minutes - like all the other alarm clocks I've had.Another reviewer disliked not having an on/off for the lamp, I don't find it to be a problem for me to just hold down the +button for a few seconds till the lamp reaches full brightness. The + and - buttons are different, the - is concave and the + is convex, so you can even feel the difference in the dark. I like being able to turn the lamp on to a very dim setting if I have to get up at night and need just a little bit of light that won't disturb my husband.The unit is no bigger that the alarm clock that it replaced so I don't find the size to be a problem. It has a solid sturdy feel to it. The power cable and the lamp cable are both heavy gauge wire. I read in a review of a similar product that a power fluctuation fried their unit, so as a precaution I have mine plugged into a surge suppressor. I have not had any buzzing or noise from the lamp or the controller. The only sound I've heard is the alarm beep going off at the set time.On my first morning with the Biobrite, I had it set for a 30 minute sunrise and was amazed to find myself awake and alert a full 15 minutes before the lamp reached full brightness and the alarm beeper was set to go off. So I reset the clock to have only a 15 minute sunrise and that has worked very well. I find that I am opening my eyes 2 minutes before the alarm starts to beep and I feel alert. I have no need to hit the snooze button at all, but I did one morning just to see how the feature worked. The lamp went dark, the beeping stopped, and over the next 10 minutes the lamp gradually brightened again, so you don't actually get 10 mins of dark while you snooze. This thing is designed to get you up and it does!I like the fact that it has the alarm beeper that gradually gets louder (or you can chose to wake to a radio station). It got me up the one morning I must have done something wrong and the lamp didn't brighten, so I didn't wake till the beeper sounded. I think I had brought the lamp on the evening before and I might not have held the - button down long enough to turn it completely off. I cycled the lamp fully on and fully off and it's been working fine since.Since that time I've been careful to make sure I hold down the - button a bit longer to make sure the lamp is off.One issue I have is with the clock's display brightness (3 settings, High, Low or Auto). When it's set on high, it will really throw some light into a dark room. I set mine for Auto brightness and it will dim as soon as I turned the alarm on, but for some odd reason, it doesn't actually auto-dim itself at night when the alarm is NOT on. So I have set the display to be on Low all the time. I'm not worried about being able to read it during the day because there is a clock on my husband's bedside table and also one on the cable box.I have 2 pet peeves with the clock, simply because I was spoiled by my previous alarm clock. The Biobrite allows you to set the date in addition to the time. Since it has the ability to hold a date setting, I wish they would have engineered the clock to also be able to tell a weekday from a weekend, and allow you to have separate settings for them. My other clock had an Alarm 1 and Alarm 2 so that I could have my workday setting and a slightly later weekend setting. It's not terribly hard to reset the clock on a Friday night if I want to sleep in a bit on Saturday, because the alarm time setting is the 1st selection when you press the program button. The instruction booklet describes a way that you can use the Snooze button with the SunSET feature that will prevent the light & alarm from going off the next morning for sleeping in on weekends, but I'm not sure what that is supposed to do because the Light/alarm isn't going to go on unless you set the alarm each day anyway. And that is my other pet peeve. My previous clock had a master On/off switch for each alarm on the side. then on the top it had an alarm button that, when pressed in the morning to silence the alarm, would automatically reset the alarm to go off again the next day, so I never had to worry about remembering to "set the alarm". With the Biobrite, you must remember to tap the Alarm button a second time after you silence it so that it will be set again for the next day.I have not used the sunset feature on the clock, I have no need of it since we usually watch a few minutes of TV before bed. I set the radio stations and the presets, but I tend not to use the radio at all. It did have good reception for all of the stations I like. It sits next to an exterior wall of my home so there is little to limit the reception.That about covers my experience with the Biobrite so far. My overall happiness with having my lamp "sunrise" every morning far outweighs the minor pet peeves and the weird Non-dimming of the display. I love waking up gradually (even beating the alarm) and feeling alert and ready to face the day. I think this winter will be a lot easier to tolerate thanks to my Biobrite!Added 10/22/12 - The lamp that I have connected to the Biobrite has 2 different places for bulbs. The regular lamp bulb and then an lower section where you put a low wattage bulb with a candelabra base. I usually never turn on the lower bulb. I have an LED bulb in it rated at 1.5 watts, while the main lamp has a 60W full spectrum bulb. This morning I turned the lamp on and also turned on the small LED bulb and I noticed a buzzing sound. It wasn't very loud and it stopped when I turned off the LED bulb. I will have to plug the lamp directly into the wall and see if I still get buzzing or if it only occurs when connected to the controller.

I have other products by biobrite including one of their sunrise alarm clocks which I love and also their SAD light visor. I think they are a good company. I have Delayed Phase Sleep Syndrome and really depend on these products to get my forever altering sleep schedule on track.After moving I found that my new bedroom was too big for the light coming from my sunrise alarm clock.. It often still woke me up, but it didn't fill the room with light like it did in my smaller previous bedroom so I didn't feel like I got woken up by it as much as I used to. So I decided to get this and hook it up to a brighter lamp.First off I LOVE how easy this is to program. It's even easier than my other bio-bright clock which is pretty easy too. The directions are pretty clear- You just press the program button to get you through the menu options and then click the -/+ to select. Example: If you want to set the time you press the program button a few times until you see "set time" and you set it with the +/- buttons. To set the alarm press program until you see "set alarm" and do the same thing. To set how long you want the sunrise to start (15,30,60,90 or no fade up) Just press the program button until you see "sunrise" and press the +/- buttons to get the minutes you want. So whatever you want to do with this clock you just press the program button to go through the menu and then one of the up down buttons to select. Easy as pie.It looks really cool too. Nice shape. The numbers are nice and large and you can choose the brightness level. Auto is the best because that way it dims the brightness of the numbers on it's own when the alarm is set.Unfortunately it's not all great. When I hooked it up to my lamp this horrendous buzzing noise came from it. There could be various reasons for this... It could be that the lamp uses too much voltage. It could be that the lamp I was using wasn't compatible... I was using a big bright day lamp of 75 watts (but it has florescent bulbs so maybe that was the problem). Or it could be that this thing just buzzes every time it turns any light on. In any case it's annoying and there was no way I was going to wake up peacefully under the sunrise simulation with that noise going on at the same time. It's not loud, but in a very quiet room it is noticeable and annoying.I decided to stick with my older biobrite alarm clock and just use a regular 5 dollar timer to turn on my larger light at the end of my alarm clock's sunrise simulation. That way at the end of the simulation my whole room will be nice and lit and can wake me up if the dawn simulation from my clock doesn't.