Two alumni from Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) have launched a crowdfunding campaign for a smart alarm clock they developed during their studies at the University of Southampton.

Freddie Temperton and Toby Isaacs are pursuing a £150,000 Kickstarter target over the next four weeks for Rise, a dawn simulation alarm clock that has integrated Bluetooth, Spotify and FM radio technology.

The former student entrepreneurs created early prototypes with support from the University’s Future Worlds startup incubator and have continued its development since graduating in 2016 to now offer the product’s first units.

“Humans are programmed to wake up with the sun,â€? Freddie explains. “This isn’t compatible with modern life, so we use harsh alarms to force ourselves out of bed before our bodies are ready. Rise solves this. It gradually lights your room before your alarm goes off, simulating the sun.â€?

Rise can be controlled by a companion app and includes a colour changing LED lamp, omni-directional speaker, auto-dimming OLED, Spotify integration and fast charge USB ports. The startup team, which includes Coventry University graduate Peter Garland, worked with renowned light designer Mortiz Waldemeyer to create a look for the product which is based on the formation of crystals.

“I originally had the idea to combine all the desired technologies of a bedside lamp, alarm clock and speaker in one sleek and elegant device,â€? Freddie adds. “We’ve learnt a lot over the last couple of years about the economics of bringing a product to market and more recently had a crash course in marketing and video editing.â€?

Freddie worked closely with the Future Worlds incubator during his Electronic Engineering degree and is now based in San Francisco, California, where he has continued a long distance collaboration with UK-based Rise developers. Toby studied Electrical Engineering and now works as a development engineer in Milton Keynes.

“Future Worlds has helped us in several different ways over the years,â€? Freddie explains. “They’ve given us lots of helpful advice and we enjoyed filming a promo video with them. This helped us to understand this process which has been important for Kickstarter where all projects require a video. We’ve also been speaking to Future Worlds mentor and crowdfunding specialist Chris Buckingham whose knowledge has helped us improve our campaign.â€?

The Rise Kickstarter campaign will run until Saturday 24th February. Click here to view the project or make a pledge.

Watch the video made by the Rise team during their studies at ECS

Researchers from Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton have discovered a way of enhancing the capabilities of an emerging nanotechnology that could open the door to a new generation of electronics. This memristor technology will be showcased at ISCAS 2018, an international circuits and systems conference, in Florence, Italy, in May, where the team will also be presenting seven original research papers.

In a study published in the journal Scientific Reports, researchers show how they have pushed the memristor – a simpler and smaller alternative to the transistor, with the capability of altering its resistance and storing multiple memory states – to a new level of performance after experimenting with its component materials.

Traditionally, the processing of data in electronics has relied on integrated circuits (chips) featuring vast numbers of transistors – microscopic switches that control the flow of electrical current by turning it on or off.

Transistors have got smaller and smaller to meet the increasing demands of technology, but are now reaching their physical limit, with – for example – the processing chips that power smartphones containing an average of five billion transistors.

Memristors could hold the key to a new era in electronics, being both smaller and simpler in form than transistors, low-energy, and with the ability to retain data by ‘remembering’ the amount of charge that has passed through them – potentially resulting in computers that switch on and off instantly and never forget.

The University of Southampton team has demonstrated a new memristor technology that can store up to 128 discernible memory states per switch, almost four times more than previously reported.

In the study, they describe how they reached this level of performance by evaluating several configurations of functional oxide materials – the core component that gives the memristor its ability to alter its resistance.

Themis Prodromakis, Professor of Nanotechnology and EPSRC Fellow at the University of Southampton, said: “This is a really exciting discovery, with potentially enormous implications for modern electronics. By 2020 there are expected to be more than 200 billion interconnected devices within the Internet of Things framework – these will generate an incredible amount of data that will need processing.

“Memristors are a key enabling technology for next-generation chips, which need to be highly reconfigurable yet affordable, scalable and energy-efficient.

“We are thrilled to be working with world-leading industry, bringing innovations into new electronic systems that require bespoke customisation. Such examples include systems that are employed in inaccessible environments; for example, inside the human body, space or other remote or harsh locations.

“At the same time this technology is ideal for developing novel hardware that can learn and adapt autonomously, much like the human brain.â€?

The research was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the Royal Society.

The University of Southampton’s Web Science Institute will help build a new intelligent merchant city from the ‘internet up’ in a new partnership with Fawley Waterside Limited.

The institute has joined a core technical group that includes Cisco, IBM, Siemens and Vodafone as it develops intelligent infrastructure for the continent’s first town-scale smart city.

Plans for Fawley Waterside will replace the former power station on the outskirts of the New Forest with a thriving residential and commercial waterside community.

Professor Dame Wendy Hall, Executive Director of the Web Science Institute and Regius Professor in Computer Science, says, “We are delighted to be part of this group and to help balance the social and the technical aspects of such an ambitious and brave project.â€?

Read the full story on the Web Science Institute news section.