Customer Reviews

American Innovative Teach Me Time Talking Alarm Clock and Nightlight

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3 star:		(21)
2 star:		(15)
1 star:		(15)

 

 

A few posters have complained that the product is too bright and you cannot have it totally dark in the room and still have the green light come on in the morning. But you actually CAN have it only turn green in the morning with no yellow light at night. This is a complaint I've seen on a few reviews on here, so I thought I'd post this clarification for others who may be considering buying this product.

From the American Innovative website FAQ on this product:
"I am using the "Ok to wake!" feature. Can I set just the green light to come on in the morning?
Yes. If you do not want the yellow light on during the night, you can set just the green light to come on in the morning. The LIGHT ON time will be set to the desired "Ok to wake!" time (i.e. 7am), the LIGHT OFF time is set to the time you want the green light to turn off (i.e. 9am) and the LIGHT change time must be set equal to the OFF time (i.e. 9am). With this set up the green light will come on at 7am and turn off at 9am."

Just to clarify things a bit. The clock has three lights. Two of them are yellow LED lights in the "feet" of the clock and are always on. A third light (also a yellow one) is in the "body" of the clock and can be set to "off". As one poster mentioned, you can set this "nightlight" to off or on by adjusting the "OK to wake" time, but YOU CANNOT TURN OFF THE LED LIGHTS IN THE FEET!!! The feet lights are REALLY bright (about as bright as a standard wall nightlight) and cannot be turned off easily (but you can turn them off permanently as I will explain below.)

I went ahead and purchased this clock knowing it would be bright because another poster mentioned that you can turn off the LED feet lights by using a screwdriver and some electrical tape and 10 minutes. No, sorry. It is more like 30 minutes to an hour and two screwdrivers, a steady hand, and lots of patience! After much frustration and dropping of tiny screws onto the carpet, I managed to turn those LED suckers off and now it works great! I thought I would share with you my experience so that you will have an easier time of doing the job (and maybe it won't take you as long as it took me. :-))

You will need:
- 1 "small" phillips head screwdriver
- 1 "tiny" (like for computers or eyeglasses) phillips head screwdriver
- Black electrical tape
- 1 thumbtack or needle or something sharp

I recommend that you do not drink coffee before attempting this because you will need VERY steady hands. Also, use a large table without clutter so that you do not lose the screws. You can also use a towel to place the screws on so that they don't roll off the table. Prepare for this to take 30 minutes to an hour, depending on your skill with a screwdriver and working with very tiny things.

1. Turn clock over.
2. Use "small" screwdriver to remove battery compartment screw and place aside.
3. Use "tiny" screwdriver to remove screws from bottom of feet and place aside.
4. Turn clock partially over again and find deep screw holes in the backs of the feet. Remove screws using the "small" screwdriver.
5. Pull white body of clock apart to expose circuit boards in feet.
6. Carefully remove two screws from one circuit board. (Do them one at a time so that you can compare how the first one is put back together by looking at the second one.)
7. Place a small black square of electrical tape over each LED on the front of the boards. (I used two layers to completely shade the light.) The two LED's are labeled in tiny letters and are located on each end of the circuit board.
8. Punch holes (using a thumbtack or needle) in the tape where the circuit board holes are (so that the board will fit back into place over the plastic protuberances that poke through it).
9. Once circuit boards are in place screw them back to the clock and repeat each step above in reverse order.


From the other poster's advice on how to turn off the nightlight by adjusting the "Ok to wake" feature:

From the American Innovative website FAQ on this product:
"I am using the "Ok to wake!" feature. Can I set just the green light to come on in the morning?
Yes. If you do not want the yellow light on during the night, you can set just the green light to come on in the morning. The LIGHT ON time will be set to the desired "Ok to wake!" time (i.e. 7am), the LIGHT OFF time is set to the time you want the green light to turn off (i.e. 9am) and the LIGHT change time must be set equal to the OFF time (i.e. 9am). With this set up the green light will come on at 7am and turn off at 9am."

My husband and I were troubling over how to get our three-year old daughter to learn when she could "get up" in the morning...we brainstormed and thought of the most desirable features of a toddler clock. Well, this one hit the mark on every one. It runs on an AC adapter, the clock can "talk", the voice is not obnoxious, parents can control the volume, the light changing feature at "wake up" time is perfect, the control panel is only accessible by parents, the games seem appropriate and clever, and I think the product will be adaptable for years to come...can't say enough good things. At first I thought the price was a little high but now that we've received it and used it, no complaints! A must-buy for any parent, especially of a toddler.

I bought this clock for my two little girls, neither of whom can tell time. I have a mixed review.

I love the hidden controls, that's genius. I love the way the nightlight turns green at a preset time, that's also genius. The dual display is nice, and that you customize whether it displays digital or analog, or both, is nifty. (I'm not sure if it's that important, but it's nifty.) It's really nice that it will tell my kids the time, verbally, at the touch of a button.

And now, a little about the features -- or lack thereof -- that I'm not crazy about.

In my perfect clocky world, this clock would allow you to still flip the nightlight on and off with the left toe button, EVEN when the nightlight timer is set. Why would that be hard to do? Whether it's on or off, the timer could still either turn it on, leave it on, or turn it green when the preset time arrives.

Also, in my perfect clocky world, you would be able to turn off the backlight. Prior to owning this clock, we did not use nightlights, at all. (Studies are coming out with evidence that it's a pretty good idea to get a good chunk of time at night in the darkest possible conditions, for both a properly functioning biological clock, and for preservation of eyesight.) Now, this clock, even with the nightlight turned off, is very bright. Bright enough to function as a nightlight, which I don't want. If I could turn off the lighting completely, and still have the green light come on at 7am, I would be overjoyed. But the only way to turn off the backlight is by unplugging it and running it on the battery, which will not allow the nightlight/green light timer to function at all. So it's an either/or. If I unplug it, then my kids get a nice dark sleeping space (which they LIKE), but then, the whole point of this clock for me -- the green light function -- is shot.

I'm not sure we'll keep it yet, because for the price, I think it should be a little more flexible. But it's a great idea and I have hope that with some tweaking it will evolve into a totally awesome timepiece.

This clock is wonderful. We got it for my 2nd grader because she wanted her own alarm clock. This one was perfect. We can practice telling time with the game feature. Which we've actually used (wasn't sure if we'd actually use it since sometimes extra features don't get used). Wonderful to be able to set it in analog mode, digital mode or both. We love the "talking" feature. When her alarm is set and turned on, it "talks" to her and says "you're getting up at 6:40am". Love it. And the alarm when it goes off is not annoying like the buzzing/beeping on your basic digital alarm clock. You have 3 color features (blue, pink, yellow) for the face which is awesome. She picked pink. It's small enough that it doesn't take up a ton of space. I just can't say enough good things about it. Wish I would have bought it a long time ago. Love the night light feature. And are not bothered at all by the constant back light. She has always used a night so this is a nice way of getting the best of both worlds. Oh and it sure has made getting up in the morning a little easier since she gets excited about using her own alarm clock. I used to have to practically drag her out of bed (which still happens here and there but not as much) but with her using her own alarm clock she gets up most of the time on her own and starts getting ready without me having to say a word. Absolutely recommend this clock to every parent.

Overall, conceptually this is great, I have a 2.5 yr old and the turning green when it's time to get up is perfect, we have cut the number of early awakenings to zero. However, someone clearly let the industrial designer have too much control without thinking things through, the silly LEDs in the "feet" are so bright they can light the room (not helpful in getting him to sleep at night in the first place, it's almost daylight with them on). Luckily you can fix this with a Philips head screw driver, ~10 minutes and some black electrical tape (I taped over the LEDs on the feet circuit boards). With this modification, it's a great product.

This clock actually made my son start waking up earlier! Clearly lots of people love this so its probably OK if your kids are used to nightlights but if they are not I would not recommend it. There are 3 lights on this clock
1) the nightlight which is the "body" around the clock - this you can turn off completely during the night and just have it light up with its waking time
2) the "backlight" on the clock face. You cannot turn off this light. You can turn it down but it is still extremely bright. This is what caused my son to start waking earlier not later.
3) the lights around the clock feet- I think another reviewer describes how to turn these off but it involves taking the clock apart -there is no control to do this.

So even if you take the clock apart you are stuck with light 2 which if you have a really dark room is actually a very bright light.

As some of the other reviewers noted, the interface to control the changing from the nightlight to "green to get up" light could stand to be a little more intuitive (or possibly just explained better/differently in the setup instructions.) When I first set it, it took me several tires to get it right (I had set it up wrong, and it came on green at bedtime rather than that morning.) However, now that I have figured it out, it only takes a few seconds to alter the "wake up" time when necessary.

Based on some of the other reviews, I had expected it to be a bit larger and brighter, but it is about the size of a slow-pitch softball (or a decent-sized grapefruit) and I really don't think it is excessively bright. (There is a bright/dim setting, but in a dark room I found there wasn't a huge difference between the two.)

It has worked for us, as our three-year-old (who would often mistake streetlights at 3 a.m. for "Sun's Up!") now knows it is not appropriate to get up before she has the green light. (Of course, lately she runs into our bedroom at 7:15 a.m. to announce "Green light on!")

If anyone at American Innovative reads these reviews, I think that there is room for improvement in the product (like different settings for weekdays and weekends, perhaps brighter "green light," larger stature, reverse the polarity filter on the LCD face to make it predominantly dark with illuminated numbers and hands.) On the positive side, there are many things that this product beats the competition hands down (price, not character-based so it won't fall out of favor when Elmo, Dora etc. fall out of favor with the child, the interchangeable color face rings are also a nice touch and this product's teach-me features also give it room to grow with your kids.)

I would certainly make this purchase again, and likely will for other families of young children.

I was skeptical as to how our 3 and 6 year old sons would respond to the clock. From the first night we told them to not leave their bedroom until the clock glowed green. Green means go! We've had it for about a month now and they have waited for it to turn green every morning. Our 3 year old was getting up as early as 5:30 am and now he seems to be falling back asleep waiting for the light and then getting up around 7 am, a much better rested and happy child.

We bought this because we have a 3 year old who is a VERY early riser. It took a few days for him to get the hang of it, but now he stays in bed until the clock turns green. So now instead of getting up with him at 5:30 am, he waits until 6:30 am. He doesn't necessarily sleep until 6:30, but he does stay in bed. Thank you clock!!!