When I was in high school I did something similar for waking up, albeit on a much lower budget.
My dad had a bunch of old X10 automation stuff laying around which I used to rig all of the lights in my room (a light switch unit for the overhead lights and a wall-wart style unit for my reading light) for remote control. Same with the stereo.
Then I programmed the control unit to fade in the lights in the morning and eventually power on the stereo which was looping an ocean sounds file I'd found somewhere. I came to really enjoy waking up in that way. I would have preferred natural light, but with Alaskan summers I needed room darkening blinds, and I didn't have a trivial way to automate those.
The whole project took about an hour and didn't cost me anything. The X10 stuff is pretty cheap now, but there is also a lot of much higher quality automation equipment available very cheap these days.
My dad had a bunch of old X10 automation stuff laying around which I used to rig all of the lights in my room (a light switch unit for the overhead lights and a wall-wart style unit for my reading light) for remote control. Same with the stereo.
Then I programmed the control unit to fade in the lights in the morning and eventually power on the stereo which was looping an ocean sounds file I'd found somewhere. I came to really enjoy waking up in that way. I would have preferred natural light, but with Alaskan summers I needed room darkening blinds, and I didn't have a trivial way to automate those.
The whole project took about an hour and didn't cost me anything. The X10 stuff is pretty cheap now, but there is also a lot of much higher quality automation equipment available very cheap these days.