Alarmageddon

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  Alarmageddon — App Overview & Key Features

Inspiration

Waking up in the morning is hard, and traditional alarm clocks make it easy to hit snooze and go back to sleep. But what if oversleeping didn't just affect you, but your friends too?

We were inspired by the idea of turning waking up into a shared responsibility. When your friends are counting on you, getting out of bed becomes a lot more motivating. That's how Alarmageddon was born.

What it does

Alarmageddon is a social alarm clock that makes waking up a team effort.

Users can set alarms, choose their repeat days, and select friends to join their wake-up crew. If a user fails to turn off their alarm, the goal is to pass the alarm along to their selected friends, sending an alert to their phones.

Instead of relying on willpower alone, Alarmageddon uses social accountability to make sure everyone gets out of bed.

How we built it

We built Alarmageddon using Kotlin and Jetpack Compose in Android Studio.

We integrated Firebase Authentication for user sign-up and login, and Cloud Firestore to store user profiles and support our social features.

For the alarm functionality, we used Android's AlarmManager, BroadcastReceiver, and a foreground service to trigger alarms and play sound even when the app is not actively open.

Our goal was to combine reliable alarm functionality with a social experience that makes waking up more engaging.

Challenges we ran into

One of our biggest challenges was making alarms work reliably on Android. Handling exact alarm scheduling, background execution, notification permissions, and foreground services required us to understand how Android manages background tasks.

We also had to coordinate multiple parts of the app, including authentication, Firestore data, alarm scheduling, and the user interface.

Another challenge was designing a social alarm experience where one person's missed alarm could eventually notify their friends, rather than simply functioning as a traditional alarm clock.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're proud to have built a working Android alarm system that can schedule alarms, play alarm sounds, and let users stop them through a notification action.

We're also proud of integrating Firebase Authentication and Firestore to establish the foundation for user accounts and social connections.

Most importantly, we turned a simple everyday problem into a fun social concept that encourages people to hold each other accountable.

What we learned

We learned how to integrate Firebase Authentication and Cloud Firestore into an Android application, and gained hands-on experience with Kotlin and Jetpack Compose.

We also learned how Android handles background execution, exact alarms, notifications, and foreground services.

Beyond the technical side, we learned how challenging it can be to connect individual features into one cohesive product, especially when building under hackathon time constraints.

What's next for Alarmageddon

We want to take Alarmageddon beyond Android and bring it to iOS so that friends can stay connected regardless of their devices.

Our next steps include implementing reliable cross-device alarm escalation through push notifications, improving friend and crew management, and adding features such as wake-up streaks and accountability tracking.

Ultimately, we want to make waking up less of a lonely struggle and more of a shared commitment.

Built With

• android
• firebase
• firestore
• kotlin