Waking up gradually is a great way to start your day. There are two methods that are normally done to do this sound and light. I often set my phone to gradually increase the alarm volume over several minutes. This sure beats the other standard alarm clock that is loud enough to wake up everyone in the house and only have one volume level. I have been wanting to make a gradual light alarm clock for some time now but never got around to it. This Sunrise Alarm Clock by Jason Poel Smith from diyhacksandhowtos.com might be just the way to make it happen. It uses a plug in timer to power a 5 volt USB power supply. You set the timer to turn on when you want to wake up, this will then power up the USB supply and energize the circuit. The circuit uses an RC time constant to slowly bias a transistor that will slowly turn on the array of white LEDs.