Never Lose a Late-Night Epiphany Again

So many of our best ideas seem to come to us right as we’re about to nod off or when we briefly wake up in the middle of the night. Those ideas then disappear back into the ether as soon as we fall asleep. If you’re tired of forgetting all of your best ideas, you can get inspired by this Bedside Thought Catcher device designed by Ansh Trivedi.

You could, of course, grab your smartphone and record a voice memo or type out a note — I know you rest your phone on your nightstand when you’re sleeping. But then blue light and notifications will wake you up and distract you.

The Bedside Thought Catcher is less obtrusive. Just press the big button and say your thought out loud. A beep confirms that it was recorded. You can then go back to sleep, resting easy in the comfort of knowing your brilliant idea is secure. In the morning, you can view a Notion database that contains all of your logs, transcribed and searchable.

Trivedi hasn’t released the files to build a Bedside Thought Catcher yet, but says he will if people are interested. However, his blog post explains most of the details you’d need to reproduce the project.

Inside the 3D-printed enclosure, there is a Raspberry Pi 5, a button, a microphone, and a buzzer. A Python script waits for the button press and then begins recording. A second button press stops recording, at which point the Python script uses Whisper to transcribe the audio. Afterwards, it uploads that (with tags and a timestamp) to a Notion database that is accessible through a smartphone or PC.

It is a really simple idea, but one that could be genuinely useful for all of the people in the world with brains that make the big thoughts at sleepy time.