Sleep Monitors
April 24, 2007 by Greg
Since the last biphasic sleep update we’ve been talking to a few companies who make rem sleep monitors. These devices monitor your motion as you sleep to determine which stages of sleep you enter and for what durations.
[Updated: Axbo Alarm Clock]
The SleepTracker watch should be here within a week or two.
SLEEPTRACKER® continuously monitors signals from your body that indicate whether you are asleep or awake. Because you wear SLEEPTRACKER® on your wrist like a watch, its internal sensors can detect even the most subtle physical signals from your body. SLEEPTRACKER® finds your best waking moments, so that waking up has never been easier.
By monitoring your sleep cycles for optimal waking moments during the preset ALARM WINDOW, SLEEPTRACKER® finds those almost awake-moments and gently wakes you when you’re most alert. The result? You wake up refreshed instead of groggy.Waking up has never been easier.
The ActiTrainer is finishing up their latest sleep analysis software and will ship out next month.
The ActiTrainer is a revolutionary new way to achieve your fitness goals and manage your healthy lifestyle. The ActiTrainer is the first and only 24-hour monitoring tool available that accurately measures:
- Activity intensity levels
- Calories burned
- Heart rate
- Pace/distance traveled
- Step count
- Nighttime awakenings
- Sleep efficiency
Update: I just heard from axbo, and we should have one of their alarm clocks to demo early next month.
The unique wake-up-algorithm of aXbo chooses the optimal wake up time through differentiating the various sleeping phases by tracking the body movements. It thus determines the optimal wake up time. Your movements are detected and gathered with a comfortable toweling wristband and submitted to the sleep phase alarm clock.
Stay tuned for the Urban Monarch Sleep Lab experiments.
I know someone with a Kitchen Aide Mixer… It’s real nice.
I can’t wait. In Biphasic update land;last night was my first successful 4.5 total hours of sleep. Results so far this morning? I feel fine now that I’ve started my first cup of coffee.
Yeah I fell asleep at 9:30p only to wake up at 6am.
That Axbo looks sweet.
Hell yeah it does. Too bad they’re only going to let us borrow it for 2 weeks.
I was seriously 30 seconds from buying a sleeptracker, however there were a couple things which delayed my purchase.
First, people said that the alarm itself was super quiet. It woke them up the first couple times (as it’s supposed to wake you up during the lightest phase of sleep), but after that they/their body just ignored it. Also, if there’s a significant amount of noise to cover it up , but not wake you up, you’re out of luck.
Second, it’s got a couple variables to set, going to bed time / wake up time / wake up window. You have to set each of these every time you go to sleep. Setting the time on a digital watch is annoying as it is — I cant imagine doing it every night.
Perhaps I’ll just wait for the reviews! The axbo is definately the sexiest of the three, but the ActiTrainer seems to offer much more featuers. However, from what I read, it doesn’t seem to be an alarm.. just a monitor (ie: you did X during the day, and slept this well at night.) Am I missing something?
Hey Jess,
I’m seeing the same thing on the actitrainer. We’ll let you know what we find out.
As far as alarms, noise levels, etc, I’m thinking that just monitoring sleep cycles, and knowing that you’re typical rem cycle lasts x minutes will probably help just setting a normal alarm. It’s like an at-home science project.
I wonder if we can get an eeg machine…
Yeah, it would at least let you get a good idea when the lightest phases of your sleep would be. However, some nights I’m out in 3 minutes, some nights I toss and turn for 15-30.
This shouldn’t set you off by a ton, however, if you are startled awake by something in the middle of the night, it might throw your whole rhythm off — something that using an alarm that wakes you up based on your sleep level will help you avoid.
too true, i suffer similar consequences during some naps.