Apple acquires sleep tracking company Beddit | Hacker News Reader

Apple acquires sleep tracking company Beddit

techcrunch.com

206 pointssidcool171 comments

Oh please please please make a smart alarm that will make me up by only vibrating on my wrist. I want to be able to wake up early for stuff without having to wake up my wife and dogs.

I want an alarm app on my Apple Watch that:

1) Wakes me up when I'm in light sleep rather than REM

2) Only vibrates on my wrist at first (let's say for 5 minutes) and then falls back to a traditional alarm sound so I get my ass up just in case

I've gotten to the point of almost buying some Udemy courses on Apple Watch development to build the damn thing myself. Only thing really holding me back is figuring out the algorithm for sleep tracking, but I'm sure that wouldn't be really hard to do.

Maybe I'll just do it still.

You might be interested in Garmin Vivosmart HR+ (I have one). While Garmin's app is a horrible walled garden (no google fit integration, or integration with other Android APIs, like alarms), it does let you set an alarm that syncs to the watch. The watch vibrates with increasing intensity in order to wake you up. Works as advertised.

I'm shocked that doesn't exist, even my old Pebble had an app for that

A big part in this comes from the fact that most people take off the watch when they sleep to charge it, making it useless for sleep tracking.

With gen 2 Apple Watch that shouldn't be necessary - I wear mine diligently and interact with it frequently yet the battery never gets below 70% at the end of the day, often only getting down to 90%, and the charge time is quite rapid. Stick it on the charger when going for a shower or some other short routine and you should have it back to fully charged when you're done.

Get the Milanese Loop band and it'll be even less of a pain because you can quickly put the watch on and take it off because it's magnetic. A lot easier than a buckle or pin fastener.

For anyone interested the sleep tracking app I use, Sleep Watch, automatically figures out when you're sleeping and awake so you don't have to manually initiate the app. I guess it interprets movement data from the accelerometer and can tell the difference between slight movements in a sleeping state and respite during wakeful periods.

I find that the battery stays pretty high (around 80%) if I don't exercise with it. If I start any workouts, however, and the battery dips down to ~50% by the end of the day. Nothing that a quick top-off during the day wouldn't fix, but it's still far from the Pebble's week long battery life.

Does the Pebble have an integrated GPS or does it rely on a phone with GPS?

I wonder if the form of exercise also has an impact. I'm averaging 12.5km walking/running per day or 7.5+ miles but my primary form of exercise is weight lifting which wouldn't be very taxing on the watch at all. On the other hand someone doing jumping jacks and various other flail-y cardio exercises might be triggering the screen to turn on an off and making the accelerometer work for its supper. Rapid changes in air-pressure might also be triggering the mic/DSP to listen for speech.

On the series 2 it's not an issue at all.

I believe David Smith, the developer of Sleep++, said that on the original Apple Watch he wore it all day and all night and simply charged it in the morning and in the evening while taking a shower or doing the dishes or something like that. It doesn't take that long to charge the thing up all the way, so two short charges while you're doing other things would be enough to top it off.

On the series 2 the battery life is so good that just charging it while you take a shower in the morning is probably more than enough.

This is what I do. I charge the watch in the morning when I get to my office and wear it all day (and to sleep, for the silent alarm feature).

I bought a steeply discounted Pebble Time a few days ago.

It's basically a dead-end product now that Pebble has been acquired/cannibalized by Fitbit, but mine does exactly what you want: it wakes me by vibrating on my wrist, and uses a smart alarm to calculate my sleep cycle and avoid deep sleep alarms if possible. Coupled with the week-long battery life, this has made my mornings a lot nicer.

I wonder if Apple is withholding a smart alarm app as a sort of carrot for future models.

I'm so sad that Pebble went under. They made the best smartwatch in my opinion.

I'm sad too.

I'm actually really worried about my pebble breaking, so have been looking into making a homebrew smartwatch. My biggest issue right now is finding a screen with similar specs to the Pebble Time in terms of resolution and power usage.

If anyone has any advice on how I could get wearable screens like JDI[0] has (without having to buy 100 of them) I'd love to hear it! I'm not super well versed in electronics procurement

[0]:http://www.j-display.com/english/product/wearable.html

...Buy everyone's old Pebbles? :p

I don't have this, but this book is supposed to be good for procurement: https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi/the-essential-gui...

It won't help for the screen... Those are made by Sharp and would be exceedingly hard to get hold of in Shenzhen.

Making a homebrew smartwatch sounds like a fun side-project. Any chance you would be willing to share your progress so far? I'm a student with an interest in electronics manufacturing so making one would be more of a learning experience.

Also, for a one-off screen have you looked at contacting a manufacturer on something like Alibaba? They are usually more than willing to send a discounted/free one-off sample of a product.

I wish I had much progress!

I looked at a pebble teardown, and saw that it didn't seem to involve very complex production strategies. From that I decided to try building a list of components! I know how to do some microcontroller programming so wasn't too worried about that part, but felt like getting an efficient screen was important.

I've had a hard time finding power efficient screens that I can purchase in very small quantites so I've been stuck there. I've been trawling around parts websites but I almost always end up on things like screens for RasPis.

EDIT: Got some luck on Alibaba searching for "sunlight readable". Going to contact some suppliers to see if I can get something

Massdrop or a similar platform might make a good option for organizing a group buy. You need to find enough other people with the same desire for a given part or item, but everything else seems pretty well handled; I know plenty of folks who've participated in Massdrop buys for keyboards, Cherry-stem keycaps, and the like, and haven't heard any complaints about the service. (Haven't used it myself, though - I'm just going to get two sets of PBT caps off eBay when this year's keyboard-cleaning cycle comes around - so can't speak to it personally.)

You can still get Pebble 2's on Amazon, and they work perfectly (including the online services, app-store, etc).

Maybe the new Fitbit/Pebble Chimera will release something as good as the Pebble some day.

This is the number one feature I miss from my Pebble. Looks like FitBit recently added sleep phase tracking though, so maybe there's hope yet...

...does this really not exist yet? That's so simple and such a seemingly necessary feature. That and a heart rate monitory seem like the only two reasons to get a watch.

i'm an iOS engineer, i'll write it for a case of beer. did not plan on rhyming that..

That is probably not possible on an apple watch. You might have more luck with an android watch or a pebble.

Apple watch dev is pretty bad, almost nobody uses the apps.

As an Apple Watch user I found a few that are quite useful. The big problem is that many companies seem to try and shove their main app onto the Watch without any thought.

What's the point of an eBay app? Do I really need to check the status of my auctions that often? I mean if something sells they can't just push a notification?

Indeed. There are some iPhone applications which could do with an Apple Watch equivalent and don't have one, such as Google Inbox, though.

It seems like Apple actively discourages the use of the Apple watch in this way with no native sleep tracking and no real mode to disable notifications overnight. Maybe this purchase signifies a change in that regard, but they are already behind all their competitors in sleep tracking.

is there a reference for this? I have seen a few apps that do watch + sleep tracking (Sleep++ is a nice watch app)

A reference for what in particular? Yes, there are third party apps like Sleep++ that do this, but there is nothing native. Those third party apps also can't change system settings likes adjusting notifications. That means that your wrist will vibrate every time you receive an email overnight. The idea that this is intentional to discourage sleep tracking was just conjecture by me.

I think there's a big difference between actively discouraging and just not having a native app.

As other commenters have mentioned your phone can automatically going to do not disturb mode which will also set the watch thus turning off all notifications, but honestly the idea of my watch buzzing every time I get an email even during the day sounds terrible.

I have an Apple Watch and I love it, but I don't have that many things notify me on it.

If you're in DND mode how will the third-party app wake you up?

not mirror the DND on watch. I just keep very few apps on watch, so that way, only the app I have on the watch can tap me.

> no native sleep tracking

FWIW I'm OK with the third party Sleep++ and am not unhappy that it doesn't have a "native" version. I use Runkeeper sometimes instead of the built-in activity app too.

> and no real mode to disable notifications overnight.

My watch goes into do not disturb mode slaved to my phone.

YMMV, of course.

>My watch goes into do not disturb mode slaved to my phone.

That is the problem. It can be slaved to the phone but can't be setup separably from the phone or controlled by any app.

What do you mean? It has a "do not disturb" toggle in the control center, always had. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT206951

Which means that sleep tracking app can't send you their notifications to wake up. There is also no customization available unless you want to mirror the exact settings of your phone.

Odd. I've been using my series 0 Apple Watch as a wrist based alarm since Sleep ++ was released. I've never, categorically, had the issues you describe. I'm guessing that you don't own one or you've not used one in this way.

When are you going to charge it if you're wearing it all night? They don't have the luxury of a week long+ battery life.

They charge really quickly. I pop mine (2nd Gen) on for a bit in the morning while I'm getting ready, or in the evening while I'm reading in bed. Apart from that I wear it all day and all night, largely for the haptic notifications and alarms.

I have a new-ish series 2 watch, I've never gotten it down to below 60%, even when I track a two hour bike ride. I just charge it for a few minutes before bed and in the morning and that's usually enough to get it back up to 100%.

If you don't use it very much, I think a series 2 watch could easily last 2 or 3 days.

That's Pebble time to a T. Shame they're no longer made.

How does a pulse oximeter figure out how to guess you are in a REM state which can usually be done by EEG ? (Or the pebble can this be done by a accelerometer ?) I have taken sleep studies where you would have to do at least something like the beddit device but even then I don't understand how they do it?

I've always been under the impression they do accelerometer heuristics and brand it as sleep tracking. The research is valuable and private, so there's no way to verify the accuracy of their claims.

The apple watch has an accelerometer too -- Sleep++ uses it.

REM is characterized by lack of movement and variable respiration rate. So I would imagine the signal is erratic oxygen saturation. You'll get better results if you can correlate that with an accelerometer.

Disclosure: I worked on a sleep tracking device that is a competitor to Beddit.

Can you shed light on whether there are a common set of algorithms that sleep trackers use or if they are generally all proprietary?

There are some common algorithms for sleep/wake classification from accelerometer input, but sleep stages algorithms are all proprietary as far as I know.

Which is another way of saying "no way to verify if they're bullshit or not".

Not true, anyone could take them to a sleep lab and compare to Polysomnograph-based sleep scoring. I'd love to see a large, independent study on this for a couple of the leading trackers.

None of the popular wrist-based trackers have an oximeter. You need red and infrared light for that, and it is really tricky to get accurate measurements at the wrist in any case. You don't measure respiration rate with oximetry in any case, oxygen saturation does not change that fast. The more advanced solutions are mostly based on Heart Rate Variability which shows some correlation to sleep stages. Source: also worked on this.

Surely the reason this isn't a thing is because the watch needs to be charged every night?

Yeah. What they need is a true full day's charge and a fast charge so you can charge it in the morning while you get ready (and maybe a top off at night). Or for a lot of people you can probably do it now by taking it off when you get home and charging it until you go to bed then wearing it overnight. There's an opportunity in the morning to top off the charge again if it's not making it through the day.

A sleep mode could also make over night wear more feasible. Really you don't want any notifications coming through anyways so all the wireless connectivity can be turned off along with the screen and the processor clocked waaaay down.

> What they need is a true full day's charge and a fast charge so you can charge it in the morning while you get ready (and maybe a top off at night).

That's precisely what the series 2 gives you...

At least for Series 2 this isn't that much of an issue any more: despite tracking a 2 hour workout every day, the battery easily lasts through the day and the night. And it recharges fully while I'm showering on the next day.

I could easily use the watch for sleep tracking, but the SDK is a bit limited for 3rd party apps to be able to automatically start and stop tracking.

I hope Apple will either improve the SDK or add a built-in sleep tracker and alarm feature as described by OP (though in my case the point is moot as I have a very efficient fur-based alarm clock that will claw my face on the first sign of daylight in order to be fed)

I agree; I charge it while I'm in the shower and so does everybody I know who actually uses their Apple watch (which means, about 15% of those people I know who bought one).

The battery (in the second version of the product) now lasts long enough to make that work — except sometimes on the weekend when I might go a day without a shower.

I also want the smart sleep tracking app badly. The reason I bought this crappy watch was solely for the vibration-on-wrist when you have to make a turn when using navigation.

Unfortunately, that iOS feature is horribly broken — it automatically switches to "car mode" when you go faster than a brisk walk, which means it doesn't work for navigating on a bicycle, skateboard, foot scooter, or even just running.

So the device has very little utility for me as it stands — but a sleep-cycle-aware, vibrate-only alarm clock would make it worth the purchase price for me.

And Apple (since I know you clearly must lurk on every hacker news thread waiting for unsolicited advice from strangers on how to fix your lame products): fixing the stupid "automatically switch to car mode" misfeature would also make the watch worth its price to me.

I think I have the newer iWatch, so I'm unsure about previous models, but I can get a full two days of use out of it. It's actually a bit of a downside for me since I always forget to recharge it :-)

My series0 (2015 model) with watchOS3 gets about 1.5 - 2 days on a charge.

Some days it barely gets a day - still haven't figured out if this is due to excessive timer usage (kids!) or messages or something... but it's rare.

I've slept with it on and simply put it in the charger while I shower/dress/eat and it's full.

ugh, the timer! Do you use the chronograph watch face too? I always accidentally hit the stopwatch and 3 hours later realize it's been running the whole time.

I got Withings Steel which has this functionality, does not need to be charged for ~8months and allows to set "margins of error" how much deviance from the set time is allowed (to better match your sleep phase).

Series 0 (original AppleWatch) here. I charge the watch while showering in the morning and while getting ready for bed. So it lasts a day, easily. And I love it tapping me awake in the morning, as does my MSO. I had the Pebble Steel before, and before that a Fitbit Armband, all with silent alarms.

The original jawbone Up bracelet thingy did that, and I LOVED it. Sadly they broke easily and Aliph (now Jawbone) stopped making them.

I had an original pebble, and kept hoping for a feature like that but it never came (or came after I stopped wearing the pebble).

I've used Sleep Cycle on my iPhone for this, but it's not as accurate- especially with 2 people in the bed.

Long/short is that to this day is still haven't found anything as good as the Up, which Was near perfect when it wasn't physically broken.

My Fitbit charge hr (latest version) does exactly this and I love it. The only trick is that having an alarm on your wrist means that the snooze button is always within reach.

Is this the charge 2? I think there's only one version of "charge HR".

Well, I own a fitbit charge 2 and one reason I bought it was the vibration alarm clock. It's a very light watch and I don't mind having it on my arm while sleeping.

You define multiple alarms on your desktop/mobile, for specific weekdays, synced with bluetooth and you can disable/enable each one of them on the watch, which I really like.

But there are some minor problems with this watch:

1) the vibration alarm is not very strong. If I have an important meeting, I use a fallback alarm clock. There are various complaints on fitbit forums.

2) The alarm lasts only 15 secs and it repeats 2 (or 3?) times after 9 minutes. Unfortunately you can't change this behaviour. Moreover, when I'm dizzy I sometimes confirm the alarm and fall back asleep, which happens too easily while lying in bed...

3) other topic, but annoying: the watch is not waterproof

so always keep a fallback alarm. but otherwise it's a great watch.

The Charge HR does exactly that, but doesn't do any effort WRT alarm during light sleep (dunno about Charge 2)

I've been using my Fitbit Charge HR as my primary alarm for almost 2 years now and it works great.

I also use it to set alarms as reminders if I have an important meeting or event.

I wish there were fewer steps to set alarms. I'd love to be able to say "ok google, vibrate my watch in 20 minutes".

Nice comment, never thought about the problem of an easy to reach snooze button.

A friend of mine had an alarm that started to roll on the floor :-)

For early morning plane flights and the like I set a second loud alarm across the room.

They don't do alarms for when you're in light sleep. It will only ring at a certain time.

I solved this (when sleeping in a military transient housing bay or something) by sleeping on top of my phone, in airplane mode, with a vibrate-only alarm set for one time, and then a separate phone or alarm set for audio alarm 5 minutes later. Direct vibration onto skull is pretty effective way to wake up.

Missing calls while sleeping on airplane mode, though, is not really compelling...

I always put my phone on silent before I go to bed. There's no way I'm getting woken up to someone ringing me.

I use do not disturb mode between 11pm and 9am. If you're in my contacts list it'll ring (silent), otherwise you're going straight to voicemail. The concept of being woken up by phone a phone call (other than being actively on call for some reason) is crazy.

Do you never worry about missing a family emergency call? Like an accident or death or similar?

I don't accept general calls overnight, but I'd hate to miss the call.

That's what the "do not disturb" mode is for in iOS - you can let either contacts, or favorites, through IIRC.

Precisely: < everyone | no one | favorites | selected contact group > + [ anyone that calls twice within 3 min ]

And it's extremely useful, I don't get random calls in the middle of the night unless it's PagerDuty, select coworkers (in case something is a big-deal before PD calls me 10 minutes after the push notification) and family.

It's absolutely essential. I travel a fair bit and I have been woken at 3 in the morning by work colleagues.

In this case I had other phones for emergency contact (satcom), and in the event of a genuine emergency I'd be woken up by a soldier or PA system.

> 2) Only vibrates on my wrist at first (let's say for 5 minutes) and then falls back to a traditional alarm sound so I get my ass up just in case

Considering how often I feel phantom phone vibrations on my leg even when I don't have my phone in my pocket, I'm guessing I'd end up "feeling" this any time I half woke up for a second.

We used to have an alarm that played ocean wave sounds. It'd start very quiet and get louder. I'd "hear" what sounded like it starting when there were hours left 'till it'd actually go off.

Have I got good news for you! http://www.thesleepwatch.com/ It's $150, takes a CR2032 battery that lasts 12 months; $50 if you can live without the vibration.

I used one for a couple of years, before I had a kid (who wakes me up by jumping on the bed). I really liked it. I woke up feeling noticeably more refreshed. It's not life changing, but it's quite nice.

(Despite its name, it's not really all that good for tracking your sleep, because it has no wireless support, but the alarm feature is all I need anyway. Get a Fitbit if you want wireless tracking, I guess.)

After finding out that the main thing I used my Fitbit Charge HR for was exactly this and the Fitbit breaking after 18 months because it's not well made I got a Xiaomi Band 2 which can be obtained for ~$US 20 and it does the vibrating alarm well.

It doesn't wake me up only in light sleep rather than REM, but other than that this device fits your requirements and is the cost of a good lunch.

The battery life is also a week plus.

Also I don't really care that much if this one breaks.

Fitbit does this.

Does it? I have a Fitbit and have only figured out how to configure a constant-time alarm. I know it tracks my sleep, but can I set a smart alarm? I'm pretty sure it can't.

A cheap mi band can do this and more quite easily. A phone under the pillow with a silent alarm tone can do this.

If I remember correctly then Sleep as Android can do this.

My MI band v1 used to do that and it was like $10. It had both these features (vibrating wrist alarm and REM sleep detection alarm) and the battery lasted for a month on a single recharge.

I don't know the compatibility with iOS but you can buy it and put it on every night to solve your problem.

I just get woken up by sunlight or my bladder

For clarity: The Apple Watch does have a built-in Alarm which will wake you by Vibrating on your wrist. If you've muted the watch (swipe up from the watch face and tap the Mute icon) then you won't get a corresponding alarm noise.

I like the suggestions for #1 and #2 though. Not sure how you'd track light vs REM sleep.

a. Accelerometer: As I understand it, people don't move at all when in REM sleep, but I don't think it follows that people are guaranteed to move often (or at all) during light sleep, so I'm not sure that the accelerometer could be used to determine that. Source: http://www.brainfacts.org/about-neuroscience/ask-an-expert/a...

b. Pulse monitoring: Apparently pulse rate is steady during light sleep but variable during REM sleep or when awake. Again, I'm not sure that's enough to reliably determine things. Source: http://healthysleep.med.harvard.edu/healthy/science/what/cha...

Perhaps combining the two?

dont people usually charge their apple(smart) watch at night anyway ?

Specifically for the Apple watch, people did with the original, but the newest model has enough battery to survive longer than 24 hours. I sleep with mine on for (3rd party) sleep tracking and charge it while I'm in the shower.

interesting, does it charge fast enough so it holds the charge until the next shower? I got my girlfriend an Apple Watch S1 which is usually at around 50-60% in the evening, but she always charges overnight and my feeling was that the inductive charging is rather slow.

Sometimes not if I'm quick or it's been used for exercise tracking the day before, but by "shower" I really mean "morning routine". Take it off when I get out of bed and then put it on as I leave the house for work. It's always at 100% in that case, and I'd guess it's usually charging for 45 minutes to an hour.

True, tried this and it works fine, lesson learned, thanks :)

Wonder what will happen when you need to charge your Apple Watch ( as I am doing this every night ).

Point No. 2, you can achieve with FitBit ( I still use Flex 1 - which has a superb battery life - 6-7 days ) in a combination with good ol' phone alarm set to 5 minutes after FitBit's alarm.

I charge my watch every morning for 60-90 minutes while I do my morning routine. That usually gets me through the day + night, unless I do over 2 hours of exercise.

I also only use my watch for activity/sleep tracking and notifications so I only have default apps running on it. That likely helps my battery life make it through the day & night.

Having tried a number of sleep tracking solutions to get this whole "wake up when your body is most ready for it" thing I'm not sure it works for me. To me, it seems the only way for me to wake up and actually get up is:

1. Someone or something wakes me up 2. I get the hell up; no snoozing allowed

It doesn't seem to matter when or how I'm woken, if I don't just get out of bed I simply won't truly wake up. Snoozing is the bane of my existence.

I've gone from trying to use these fancy sleep tracking devices and apps and what not, to just sleeping with my Apple watch on my wrist and have an alarm set every day, including weekends. It's the same time, and I only turn it off under special circumstances, like I had to stay up all night for some reason or other.

I never get woken up by notifications, because do-not-disturb is on during sleeping hours, and when the watch is on my wrist it wakes me up by vibrating at the set time. This alone has done more to improve my sleeping habits I think, because something gently vibrating my wrist is a quite nice way to wake up, as opposed to blaring a war signal horn in my ear. When I don't have my watch with me or available, I do what someone else around here tipped about: sleep with my phone under my pillow and have it vibrate at a set hour.

There's probably some serious scientific fact around waking people up during light sleep making for better sleep or whatever, but it just hasn't worked out for me.

> Snoozing is the bane of my existence.

For me it's not snoozing, it's auto-snoozing. Who the hell had the idea that an alarm clock should _stop_ after a minute or so? I want an app that does not turn off alarm "due to inactivity", I want it blasting away until I wake up (or my neighbours wake me up by knocking to the doors).

I think the idea is that people sometimes make mistakes... They leave home early and forget that alarm is still turned on, and then get home in the afternoon to find the front doors broken by angry neighbors. But yeah, if that watch could measure heartbeat... ;)

True for alarm radios, but for phone apps? I assume everyone takes their smartphone with them when they leave...

Some people like to go out for a morning run without carrying a phone.

Sleep as Android is perfect and has fully configurable snooze settings.

>Having tried a number of sleep tracking solutions to get this whole "wake up when your body is most ready for it" thing I'm not sure it works for me.

This feature also depends on personal health as it just checks for REM cycles and deep sleep.

People with apnea (like me) will never be "ready for it" regardless of the phase they are in. At best they'll be "a little more ready for it but still very much needing sleep".

Ah, this might be it then because like you I suffer from apnea. Thanks for that tidbit!

>Oh please please please make a smart alarm that will make me up by only vibrating on my wrist. I want to be able to wake up early for stuff without having to wake up my wife and dogs.

I bought a Withings watch (Nokia owned, they also make scales) basically for that feature.

The main caveat is that the control app (the watch has no buttons) only supports setting 1 alert p -- and you even have to change it manually if you want a different hour the next day, can't preprogram different alerts for various weekdays.

That said, it was just $100, and Nokia is supposed to revamp the models soon-ish. I'll go for an Apple Watch next though...

The Cheap Mi Band from Xiaomi does that perfectly.

Pavlok can do this! It's a wearable that vibrates, beeps, and can release electric stimuli. It also has motion detection to know if you're out of bed (depending on alarm, you can turn it off only by doing jumping jacks).

http://pavlok.com and the sister product, Shock Clock: https://buy.pavlok.com/products/shocking-alarm-clock

This comment reminded me of a guy in my college dorm who would not wake up to traditional alarms. It was some sort of sleep disorder. His mom used to slap him in the face a few times and drag him out of bed immediately. He'd sleep through traditional alarms, no matter how loud and piercing.

This alarm clock had a bed-sized pressure pad (so he couldn't merely roll off of it) that went under the sheets and the alarm clock wouldn't stop with the wake-up procedures until he was out of bed. The alarm clock controlled an extremely bright flood light that was pointed directly at his face a couple of feet over his bed. If that didn't wake him up, there was an adjustable water spray nozzle that would spray his face with water. THe pressure pad also had some sort of semi-painful tactile feedback, similar to a massage chair with really pokey deep tissue nodules.

I felt bad for his roommate.

I use "Sleep as Android". Absolute shit ton of features. The obsessive customiser in me loves these kinds of software; it's a pity that being able to customise your software like this is getting more and more uncommon.

Anyway I'm pretty sure you can do that in Sleep as Android. If I had a smartband I would.

You can indeed do this with Sleep as Android - I use it in combination with a Pebble Time to feed Sleep as Android accelerometer data (for sleep phases), and then the watch vibrates for an alarm - falling back to an audible alarm on the phone if I don't deactivate it in time.

The only downside is that the vibration motor in the Pebble Time is a little bit loud, but still much quieter than an audible alarm on the phone itself.

You most certainly can. I have been doing this with my Moto 360 2nd gen and it works great. Unfortunately it turns out I hate sleeping with something on my wrist, so I don't do it anymore. It also slowly turns on my smartlights when the alarm goes off.

When do you charge it if not while you sleep?

I charge my watch when I get home since I hardly really need it between then and bed time where I can either glance at one of the clocks around the house, or take care of notifications and what-not on the phone itself. I then put it back on charge between getting up and leaving the house in the morning.

It sounds like a lot, but it's very quickly become routine.

I charge my fitbit when i shower

"Sleep as Android"? Is that an odd translation?

I believe so. It's an old app (2010?) and the devs are foreign I think, but the name stuck.

Maybe a play on "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"?

I use the Apple Watch's silent alarm feature to wake me up every morning. Just make sure the haptics and sound are turned all the way down, and the watch is set on silent and DnD mode.

Sleep as Android + Pebble with heartrate tracking. Hopefully Apple catches up because this is a killer combination.

Up until the last paragraph about Udemy courses, I thought you were being sarcastic.

"Oh please please please make a smart alarm that will make me up by only vibrating on my wrist" - Fitbit has done this for a while now. You can even snooze it. Fitbit calls them Silent Alarms.

Fitbit does not provide a smart alarm, that wakes you in a light sleep phase. Jawbone Up does.

I'm looking for a similar solution, but I'm more interested device that isn't tied to a particular platform. Integration with an app is not high on my priority list, I just want to wake up without waking up my wife.

So far, the more interesting devices I found are:

- Sonic Alert Sonic Bomb: A digital clock with a bed shaker. I would turn of the extra loud alarm and just use the bed shaker (a vibrating disc you can place under your pillow). Highly rated on Amazon. Link: https://www.amazon.com/Sonic-Alert-SBB500SS-Alarm-Shaker/dp/...

- Shake-n-Wake: A vibrating wrist watch style alarm. It's fairly bulky compared to fitness trackers, but it's quit cheap. Only 3 stars on Amazon, has apparently some quality issues. Link: https://www.amazon.com/Silent-Vibrating-Personal-Alarm-Shake...

- iLuv Smartshaker 2: just a bed shaker, a vibrating disk with sound alarm. You need an app for it though, available for Android or iOS. 3,5 starts on Amazon, so not a clear winner. Link: https://www.amazon.com/Smartshaker-iLuv-Portable-Vibrating-M...

I've tried a Fitbit fitness tracker, but the vibration isn't always strong enough to wake me up. And you have to remember to charge it (enough!) before you go to bed. Just forget the Lifemax 331 Under Pillow Vibration Alarm Clock: it's really crap.

Any suggestions, experiences or recommendations are welcome!

I have a Garmin Fenix 3, and the vibration wakes me up easily. It also goes well over a week between charges, even using the GPS heavily. Long battery life is important for a watch you are going to use as an alarm, since you lose the convenience of charging overnight.

Any wrist-mounted Fitbit will do this, even the tiny ones without a screen. I've been using one as my only alarm for about a year, and it works great.

Disclaimer: I work for Fitbit.

Edit: Also, the battery needs a 90-minute charge only once or twice a week.

Fitbits don't do smart alarms, which is what he's asking for. He wants an alarm to wake up him roughly around the end of a sleep cycle. No fitbit currently has this feature at all.

I was confused since I was sure it didn't have this feature. Had to look it up to make sure.

The Fitbit Alta can do this. It's a great feature, I use it exactly as you describe.

If you wear your Apple watch while you sleep, when do you charge it?

I read this as "BBEdit" at first and thought wow, they pivoted to sleep tracking?

Apple buying BBEdit would make me soooo happy... A return to their roots. Very, very old roots.

I read "Apple acquires... Reddit"

The humor is, someone else probably read it that way, but had to do something else and is thinking about it now...

I was thinking of getting one of these, but now it's only a matter of time before they remove Android compatibility.

Since sleep tracking dramatically increases the need for robust battery life without having to resort to very specific charging rituals, I hope this means that Apple will finally debut an Apple Watch strap which utilizes the electrical contacts hidden away in the lower strap retention channel. Officially, the contacts make up a diagnostic port, but it's been proven that the contacts support charging. Apple has been expected to release a segmented battery strap for quite a while, but it's never materialized.

Even in the sport band, where the portion of the lower retention strap usable for battery placement is severely limited by the clasp-holding punctures, you can easily double or triple the battery capacity of the Apple Watch and maintain flexibility of the band by using a dozen or so interconnected segmented batteries. [1]

The pleated leather loop bands do not have punctures since they utilize magnetic retention, and can easily be adapted to hold one battery segment per pleated portion. As many as two dozen battery segments can be sewn into the loop, assuming that a magnet and a battery can coexist in a single pleat. [2]

[1]: https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MLKX2ZM/A/38mm-midnight-b...

[2]: https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MLHL2ZM/A/42mm-midnight-b...

Did beddit actually ever make a product that worked? Certainly the indiegogo version I got never worked in any useful way.

Is it possible for a sleep tracking app to work in a useful way? It could tell you that your sleep is interrupted a lot, restless, rarely goes in to deep sleep - but is that actually useful information? How could you use what it's telling you? It's not enough to only know what's happening. You need to know why it's happening in order to affect changes that might improve things, else you could make things worse, or just waste any time/money you're spending trying to improve, or miss an underlying cause that indicates something is seriously wrong..

At the very least, sleep tracking can be used to wake you up at the best time.

Gwern uses a sleep tracker for self-experimentation: https://www.gwern.net/Zeo

This article is amazing. Thank you for reminding me about gwern.

When I reviewed it, my take was that it might be a low cost way for someone who felt tired a lot to collect some basic data before deciding to go in for a sleep study or other medical tests.

Yes. I have both the now unsupported original model and the new one. Seemed to work as advertised. I'm honestly not sure how useful collecting that info is but it does work for me.

One of the factors holding me back from buying an Apple Watch is the need to charge overnight. I wear a Fitbit overnight for sleep quality and duration tracking - imperfect as it is. An iPhone- or iWatch-integrated solution would push me over the edge.

For what it's worth, the Apple Watch charges surprisingly quickly. I often forget to put it on the charger when I go to bed, so I just throw it on when I wake up in the morning – it'll easily get through the day on the juice it picks up while I'm in the shower.

Yeah, I have the same situation. I charge it when I am laying in bed watching TV or something before going to sleep. Wear it through the night, then throw it on for a shower. I've never actually "charged" mine for a significant period of time.

I wear a Fitbit overnight for sleep quality and duration tracking

Are any of these overnight sleep trackers effective?

I'm curious if they cause any changes in your life, or if it's mostly just fulfilling curiosity.

The sleep tracking is definitely fairly accurate. You get a fairly close measure of how much sleep you got that night.

As for what you do with that data is up to you. It's like a weight scale, seeing the number may or may not help you keep a healthy weight.

Read the "Sleep Insights" section of https://blog.fitbit.com/sleep-stages-and-sleep-insights-anno...

It certainly changed my life, and it's the only reason I keep wearing this decaying fitbit.

I did a bio major in college and had researched as much as I could about sleep, so I went into it informed, but could never really 'figure out' anything to my satisfaction.

That all changed when I got the fitbit, which tracks your sleep 100% automatically. I was able to piece together my complete story about sleep debt, the effects of drinking, caffeine, anticipation, and exercise on my sleep quality, and exactly how much sleep I actually need in a night. (All of which had elements of mystery to them before)

This has put me FAR more in tune with my body and mind. It explains the ADD-like symptoms I've coped with, as well as other negative effects that I now realize are due to sleepiness, but had believed were natural variance in life. It gave me control of my life by allowing me to figure out exactly what I need to do to regain my sleep balance when I lose it- something that seemed like an art or even magical before.

I think a skeptic's first thought might be along the lines of "How could someone not be able to tell their body's sleep situation- sounds like a high tech solution to a non-problem." If you've studied sleep, you should know that after a few hours sleep debt (even before you go to bed) your body compensates by increasing the release of dopamine in your head, which provides stimulation and euphoria that inhibits your ability to sense your own disability That should explain the benefit of an objective robot that tells you whats up, and if you're a true skeptic, it should make you wonder a bit about the accuracy of your own self perceptions.

you should give the withings watch a shot. the battery lasts a month and they look like normal watches

Seconded. I am very happy with mine.

If you charge it for 30mins in the morning, while you get ready, you'd easily be able to wear it overnight.

source: I do this.

I wear my Apple watch at night and just charge it in the mornings when I'm in the shower. I have a fairly active lifestyle too so it gets a lot of work tracking activities.

For sleep tracking I use Autosleep though it's not fantastic it's usable. I've been hoping for a built in one for a long time.

I use Autosleep too. Like you said, it's not fantastic but it does the job and it's nice that you can fine-tune it based on how restless you are normally at night etc.

You are overestimating how long it takes to fully charge an Apple Watch.

20-30' while you're showering and/or having breakfast is enough

I use the first version of the Watch all day and all night. Charges in the morning when I go for shower, and during the before sleep routine (brush / meditate). Thats been more than enough. I'd assume Series 2 is much better in battery capacity

My Apple Watch lasts over 2 days on a charge, and it charges pretty quickly ;-) Where did you get that "charger overnight" stuff?

Apple's keynote

Good news - The next Apple Watch will be thinner!

Oh, you didn't ask for it to be thinner?

To be fair, it could stand to be a bit thinner IMO. As a smartwatch it's a nice size, but as something that's always attached to my wrist, I wouldn't mind if they figured out a way to make it thinner without sacrificing any more battery life.

The Sleep Cycle app does a pretty good job at sleep analysis and gentle waking and you don't have to wear anything.

I was a first adopter for this app, and I have seen way too many scientific journals / papers by PhD candidates or from researchers saying that the Sleep Cycle app is not anywhere close to identify the correct sleep cycles.

After using it for a few years, I stopped using it because how I felt in the morning had no correlation to what the app was saying how my sleep was.

What I really really want is: a fitness tracker that does not look like a watch and can be worn with a normal watch.

I prefer wearing classic watches, surely I cannot be the only one out there with this need?

Do not care about notifications, viewing messages etc. So something that has HR and great sleep tracking.

Is the Alta HR slim enough? https://www.fitbit.com/shop/altahr

To get anything on your wrist slimmer than that you'll have to give up heart rate tracking.

I used to wear a jawbone up3 for this very reason, but it seems like they are discontinued. Someone mentioned the fitbit below but it might be too much to sit next to a normal watch.

I have had a Beddit for many years now. It's a great device and hope they can make some waves with Apple.

Do you sleep alone? I have GF, cat, dog all of whom move differently. Can it filter one person from the noise?

There's also the kid-jumping-on-bed problem but that is pretty rapidly an "awake" case.

Their FAQ says it can:

Absolutely, Beddit 3 is designed for sleep tracking in a shared bed. However, this requires one sensor per person, per phone. You may track sleep one or two-at-a-time

http://www.beddit.com/faq/

Before going to bed, try telling yourself to wake up at a particular time and you will be amazed.

Not to be confused with BBEdit.

I miss Apple's innovation.

We've tracked down in all sort of ways while awake ... now are we going to be tracked also while sleeping? We should try to figure out how to not be a data source without being paid for..

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