That $5 pre-order is far too easy to do. I bought one without stopping to research other products like the http://www.fitbit.com/. Brilliantly designed pricing.
It's a lot like Glastonbury ticketing. Deposits in autumn, full payment in January. This is extra profitable because in January many people are short on cash post-christmas and either can not or choose not to pay the full amount. You get to keep the non-refundable deposit and then sell the ticket/product again to another person.
As an aside, any idea on how hackable the Wakemate is? Presumably other devices could talk to it over bluetooth, eg a homemade arduino based alarm clock. Will the bluetooth protocol and data format used be published?
It took me about 15 seconds from the initial onload to typing my PayPal password, and I'm normally just seething with deliberative-yuppie-purchasing-angst. My normal minimum conversion time is at least an hour of research and a week of wall-clock time.
If you can hack my purchasing process so effectively, I'm pretty confident that you'll do well by my sleep cycle. Bravo!
I've been aiming to write a Rayleigh random number generator-driven alarm app for my iTouch (to do random-phasic sleep, e.g., countdown 20+X minutes, X drawn from a Rayleigh(20) distribution). If something like that could integrate with your app, that could be really cool. Crowdsourced sleep research :)
It's so easy to do, in fact, that I had already paid before I realized that the device isn't scheduled to ship until 3 days after my daughter is scheduled to ship.
I bet my graphs are going to be REALLY interesting.
The Fitbit looked very fun, but the site didn't mention an alarm function. I'm already envisioning a long slog toward convergence, because some day I want my phone to do calorie-counting and smart-alarming. After all, I already keep it near me all day and night...
I was fortunate enough to know these guys while they were building the wakemate prototypes, and even luckier to have had the opportunity to sleep with one (of the devices) for a week. It has made a tremendous difference in how I feel when I wake up. Congrats guys!
I was fortunate enough to know these guys while they were building the wakemate prototypes, and even luckier to have had the opportunity to sleep with one
Joking aside, if this actually works and you value your time it should pay for itself more or less straight away. I'll be watching closely.
edit on re-reading it looks like the parent noticed that too...oh well.
I didn't get to use one of the new, super sleek, production quality ones. I used an early prototype that slipped inside a wrist band (like tennis players wear). It was actually still pretty comfortable to sleep with - I didnt even feel it after the first night.
It definitely woke me up at the optimal time in my sleep cycle. The alarm app was a really simple web app, and the bluetooth was simple. It was cool to see my sleep analyzed with all our different metrics and quality rated. The sleep analytics software was pretty simple, but definitely did the trick.
I don't have trouble getting to sleep if I put in a full day of productive work topped off with exercise. Is this product only for people with sleep problems?
I am actually a pretty good sleeper. I naturally sleep about 8 hours a day, and if I wake up naturally, I usually wake up feeling pretty good (haha...people are going to hate me for that).
The problem is when I go to bed really late and/or need to wake up earlier than I would naturally. As it turns out, I am more affected by when I wake up in my sleep cycle than I am by how long I sleep. If I need to wake up at 7:30am for a call with east coast people, the wakemate would wake me up at "around" 7:30 (you can set a hard stop), during the point in my sleep cycle in which I am most amenable to being woken up. It's the difference between feeling like shit, and feeling like I woke up naturally.
Interesting, when I went to the Wakemate site I was hoping for a product that looks like a tennis wristband, which I know to be comfortable. I didn't pre-order because I'm not confident the neoprene looking band would be comfortable to sleep with. I'd like to try it on before buying.
I really like the idea, but putting "(works on all phones)" on your front page is kind of shady if the actual requirements are bluetooth and internet access and third-party app support. No phone I've ever owned has all those features.
Those features have been practically ubiquitous on GSM phones for about five years (except for the cheapest 3rd world models). That's as close to "all phones" as you can get.
Yes, most phones have internet access, but I strongly doubt most people have that included in their monthly plan - I know I don't.
So do I have to pay extra charges for that? How much data is being sent? Can I view stats on my phone? Can I tether my phone to my computer to look at stats?
I can't find any of these answers on their site. Which is frustrating, because this almost sounds like something that would interest me.
Then put a star next to "all phones" and add some fine print that bluetooth is a requirement, and app requirements. I'm guessing it's been written for java/symbian/iphone/blackberry? Also a good idea to write the phones tested on.
Not every phone has bluetooth and can run third-party apps, especially if you bought a cheap non-branded phone. Also, not every would know it's necessary for a device like this.
Even better, why not allow us to download the app now?
I have a prepaid phone, and it has one of three-- sort of. It's got a browser that opens occasionally when the phone's in my pocket and drains my minutes, but I wouldn't describe it as any sort of actual internet access.
I've heard complaints that it doesn't accurately monitor your sleep cycles because it uses an accelerometer which obviously doesn't work if you don't move enough.
There is a product called Zeo that supposedly detects your brainwaves but then people complain about having to wear a strap on your head. http://www.myzeo.com/
Anyone want to share their experience with these sleep aids?
I bought the Zeo a couple months back based on reading about here on HN.
What a huge difference in the morning! I used to be the kind of person that needed a 20 min hot shower to properly wake up. Now I wake up mostly alert and almost never groggy.
I noticed the change most this week since I flew to Philly for Thanksgiving with family and don't have my Zeo. The last few mornings without it have been hit or miss.
The pretty graphs and statistics were interesting for the first couple weeks, especially to compare how alcohol and caffeine affect my sleep, but the novelty wears off. The smart wakeup is by far the best feature and if the Wakemate can do a similar job, it'll be a cheaper solution that I can take on the road.
My father and I both enthusiastically tried the sleeptracker when it first came out. I am horrible for waking up in the morning, and this did not help one bit.
The article asks why they did not put the alarm in the watch - the sleeptracker chooses that exact strategy and it did not work well for either of us. One, the alarm was not that loud (probably cannot be that loud in such a design). Two, if you had your wrist under your pillow it was inaudible. And three, the alarm is trivially accessible and easy to turn off - not a good thing for an inventive and persistent snooze buttoner like myself.
The product was a huge disappointment to the both of us. The price point and design for this product are encouraging - I will probably try it out.
I've used the zeo for a while. Love it, but in the end I move the headband off my head in my sleep (active sleeper) and would wake up with no data 1/3 of the time. That is frustrating. From what I read this is true for about 10% of users.
As far as the Zeo goes, it is a great product. Very interesting future (there are some obvious 'this is a first release' flaws) but overall, it rocks. Knowing to the minute how much you slept with REM and deep sleep markers is quite interesting and fun.
I've got an extra in Boulder if anyone wants to try it out.
which obviously doesn't work if you don't move enough.
That's interesting, because I suspect I may be one of those. Any idea how many people have that problem and if I can determine upfront whether this product will work for me?
Well seeing how it was mentioned all over the media like Dr. Phil, 37 Signals, and Wired, Associated Press, G4TV, etc... I would say it is far more ubiquitous than the zeo.
What kind of battery does it use and how do you charge it?
How long before it needs to be charged. Your website is quite informative about the science but seems to leave out this basic operation information.
Looks cool anyway, with free shipping to Belgium I'll definitly order one.
I worked at a sleep company up until 2008 and there are a lot of startups and big sleep companies getting into lowcost devices that a customer would own or rent instead of going into a sleep lab. They would do more diagnosis or pre-diagnosis rather than just wakeup timing but I think some had that feature. I know there is a watch that does this.
One tip I would do if I were them were to contact all those huge sleep lab companies and try to get them interested. Insurance covered prescribed factory sleep labs drive the industry.
I think this is pretty significant advice. My daughter broke her foot one day before getting on a plane to Barcelona, where we planned on doing a lot of swimming, I had a waterproof cast cover over-nighted and they sent two. One for me and a free one for the foot doctor. The product worked so well, it literally saved our vacation and I couldn't say enough good things to the doctor when we got back. I'm sure giving the free sample to the doctor was a win for them, especially considering the doctor had never heard of the product.
Of all the recent YC announcements this is the first one that has me go: Yes! solve a real world problem. Runner up is the flight delay guys, but I no longer fly a lot for business so it is not as much of a factor as it used to be.
Congratulations, excellent idea and a very nicely priced implementation.
I sincerely hope you'll sell these by the containerload.
One of the first pages I navigate to when evaluating a product is the About Us page. If I didn't know that Wakemate was a YC funded company I would not take the product very seriously. Luckily the 'How it works' page (http://www.wakemate.com/about/), and the references cited there make up for the absence of an About Us page (that would hint at your credibility - at least say you are YC funded!). I think it's worth a try! Pre-ordered one
I pre-ordered, but there was absolutely no info about whether or not it ships internationally (even after paying). Hopefully they'll be shipping outside the US!
i chatted with them on their site (chat powered by Olark.com), and they said they shipped pre-ordered wakemates free to canada. might want to check in w/ them about shipping to your country.
the free shipping to the UK and the aggressive price point was what got my pre-order. A while back I was looking at the FitBit, which specifically said 'we only ship to US right now'. FitBit should partner with a shipping specialist, since the device is small, and people like me would be willing to pay quite a lot of postage.
I have been using a Now & Zen alarm clock for the last 3 years. http://www.now-zen.com/ (It looks like they are now calling the one I have the 'zen timepiece.') I was fed up with electronic noises. These clocks have a brass bowl that produces very pleasant gongs to wake you up. And it doesn't jab you awake like most all other alarm clocks I could find. It gongs and then waits a few minutes. If you haven't gotten up after a few minutes, it gongs again, and waits a couple more minutes. It gradually gongs more frequently over a period of 10 minutes.
Sometimes I am up at the first gong and sometimes it takes several. Now, hooking up my bowl gong to the wakemate could make for a great combination.
The science has been done. The tests are clear. Polyphasic sleepers suffer performance losses in mental tasks compared to normal sleepers. In particular, it significantly impairs long-term memory coding.
Charlatans like Steve Pavlina always refused to do even basic scientific testing. His results simply can't be trusted, especially since he has a massive vested interest in it being effective.
If there is some reason you need to sleep less than 3 hours per day, then polyphasic is the best way to do that. However you will always have reduced performance compared to those who get a full 7 hour sleep.
If you want a sleep schedule optimized for creative/intellectual performance, free-running sleep is the best available. Piotr Wozniak has plenty of science of his website showing that this is the case.
I'm afraid I don't see any citations in that article for studies done specifically on polyphasic sleep. I see citations for the natural length of the human day (24.2 hours), sleep deprivation effects, maximum waking time for humans, etc. But nothing but unbacked, though strongly held, assertions about polyphasic sleep. I may have missed it, but every time the article goes into discussion of polyphasic, it seems to talk around the issue when providing citations, and explicitly to the issue when it is clearly the authors opinion. It has the feel of a religious tract, rather than a scientifically sound article.
I'm not saying the author is wrong. I've never had much luck with polyphasic sleep, as I mentioned above, and I'm certainly not going to argue that it's a great idea without having had any success with it myself or at least having seen good science on the matter. But, if this is the best "science" there is to offer suggesting it does not work, then I don't think I'm convinced.
That said, I'm leaning towards one of the "core sleep plus naps" variants this time around rather than the 6x20 minute routine. I do enjoy sleeping. At least, I seem to, since I do it a lot, and frequently roll over and drift back to sleep in the morning. I also love a couple of cups of jasmine green tea in the morning with breakfast...it's a one to two hour ritual that makes me happy. And a polyphasic schedule would throw all of that for a loop...though I might try kicking caffeine for a while, too. I won't have an Asian market nearby from which to buy my Yamamoto tea, so I probably won't want to drink tea, anyway.
I don't read Pavlina and am unfamiliar with his arguments regarding sleep, so I don't know anything about his results.
Claudio Stampi tested all the various forms of reducing sleep and found polyphasic - the uberman style - to be the best out of them all.
At the same time, he found that polyphasic sleep results in poorer performance compared to normal sleepers. And this was considered non-noteworthy, since obviously 2 hours of sleep is worse than 8. You can find his articles on Google Scholar.
Steve Pavlina is the only person I know of who has claimed to be polyphasic for an extended period of time and claimed that there is no performance decrease. Unfortunately, Steve refused to do any scientific testing and relied entirely on his own subjective judgment. He gave it up after 6 months anyway, but still maintains it is effective.
Steve's Pavlina's experience however exactly fits in with the best scientific understanding of sleep (which Wozniak perfectly elucidates). Steve Pavlina was never able to maintain the schedule without an alarm clock, which indicates that his body did not adapt and was not co-operating or behaving in a "natural" way.
The theory that Steve was only getting REM is shot down by his own journals which indicate that he was getting both Delta and REM. My own experience with polyphasic also indicates that while the proportion of REM may increase, you still get delta sleep. I was fully (and rigidly) polyphasic for some weeks but never stopped having delta sleep. I also consistently showed decreased performance that could only be overcome by surges of adrenaline and autonomic excitation in general - which is easily caused when a loud alarm clock wakes you up when your body desperately desires sleep. You are tricking your body into a state of permanent fight or flight.
Anyway the studies were done in the 80s that directly measured performance. But in the modern day extensive studies have been done on sleep and everything we know about sleep now shoots down all the theorizing that the polyphasics use to justify their crazy. The idea that delta wave sleep is useless has been utterly rejected because it has been shown that delta wave sleep contributes to long-term memory encoding. If you cut down on delta wave, you cut down on long-term memory. If you cut down on sleep in general, you cut down on cognitive abilities in general.
This trade off may be worth it for some people, but they should be aware that it is a trade off. Magical thinking like that displayed by Steve Pavlina does not magically make you immune from the negative side effects of sleep deprivation. You get over the drowsiness with sheer strength of will and adrenaline, but the fogginess doesn't go away. (Steve considered the fogginess to be a benefit. But remember this is a guy who believes ghosts tell him how to win at blackjack.)
So, talking about this and reading what links I could find from your originally linked article, as well as reading up on Claudio Stampi leaves me no more illuminated. Stampi's book Why We Nap is out of print, my library does not have a copy, and I can't find any other references to actual studies that prove the arguments against polyphasic sleep, though the opinion of most folks does seem to be that it's not a replacement for a full nights sleep. I just can't figure out how they know, rather than merely think so. There seems to be a tremendous amount of regurgitation of party lines and mentioning of the same few, mostly dubious, sources. I think damned near everybody involved in the conversation, including you and I, understands less about sleep than they think they do.
You're right, however, that there is a cult-like feeling around polyphasic sleep discussion, and I view that sort of thing with extreme skepticism...but I'm surprised to find it happening on both sides. The "debunkers" are just as guilty of making unbacked claims, and poorly citing their opinions.
Every time I've seen a straight up assertion about how long one should sleep, whether napping can reduce the total number of hours needed, etc. I'm unable to find a study that directly backs the assertion. I guess such studies must exist, but no one is linking to them. Even Wikipedia is surprisingly lacking in citations of directly relevant scientific research on the matter.
SwellJoe, I'm with you in that the "debunkers" seem quite dogmatic. Then there are people who have had personal success with polyphasic sleep and rave about it, typically doing it for a period of months but not on a permanent basis. Science doesn't have a lot to say, and everyone else is left wondering what to think.
References I found enlightening about the actual practice of it (in favor of it) are the book Ubersleep:
I've read enough anecdotal evidence to be convinced that when it polyphasic sleep works, it works -- that after a potentially rough (and potentially impossible, depending on the person) period of adaptation, the practitioner is not significantly impaired in day-to-day functioning. Skeptics' arguments usually boil down to "it's unnatural", "you can't get something for nothing", or "it didn't work for me".
In terms of needing to set an alarm, I don't know if the body can learn a polyphasic schedule or not; even if it can, the reasons busy monophasic people use alarms to regulate their sleep would apply all the more so to polyphasic sleepers, and I get the sense polyphasic sleep is a sort of "unstable equilibrium"; and if the body can't learn it, that still doesn't mean it's unnatural.
Science could come along and discover a long-term deleterious effect of getting so little sleep, in which case I'd be all ears, but it seems doubtful. I hope the science catches up, though, and we figure out what the deal is with sleep, so we don't have to argue quite so irrationally. There's a lot of interesting recent work on whether being unconscious for eight hours is mostly a behavioral adaptation rather than a biological necessity.
My general philosophy is "if it works, do it", and it definitely works in some instances. Reducing total time spent sleeping per day isn't like smoking cigarettes, it isn't going to slowly poison you. Lots of people get very poor sleep and are definitely impaired during the day, more so than a skilled polyphasic sleeper would report, and they aren't doing long-term damage.
The debunkers are cultish because the proponents are cultish. Just like atheists are cultish in response to cultish cults.
If reducing delta wave sleep by 10% significantly decreases performance on memory and reasoning tests, why should reducing delta sleep by 90% fail to decrease performance?
Lots of studies are done on sleep, but they are never as extreme as polyphasic because it would be considered unethical to perform those studies. Those few insane people like me who actually did go polyphasic don't get scientifically tested.
It did work for me but I recognized that my performance had decreased because at the time I was in memorization-oriented schooling and using Anki to manage my memorization tasks. With the help of Anki, I could see quite clearly that my memorization abilities had decreased.
It was also never a natural state. It was a constant state of heightened autonomic response - fight or flight. Especially at nighttime, my body was surging with corticosteroids. This stress response is what provides the capability to stay awake so long, but it comes at the price of high-level thinking and memorization.
Typically in nature, humans will adopt polyphasic sleep in times of war and other extremely stressful situations. This is adaptive because their life is threatened. This is not the case for the modern knowledge worker.
There is tons of science on sleep. The polyphasic people base their theory on the outdated and discredited idea that we only need REM sleep. This has been categorically disproven by modern sleep researchers. Slow wave sleep provides many benefits, the most clear being improved memory but also better performance on other cognitive tasks.
AFAIK Claudio Stampi is the only person to test polyphasic directly because since then it has been considered unethical to directly test polyphasic. (The Geneva Convention considers it torture, afterall)
"The device has modes for both ‘power naps’ (which last around 30 minutes)"
I'm guessing polyphasic sleepers can use this, but no idea if they provide support specifically for polyphasic sleepers. Just curious, are you a polyphasic sleeper?
"WakeMate is launching with support for iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, Windows Mobile, and a standard Java app for non-smart phones"
I've tried polyphasic sleep a few times over the past 15 years, and always went back to normal. But I'm about to give it another try, and all of the circumstances that made it difficult in the past (live-in girlfriend, office to go to and an expectation of availability throughout normal office hours, or school+work, etc.) are no longer a factor, so I think it will go better this time. I'm also about to shake up a bunch of other aspects of my life, so going polyphasic will fit right in.
Please, please, please blog your attempt at going polyphasic. There aren't a lot of rational records of people trying this; and it's a really interesting topic (to me, at least).
I'd try it myself, but for now my commute prevents me from being able to do it.
pchristensen did it a year or two ago, and it was really interesting to read about.
I plan to. I'm shopping for an RV at the moment, and plan to hit the road on January 1st, and I'll be blogging about the process of going mostly off the grid while still running a company. Switching to polyphasic sleep will be a minor change in comparison, and so I'm cramming a number of life alterations into one bunch...since I won't have any habitual behaviors that remain unchanged, I'm going to take the opportunity for self improvement on all fronts (eating, exercise, environmental impact, getting out of my comfort zone, etc.). I've read that people have an easier time altering habits, like smoking, when they are out of their normal routine, like when they're on vacation.
This sounds like a great plan, I think you will have an interesting journey! I can confirm that the absence of daily routine triggers facilitates change to let go of undesired behavior. For instance, it was way easier for me to stop smoking and exercise every day when I spent the summer in California.
I loved it but my life didn't accommodate it. It was much easier on work days because I could sleep both ways on the train, one nap in the middle of the day, and then make it through family duties at night before I needed another nap. My wife didn't enjoy the scheduling difficulties on the weekend and it's not something you can switch on and off on short notice (takes about 5-7 days the first time and 2-3 days to start back up). There's a couch at my new job and I'm considering starting up again.
I learned about polyphasic sleep a couple years back, and came across stevepavlina's blog posts about his experience. I want to try it (just for the heck of it, and to see if it fits my lifestyle better) sometime in my life.
If you happen to get Wakemate, I'd be interested to know if it helps or eases the transition to polyphasic.
I can't say there is any definite correlation, but Steve now believes in subjective reality and that his love is too big to be contained within a relationship, so think before you leap
There is no polyphasic sleep feature, but you could definitely use it track your sleep cycles and optimize your polyphasic sleep. Yes there is an android version.
Just a question that popped into my head: why choose to release the product on so many mobile platforms? That becomes very expensive development-wise, whereas the most active platforms cover most of the target market.
One thing I don't understand: how does the wristband/app tell when you are awake and when you are asleep? The screenshot shows several spots of "time awake" during the night, how does it know this?
Preordered, anyway. I've always wanted to try this but the price point of similar gadgets have been over the "cool thing to try" level (>2-300 bucks).
It must be extremely motivating to see all of these $5 payments come into your account, too :)
I don't know about you, but I move around a _lot_ during sleep. Sure, if it only knows that I'm awake if I go to the bathroom or kitchen during the night, I understand the difference. Would be interesting to know how it makes the distinction, though.
You (supposedly) only move around when you're in certain sleep stages, and not others. When you're moving around, you're still asleep, but you're much more lightly asleep than when you're not moving around, so it's a much more optimal time to wake up and you can also track how "restful" your sleep is.
Typically, when you enter deep stage sleep your brain turns your normal motor functions off - it's supposed that this is to stop you from hurting yourself while in deep sleep (although some people suffer from sleep disorders where they do move).
In lighter stages of sleep this doesn't happen and you do move around.
Congrats on finding a hair-on-fire problem, and totally rooting for you guys. Just 2 weeks back I ordered an aXbo (http://www.axbo.com/axbo/CMS/CMS.aspx?Language=E) for the same purpose, but this is a much more convenient implementation.
The axbo uses similar technology and works well, but it is much more expensive, more difficult to use and less comfortable. Also they do not do any of the sleep analysis and personalized recommendations on how to improve the quality of your sleep.
First off, I love this product. But before I click purchase, I want to know: how good of a proxy is the wrist accelerometer for brain wave activity?
Someone else asked this already but I didn't see a response. Ideally, I would love to know what the quantitative results were from your testing. For instance, if sleepers rate their grogginess after waking up every day, what kind of an improvement do you see in those ratings? What is the distribution like? Are there a certain percentage of people who don't respond to the Wakemate because for some personal reason their wrist movements don't correlate with brain wave activity?
I think this data would help sell a lot more of these since that's definitely what made me pause - and I was very ready to purchase.
It would be really cool to see what they could do for those who would like to wake up with their partner. If both could wake up without being groggy, that would be amazing. I'd imagine you might need a bigger window of possible wake up time.
It also depends on how many 'good times' for waking up you have in 20 minutes, and how much they last. For example if you have 2 minutes optimal waking time two times, you might have a 1% chance that a given moment is optimal for both of you.
I asked this in the Techcrunch comments but I'm thinking it will be more visible here:
In terms of the iPhone app, how do they trigger anything without having to keep your iPhone on and in their app the whole time? Other than that I am sold.
The iPhone has to be on and the app open for it to work. No way around this limitation without 1) jailbreaking 2) digging around in private apis or 3) applying to be an approved accessory maker.
Sounds really interesting. It's a shame it's not shipping sooner. I just had a 7 month vacation and getting my sleep pattern back to normal has proved nearly impossible. Some days I wake up super energized after 5 or so hours and then days like yesterday, I get 7 hours in and I wake up feeling like I haven't slept in days. Pre-ordered one for sure.
On a side note, this page is terribly hard on the eyes. http://www.wakemate.com/about/ I don't know if it's just me or not, but I think they need some more spacing between the letters??
I'm particularly interested in using this to help trigger lucid dreams. For the past few years, I've had a song on my playlist that I've trained myself to always ask if I'm dreaming when I hear it. The idea being that this song would play at the right time during my sleep cycle to get me to realize that I'm dreaming.
However, so far I've had trouble triggering the song at the right time. Perhaps this app will be configurable enough to play an MP3 when I'm in REM?
Where did you get the idea to trigger lucid dreaming with a song? I am both very musically oriented and a frequent lucid dreamer, and I rarely ever have any music in my dreams, let alone any sort of recognizable tune. I'm talking months between each such event. Unless you frequently dream about music already (as we are all different), I would suggest sticking to the more conventional triggers.
One of these events took the form of a dream that I had written the most powerful, moving song ever, one that could forcibly move people to tears due to sheer awesomeness. Bear in mind I'm not talking about an abstract assessment, but a deep belief that this was awesome. For once, I managed to actually drag the song back up to the waking world, whereupon I discovered that my brilliant song was, in two-second-long quarter notes, the following incredible melody line: C, C, D, C, repeat.
(The full moon seems like a good one to me; I get a lot of circles in my dreams, only due to my science-fiction viewing proclivities, they tend to turn into Stargates.)
I don't usually have any music in my dreams. However, I have frequently found myself incorporating outside noise into my dreams (a television left on, a radio alarm clock that plays the morning talk show, my cat meowing, etc).
Using a song as a trigger for lucid dreaming seems like a reasonable enough way to send myself a signal, though I honestly don't have much to back it up.
Allowing yourself to sleep wake up naturally is probably the best option, but you could easily oversleep that way. Waking up when you are at one of your arousal periods is going to be the next best thing.
Just bought, having live chat like this on the first day is a very good idea that I'll have to keep in mind when launching a new product... And as others have said the 5$ preorder in exchange for free shipping is a great way to make us impulsive buyers.
I confirmed with them that worldwide includes China too (so many companies do not ship there that I've become wary) so will be getting one :-)
Not directly on the first-gen iPod Touch, since it doesn't have bluetooth, but the later ones do with OS 3.0 and up.
You could load the analytics app without it, but you'd need some device with bluetooth to trigger the alarm. Someone will inevitably release desktop apps to interface it, especially since all Macs ship with bluetooth and tiny USB dongles for your PC cost about a dollar.
From the article: "It then transmits your sleep data to your phone, which in turn uses its cellular data connection to upload it to the WakeMate servers."
When I looked at the actual pre-order page, it doesn't seem like that is so. You pay $5, then you pay $45 later. Or you pay $50 when it comes out. What incentive is there, especially with an unreviewed product such as this? Will they tack on a subscription fee to use the device like the fit bit?
That is slick...both the device and the purchase process.
My wife and I discussed something similar using EEG measurements but couldn't find a practical way to apply the electrodes in a consumer-grade product. This is a good example of solving that problem obliquely.
I think it sets a time you will be up by, you just might get woken up earlier. Heck you might even be on time to drop your kid off if you can get that little bugger out of bed as well. :)
I hope you guys get enough orders to start shipping because I just put in my preorder. Very interesting looking product and chatting with a cofounder at 1 AM is a huge plus.
This seems great, but what about couples that sleep together. Each person might have a different "optimal stage" of waking up. Did you guys offer any solutions for that?
Why not just an iPhone app: tie the phone to your wrist and let the accelerometer record the movements. Would it drain the battery, or is the iPhone too heavy?
We have an app just like this, but haven't released it because a lot of people expressed concerns about not being able to charge their phone at night as well as breaking their phone. The WakeMate is a much better user experience in terms of comfort and convenience.
The "Sleep Cycle" iPhone app works by placing the iPhone next to your pillow. I never got it to work reliably, even though the motion detector is sensitive enough.
Or just put an alarm in the device itself. I can see the appeal of a $50 alarm that attaches to my wrist and wakes me up at the right time, but I definitely don't want something monitoring my sleeping pattern and reporting them to somebody's server.
So myself integrating the alarm clock beeping into my dreams is just a built-in way to delay the wake-up point until it hits one of the light-sleep windows?
Probably because (1) Wakemate has simpler price constraints, and (2) because the software integration required for Wakemate is simpler than for that of an entire general-purpose computing device?
A big part of it is power supply (a tablet ps is extraordinarily hard to design whereas this can run on a large coin cell or AAA battery), and display (blinking LEDs are easier to get a hold of than nice color LCD with good touchpads).
It's a lot like Glastonbury ticketing. Deposits in autumn, full payment in January. This is extra profitable because in January many people are short on cash post-christmas and either can not or choose not to pay the full amount. You get to keep the non-refundable deposit and then sell the ticket/product again to another person.
As an aside, any idea on how hackable the Wakemate is? Presumably other devices could talk to it over bluetooth, eg a homemade arduino based alarm clock. Will the bluetooth protocol and data format used be published?