SleepSmart/Tracker

sleep optimized.
Originally inspired by debilitating morning fatigue that followed late night study sessions, Axon Labs has created a true innovation within the sleep industry. Project SleepSmart™ allows a person to both assess the quality of a night's sleep and wake up more refreshed.
Project SleepSmart is a two-part product. A comfortable, wireless headband collects sleep data through proprietary soft sensors that rest on the forehead. The headband wirelessly sends the sleep data to the base station for real-time processing in a sophisticated algorithm. Within a pre-set thirty minute window, SleepSmart activates a friendly alarm during the last moments of lighter sleep.
Forty years of research has shown that waking from deeper sleep results in a longer duration of sleep inertia and morning grogginess. SleepSmart decreases the severity of sleep inertia by waking the sleeper from a lighter phase of sleep. However, SleepSmart is far more powerful as it also helps people learn how to sleep better by providing information on the duration, depth and continuity of each night's sleep. We look forward to unveiling this exciting new product in 2008.
http://www.axonlabs.com/technology/sleepsmart.html

Product Review: Sleeptracker and SleepSmart
As a graduate student I am naturally obsessed with my productivity and on a constant mission to find devices and methods to improve my efficiency and quality of life. One constant problem is that I need to sleep and I feel that the time is wasted. Even worse is when I wake to my alarm to discover that I am groggy and waste even more time in an unproductive funk. Sleep researchers have long known that the brain goes through various sleep cycles during the night and that it is best to awake when brain waves are in a certain pattern. This knowledge has been used to help chronic insomniacs get at least a minimal amount of helpful sleep, but it is clearly also useful for students who want to spend as little time sleeping as possible without losing mental acuity while awake. I experimented with timing my sleep cycles as an undergraduate, but in order to reliably work one needs to be observed and awoken at the appropriate time. Now there is technology to the rescue! A company SleepTracker has developed a wristwatch that detects movement correlated with "light sleep" and activates an alarm to make sure that you wake up during that period, and as close to your desired wake time as possible. Even better is an upcoming product by SleepSmart. Theirs is a headband that actually detects the appropriate brainwaves and wakes you up at the optimal point in your sleep cycle that occurs prior to your desired wake time. You'll always wake up in time and fully invigorated by your sleep (no snooze button pushing anymore). The SleepTracker costs $150 and is available from their website. The SleepSmart system is clearly better, but it isn't available yet. According to their website they project the cost to be in the $300 to $400 range and you can reserve one now (I did). Is it worth it? Just determine your minimal hourly wage and see how many hours it will have to rescue from the abyss of unproductiveness. For example, if you could use that time to earn $20 an hour, then it only has to save you 20 hours…if it saves you five hours a week then it's worth (5*52*$20=) $5200 for just one year's use. If you're a graduate student then you NEED this!http://aaronbramson.blogspot.com/2006/03/product-review-sleeptracker-and.html

SleepSmart Headband Alarm Clock Wakens You From Light Sleep Stage
A company called Axon Sleep Research Laboratories has developed a headband alarm clock that awakens you when you are not in a deep stage of sleep.
Have you ever felt that you have had a full night’s sleep, but you still feel tired when your alarm rings? When we sleep, we repeatedly move through several cycles of brain activity. It is incorrectly believed that an extra 15 minutes of sleep would make us feel better. What actually makes us feel alert and energetic, however, is being awoken out of the right sleep cycle.
The scientific community has known about this phenomenon for decades, but the technology has not existed to take advantage of it — until now. Enter SleepSmart: an intelligent alarm clock that monitors your sleep cycles as you sleep, waking you at the ideal moment from the optimal stage of sleep. This optimal moment might be several minutes prior to your set alarm time. However, when you wake up, you will be refreshed and ready for action — just as if you had awoken naturally.
The device is worn on your head and it analyses your EEG brain wave to decide when to awaken you. The device does not appear to be on sale yet.
They claim that being awakened from a lighter stage of sleep will cause a person to feel less tired.
SleepSmart’s technology is based on the existence of sleep cycles. For the sake of simplicity, we will classify the cycles into 3 categories: light, deep and REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. Recent scientific research has learned that the way one feels after waking up is determined not by the length of sleep, but rather the sleep cycle from which that person awakens. When awoken from deep sleep, the sleeper feels groggy, tired, and grumpy. However, if someone wakes up from a lighter stage of sleep, no matter how many hours they slept, they still wake up recharged, invigorated, energetic and alert.
SleepSmart capitalizes on this finding by waking people only from light sleep. In order to do this, users wear a soft headband that passively monitors the brain. The end result is the aversion of sleep inertia and the production of a more energetic, attentive and happy morning.
The headband is the idea of a group of Brown University students.
http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/002725.html

How does SLEEPTRACKER® work?
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.
When you sleep, your body goes through a series of sleep cycles. The average adult experiences 4-5 full sleep cycles over an 8-hour period. Each cycle lasts about 90-110 minutes and comprises five different stages, as illustrated by this chart.
No two people have the same sleep cycles, and nobody has the same cycle twice. Many factors can influence sleep cycles, including diet, exercise, medications, drugs or alcohol, stress, sleep disorders, and sleep deprivation. Age and gender can play a role, too: women tend to sleep more soundly than men, and as we age, we sleep more restlessly.
A typical sleep cycle has five stages and takes 90-110 minutes. During Stage 1 of your sleep cycle, you sleep lightly. At Stage 2, your sleep gets progressively deeper. At Stages 3 and 4, also known as "Delta Sleep," you sleep most heavily; this is when your body rebuilds itself.
Stage 5 of sleep, also known as REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, is marked by extensive physiological changes, such as accelerated respiration, increased brain activity, rapid eye movement, and muscle relaxation. People dream during REM sleep.
In the first third of the night, Delta sleep stages last longer than REM stages. As the night progresses, Delta sleep diminishes in length. By the last third of the night, Delta sleep usually ceases, while REM stages lengthen.
SLEEPTRACKER® may find multiple almost-awake moments within the sleep cycle. Almost-awake moments may also vary in frequency throughout the night.
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.
Worn like an everyday watch, SLEEPTRACKER® is ideal for anyone who wants to wake up alert and ready to start the day, such as frequent travelers across time zones, business people looking for an extra edge, students with fluctuating schedules, or busy moms who need to wake up easily
The Key to Waking Up RefreshedWhy is it so hard to wake up to a normal alarm clock? Because a normal alarm clock can't detect where you are in your sleep cycle - a continuous cycle from deep sleep, to brief almost-awake moments, and back to deep sleep again. Occasionally, your alarm may catch you at an optimal, almost-awake moment and you wake up feeling refreshed, but usually you grope for the snooze button waking up tired and groggy.Wake at Your Perfect TimeSLEEPTRACKER® puts an end to that tired feeling. Once you set its alarm window, it monitors your body and continuously looks for your optimal waking times so it can wake you at just the right moment. Imagine not feeling tired in the morning and getting a few extra minutes out of your day.
http://www.sleeptracker.com/how-it-works.html
Update: If you think the SLEEPTRACKER watch is cool, check out our video of the SLEEPPHASE Alarm Clock!
A few weeks ago we told you about a product called SLEEPTRACKER. The SLEEPTRACKER watch is unique in that while it tells you the time and has a built-in alarm like every other digital watch, this one actually monitors your sleep and wakes you at the moment that your body would best adjust from moving from a sleeping state to being awake. Does it live up to the hype? Find out after the jump.
INITIAL IMPRESSIONS
The SLEEPTRACKER doesn’t come in a fancy package, nor does it contain any sort of add-in accessory. Of course, I didn’t expect either of these things. It is simply a watch. The box basically lets the buyer know what features they can expect out of the product. On the back there is an interesting chart that shows the typical adult sleep pattern. Seeing this changed my mindset from believing that the product was a gimmick, to thinking that is just might be the real thing.
The watch itself is actually very basic in its presentation. Don’t expect to turn heads by wearing it. Don’t get me wrong, as it doesn’t look bad – just average. There are four buttons on the watch – Mode, Set, Glo, and a fourth that is unlabeled. This fourth button can be explained as a “down” or “minus” button. It is used when setting the time, to reduce the number shown. Now, the action takes place on the back of the watch. There is a tiny area that you can see is what will monitor your sleeping state, letting the alarm know when to sound.
SETTING UP THE SLEEPTRACKER
The SLEEPTRACKER came with batteries already installed, so all I needed to do was program in the time and date, along with my preferences. Here is how it went:
Alarm: While this sounds self-explanatory, it really isn’t. The SLEEPTRACKER’s goal is to wake you up and the most optimal time for your body to not feel tired and sluggish. The time that you set on the alarm is actually the latest time that you want to wake up. I set mine to wake me up no later than 6:00 AM.
Window: The window setting allows you one of four choices - :00, :10, :20, or :30. Let me explain this one as well. The window setting is basically the number of minutes before your alarm that you will allow the SLEEPTRACKER to wake you up. Since it monitors your sleep pattern for the optimal moment to wake you, you need to give it a window of time so that it can choose the point within that given time period that you are most awake. I set mine to wake me up whenever it felt best within a 30-minute window. The earliest it would wake me would be 5:30 AM, and the latest was 6:00 AM.
To Bed: The To Bed setting is the time you expect to go to bed. The SLEEPTRACKER starts to monitor your sleep pattern thirty minutes after the time you specify in the To Bed area. I set this to midnight, which meant the SLEEPTRACKER would start monitoring my sleep at 12:30 AM – whether I am in bed or not.
Data: As the SLEEPTRACKER monitors your sleep through the night, it saves the times that you were the most awake during the night. You can review this information on the Data screen. It doesn’t really help you much, but it is interesting to take a look at your sleep pattern.
USING THE UNIT
Okay, this is the easy part for a change. The only thing that the SLEEPTRACKER needed to do to be a success were:
· Tell the time
· Wake me up without me feeling sluggish or overly tired within my specified window
· Monitor my sleep data correctly
Now, I had no doubt that the SLEEPTRACKER would perform just fine as a digital watch, which it did. Setup was simple, and after it was done, I could tell the time and date. However, this watch sells because it wakes you up like you have never been woken up before. I went to bed that evening at the time that I told the SLEEPTRACKER that I would be in bed by. During the night, my baby woke up crying, which in turn woke me up. I remember getting up at about 2:10 AM to calm him down and get him back to sleep. In the morning, I heard the alarm go off. I checked the watch, and it was 5:47 AM. Oh, and yes – I felt perfectly awake and satisfied with the amount of sleep I got. I didn’t feel the need to hit a snooze button of any sort.
After I got up, and did the toothbrush thing, I checked the sleep data. It was very interesting to see the times that the SLEEPTRACKER had recognized as my light sleep/awake moments. Most intriguing though, was that it marked 2:11 AM as one of those moments – right after my son woke up crying!
The truth is, I have been testing this watch for about a week now, and there was just one morning that I was not awakened by it. It was a morning that I simply stayed up way too late to even hear the alarm. That is the thing though. The alarm is not loud – it is audible only because it usually goes off when you are in a light sleep mode. If it doesn’t recognize an optimal time within your window, then it just goes off at your designated alarm time. If you are too tired at that point, that is your problem.
This product really was a pleasant surprise. Most of the things we review at Gear Live are gadgets with interesting or fun gimmicks that make them must-haves or horrible failures. The thing about the SLEEPTRACKER is that it doesn’t provide anything “fun” or “cool” per se. Instead, they have developed a product that actually improves your quality of life. Waking up fully energized on a daily basis is just amazing. It is almost as if there is no lost time, and you just want to seize the day. The product did exactly what it said it would do, and because of that, it gets our highest honor. This one comes very highly recommended.
Specifications
· Customized ALARM Window
· Customized ALARM
· Record, Store, Review Your Sleep Data
· “TO BED” Feature
· Easy To Set
· Works Like A Watch, Too
· Water-Resistant
http://www.gearlive.com/index.php/news/article/sleeptracker-watch-review-03221147/