Automatic sleep

[symesmd]

I hate having to tell my Band when I am going to sleep. I realize that some people may like this since you are able to see how much time it took you to get to sleep, but for me that particular metric is not so interesting. I often forget to tell it I am going to sleep and thus miss a whole night of data. I wish they would allow an option to automatically record sleep if you desire.

 

[defante]

It would be nice. Right now though since there is no way to edit or merge data, you would have multiple sleep entries in one night. My tracking shows me "awake" several times in any given night.

If they manage to do auto sleep, then I hope they can set a certain threshold of how long you need to be "awake" before it stops recording.

 

[11B1P]

How is the band supposed to differentiate between you sitting still watching a movie, listening in church or a myriad of other things that may mimic you being asleep? Good grief, if you can't remember to set it to sleep mode, maybe you're not that dedicated to tracking your sleep pattern.

 

[symesmd]

This is such a bogus reply. Many fitness bands currently do this. Take a look at the Peak for a good example. And perhaps do more research before giving such a belittling reply.

 

[dbregman]

The Peak and the basis before it have the issue that defante mentioned. Both would show multiple sleep events for one night of sleep. The other 'benefit' of manually starting it is that it turns off the display and BT.

 

[Teeceman]

Take a look at the Peak for a good example.

No disrespect meant here, but NO the Peak is not a good example as there are some owners who are reporting issues with false positive events and the watch reporting that they are sleeping when in fact they are watching TV, in deep concentration or reading a book etc..
I would suggest the option of having automatic and manual sleep options would be good, with the add ability to adjust/correct the event if the band wrongly interprets your deep yoga meditation as a sleep event.

 

[MatsuDano]

Auto sleep just isn't accurate enough yet. Like mentioned before, relaxing activity might be enough to fool the device into thinking you are asleep.

Make setting it to sleep a habit, just like other good habits like brushing your teeth before bed.

 

[gadgetrants]

Not sure what it means and not sure if it's correct, but the band has me "averaging" around 53 BPM while sleeping. I can safely say, even when I'm deeply concentrating or on the couch watching TV, my heart rate pretty much never goes below 60. If I'm in the 50's I'm losing consciousness.

Seems simple enough for me!

Also not sure how "multiple sleep events" are popping up on "auto-sleep" trackers...it's a pretty reasonable heuristic that if it's sometime between midnight and 6 am, you're trying to sleep. If I were programming the thing, I'd simply bake in that assumption, and otherwise treat late night activity as short interruptions (e.g., midnight snack, pee break, change diaper, etc.) of one continuous sleep episode. Such a set of assumptions wouldn't work for someone in an unusual situation (e.g., graveyard shift) but then again it would be easy enough to include a set-up configuration that simply asks if you sleep "during normal evening hours" and shifts expected sleep time as needed.

-Matt

 

[dbregman]

Also not sure how "multiple sleep events" are popping up on "auto-sleep" trackers...it's a pretty reasonable heuristic that if it's sometime between midnight and 6 am, you're trying to sleep. If I were programming the thing, I'd simply bake in that assumption, and otherwise treat late night activity as short interruptions (e.g., midnight snack, pee break, change diaper, etc.) of one continuous sleep episode.

I agree and provided that feedback to Basis over a year ago with the B1. They still have not fixed it with the Peak.

 

[11B1P]

...it's a pretty reasonable heuristic that if it's sometime between midnight and 6 am, you're trying to sleep. Such a set of assumptions wouldn't work for someone in an unusual situation (e.g., graveyard shift)

Exactly

... but then again it would be easy enough to include a set-up configuration that simply asks if you sleep "during normal evening hours" and shifts expected sleep time as needed.

Why make this so difficult? Can you imagine the coding MS would have to add? That's just adding the ability for something else to not work right. Push a button when you lay down, regardless of the time of day or night.

 

[BADM0USE]

Can you imagine the coding MS would have to add?

Yes I can imagine and it's not that much coding to have this feature on an update.

 

[Teeceman]

A couple of early reviews I read did state that automatic sleep was going to come to band in an update as was the removal of the UV sensor tile effectively giving the user two more tiles for apps as these two functions became automatic features.

I will search around for the articles if I can find them, but I read a lot of them before buying the band.

 

[teemulehtinen]

I can assure you that if I relax and remain immobile on the bed or a matress, the band thinks I am asleep. This has already happened several times in the mornings when I have woken up but decided not to interrupt the sleep mode. My full rest heart rate is usually in the low 40s and sometimes even in upper 30s. I know it's slow - it has been like this since ever.

 

[gadgetrants]

I can assure you that if I relax and remain immobile on the bed or a matress, the band thinks I am asleep. This has already happened several times in the mornings when I have woken up but decided not to interrupt the sleep mode. My full rest heart rate is usually in the low 40s and sometimes even in upper 30s. I know it's slow - it has been like this since ever.

Yes because you've achieved full mindfullness...while I trail far behind on the enlightenment scale. :wink: Actually your situation is an interesting "exception" to the norm. If indeed your deeply-resting HR and sleeping HR are that close, then perhaps, physiologically, your body is benefiting in a similar way from both states. On the other hand, I'd venture to guess that your brainwave activity is still very much distinct between the two -- though I think it'll be a while before the Band includes an EEG sensor (though that's not total science fiction)!

-Matt

 

[teemulehtinen]

The times it makes the mistake, it is in "light sleep" of course. I seem to get "deep sleep" from 30 minutes to 1.5 hours per night depending on the total length of the sleep. As I write this at my desk, my heart rate is around 60 bpm. If I move around, I am at around 70-80. There's still a pretty hefty drop until the deep sleep 40. If I stop all activity now, I will get to some low 50 without falling asleep pretty quickly.

 

[dorelse]

My Misfit Shine has automatic sleep mode, and recorded 3 hours of sleep time when I was hanging out watching the Bears stink up the field with the family last night.

There is good & bad to automatic sleep mode.

 

[gadgetrants]

Given all that makes the Band a fun and interesting device...I'd like to draw an analogy...

I'm an Android guy (sorry if that's kinda rude on Windows Central). My first smart phone was the original Droid, followed by the Droid 3, and now the HTC One.

What I've noticed in the 5 or 6 years that I've owned these phones (and probably 4 or 5 Android tablets) is that while they've all been "packed" with sensors, often those sensors didn't really work. Case in point: GPS NEVER really worked on either of my Droids. I don't think this is a Motorola issue -- I think it's just a consequence of emerging technologies.

Now I just "look" at my One and it gets a GPS lock. OK, I might be slightly exaggerating, but compared to earlier devices I owned it's rock solid. As is the accelerometer...and the camera, and touch screen, and the compass...and so on. Sensor technology for smart phones has relatively matured (as have CPU and other hardware areas), such that pretty much any decent phone on the market now "just works". Quad-core...3GB RAM...4K display...that's all overkill for the average guy!

I hear us all feverishly reverse engineering the Band, trying to figure out what the algorithm for X is, or what heuristics go into computing Y. As a human being it seems perfectly reasonable. But as a researcher, I know it's a fruitless task. There are an indeterminate number of ways to explain how any function might be computed.

Anyway, to conclude: I'm 110% sure that there are very consistent, clear, easy-to-read physiological data for detecting sleep. But the technology is pretty young, and if our reverse engineering is even partially correct, it seems that the engineers for devices like the Band are not trying very hard (which is another whole topic itself, i.e., crippling the first gen on purpose).

Give it a few more years and automatic sleep detection will be better tech than GPS.

-Matt

 

[DenMag]

So I used a FitBit Flex for over a year and you had to put it In and Out of sleep mode so this isn't an inconvenience to me. What I would like and noticed this morning (day two of owning), is that when the morning alarm goes off to wake me up, it would be nice to have that also end sleep mode. On the Flex this worked because you had to beat the heck out of it to turn off the vibrating alarm. I think once MS has synced turning off alarms on the Band with the phone, they might be able to incorporate a wake-up alarm that works with the Sleep mode.

 

[Tim Stone]

I tried a Fitbit Charge ... with auto sleep detection. The first night it seemed to work. The second night it failed after about 3 hours. The 3rd night it didn't work at all. The next day it went back ( because even soft cloth excessively scratched the display ).

 

[anon(8555314)]

Anyway, to conclude: I'm 110% sure that there are very consistent, clear, easy-to-read physiological data for detecting sleep. But the technology is pretty young, and if our reverse engineering is even partially correct, it seems that the engineers for devices like the Band are not trying very hard (which is another whole topic itself, i.e., crippling the first gen on purpose).

Give it a few more years and automatic sleep detection will be better tech than GPS.

-Matt

I tend to agree with the Lean Startup philosophy, which is to get a new product out the door quickly, in a less than fully formed early format, seek customer feedback, and keep updating constantly. I don't have a problem with the strategy here if they come out relatively soon with upgraded hardware and firmware, similar to what they did with the Surface Pro, Surface Pro II and Surface Pro III.