How IoT will change Sleep

My life, just like everyone else’s revolves around sleep. If I get a good night’s sleep I’m up and ready for the day. If I get a bad night’s sleep I’m tired and grumpy until I get some coffee. The hardest thing about getting a good night sleep is figuring out what is wrong with your current sleep situation. But lucky for us IoT is here to do the work for us, and tell us how to get better sleep!

Smart Beds

If you’re looking for a new bed you should check out Sleep Number’s x12 bed. It comes equipped with what they call SleepIQ. The bed monitors your sleeping habits, movement, heart rate, and breathing rate while you’re sleeping. The bed sends the data to an app on your phone and it then suggests how you can adjust the bed for better sleep. The app also gives diet and exercise suggestions for better sleep.

Imagine headed home from a long day and counting the seconds until you can sleep, and then coming home to a bed that’s too hot, or too cold, to fall asleep in. IoT is here to save the day, again! Luna is a mattress cover that learns your sleep habits and uses that knowledge to know the times you are likely to go to bed, and makes the bed a comfortable temperature for for sleep. Luna continues to adjust the temperature throughout the night to keep you comfortable. Not only does Luna adjust the temperature in your bed for comfortable sleep, Luna also monitors and analyzes your sleep cycles, heart rate, and breathing rate to give you information on the quality and quantity of your sleep on their app the next morning.

On top of all of this Luna can connect to other smart devices in your home. Sending signals to other devices to lock doors, to turn off lights, or even to turn on the coffee machine once it sense that you’re awake.

Smart beds will change the way we understand our sleep, and possibly our sleep routine. If you don’t want to part from your current bed, but want to join the future and IoT, don’t worry IoT comes both big and small!

Wearables

The list of wearables is endless in the IoT world. But when it comes to monitoring your sleeping habits and giving suggestions for better sleep some wearables are better than others. The most popular wearables that track your sleep patterns are the Jawbone UP series, MisFits, Fitbits, Withings Pulse O2s, Nike + Fuelband, Microsoft Bands, and My Basis Peaks. Each wearable comes with its own pros and cons that are worth looking into, but all of them do the basic tasks of monitoring your sleep.

All of the bands have the are able to track your heart rate, monitor your sleep cycles, and present all the information on an app or website. The Jawbone UP series provides in depth suggestions and tips for better sleep, whereas My Basis Peak also measures movement in your sleep, and provides a sleep score to better conceptualize your quality of sleep.

Apps

IoT gives you the ability to download apps that monitor your sleep and give suggestions for improvement!

SleepBot and Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock are two apps that turn your phone into a motion sensor that can track your movements while you sleep. You turn on the app before going to sleep and place your phone next to your pillow or close to your body on your bed. When you wake up it has a report on your sleep.

In addition to giving you a brief report of your sleep both apps also double as alarm clocks. The app will slowly wake you up within a 15-90 minute window of your choosing. The idea is that the app will wake up at the time in the window provided when you are the ‘most’ awake. For instance, the app will try and wait until you are out of deep sleep to wake you if the window you provide is long enough.

Devices

Beds, apps, wearables could there be more?!? Of course! There is always more in the world of IoT! In addition to everything previously mentioned there are also devices that sit under or on our beds that monitor and track your body while you’re sleeping.

Beddit is a device that attaches to your bed and measures the quality and quantity of your sleep, has a smart alarm similar to that of the apps previously mentioned, and gives daily tips. All this information goes to the app on your phone.

For those of you who burn the midnight oil might be interested in Chrona! The device is a insert that goes into your pillowcase, and monitors your sleep, deep sleep cycles, movement, and can wake you up in the same manner as Beddit and the apps. While it has the same functions as Beddit and the other IoT devices mentioned in this post it also has the added bonus of what the company calls a ‘deep sleep boost.’ The pillow insert promotes deep sleep by using low-frequency sounds to help have a deeper sleep.

If you’re really interested in understanding how your bedroom conditions affects your sleep Sense is the sleep monitoring device for you! Sense comes in two parts. One part is the ‘pill’ that attached to your pillow and monitors your movements and sleep cycles, and has an alarm that wake you up at the right time according to your sleep cycle. The second part is an ‘orb’ that sits on your nightstand and can determine if your room is too bright, too loud, too cold, etc to help you understand why you woke up at 3am or why you couldn’t go to sleep.

Just like the other devices, Sense sends the information to an app on your phone and you can visually see your sleep cycles from when you fell asleep to when you woke up. The app also gives suggestions on how to change your bedroom conditions for better sleep.

Link to video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=80&v=6aR2Qzgtvq4

Connecting your home to your sleep patterns!

Have you ever gone to sleep with the TV and air condition on and woken up to late night infomercials in a freezing house? Don’t worry IoT has solution for that too!

Samsung’s SleepSense is a device that goes under your bed that monitors and tracks your sleep cycle like everything in this blog post, but has the added effect of turning off your smart TV if it senses that you’ve fallen asleep. Now you’ll never have to wake up to Netflix 4 episodes ahead of you! In addition to being able to be synced with your smart TV it can also be synced with your air conditioning, smart refrigerator, or any other smart appliances you may have in your home!

SleepSense transmits its data to your phone for you to view your sleep score the next day. Not only does it give you suggestions for when or how to sleep for a better sleep it can also give suggestions based on the other smart devices it is connected to. For instance if you have a smart refrigerator it can track what foods you may have eaten that led to a bad sleep. Imagine knowing exactly what it was that caused your restlessness!

Here at thethings.iO we connect devices or wearables. We are a Cloud solution for companies that decide to build new cool things that can be connected to improve our lives. If you want to know more about us, you can create an account by clicking here, sign up to receive our monthly newsletter or follow us on Twitter! Stay tuned and be the first in knowing the latest news of the IoT world and thethings.iO.