I’m going to try to review two different applications for Android that are designed to track your sleeping habits and improve your ability to wake up on time.
Both SleepBot (http://mysleepbot.com/) and SleepTime (http://www.azumio.com/apps/sleep-time/) have the same basic strategy. You put your phone under your pillow and go to sleep. The phone’s accelerometer notices your tossing and turning or your deeply quiet snoozing, and keeps track of same overnight. When it comes to be time to wake up, they look for a time window when you’re not in deep sleep in order to maximize the chance that you wake up refreshed.
I haven’t used SleepTime yet, but SleepBot seemed to work this morning. That is to say, it did wake me up at 7:00 alert enough to notice that I was awake, but since I didn’t have anything else planned for that early hour I caught some more sleep.
The only hitch I really see is that overnight is when I like to charge the phone, and by keeping the phone under the pillow it gets in the way of starting the next day with a full battery.
I’d be happy to hear any reviews or recommendations from anyone who’s tried these over a longer period of time. I have a faint goal of getting to bed earlier and getting up earlier, and if this can be accomplished with the help of a tiny habit to put my phone under my pillow before bedtime, let’s try that out and see what works.
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Hi Edward,
I’m Jane, the designer of SleepBot– I noticed you said that you keep the phone under your pillow while tracking instead of keeping it on charger?
We actually recommend you putting your phone next to your pillow so it doesn’t muffle movements/sounds tracked, and also it may make it more hot since it’s running during the night! I have a charger close to my bed because I used to charge it and leave it on my nightstand, so I usually just plug it in and put it in the empty space next to my pillow.
If that’s not a great option for you, make sure you check if you can enable “Screen-off Tracking” which is possible for newer phones, which minimizes battery consumption 🙂
Make sure to monitor your sleep debt! and let me know if you have any suggestions. 😀
Hi Edward,
I’m Jane, the designer of SleepBot– I noticed you said that you keep the phone under your pillow while tracking instead of keeping it on charger?
We actually recommend you putting your phone next to your pillow so it doesn’t muffle movements/sounds tracked, and also it may make it more hot since it’s running during the night! I have a charger close to my bed because I used to charge it and leave it on my nightstand, so I usually just plug it in and put it in the empty space next to my pillow.
If that’s not a great option for you, make sure you check if you can enable “Screen-off Tracking” which is possible for newer phones, which minimizes battery consumption 🙂
Make sure to monitor your sleep debt! and let me know if you have any suggestions. 😀
I can’t get the sounds to play that are in my log. how does that work?
Does the sound recorded reflect the whole duration or is it made up snapshots.
I can’t get the sound to work – the peaks are there but no sounds. How can I get them to replay? The record mode is on.
aashleigh, here’s a video on how to listen to the sound files on sleepbot:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgW5Jl46nuo