There is another iPhone app in the market which should aid sleep deprived people to resolve their sleeping problems. The new app is called the Sleep Cycle app which turns your iPhone into a virtual sleep tracker. It makes use of the iPhone’s sensor which monitors movement.
Sleep Cycle uses these fluctuations to create a nightly record of your sleep, which it presents to you each morning in the form of a graph. More remarkably still, it uses this information to decide when you’ve reached the optimal point in your cycle to wake up. Then it assists you back to consciousness with soothing music.
(Source) Guardian
Also see other interesting tags at SleepZine: consciousness, fluctuations, graph, guardian, iphone, iphones, music source, nightly record, optimal point, sleep, sleeping problems, soothing music
More similar categories at Sleepzine: Sleep Disorders, SLEEP Gadgets.
i’ve tried that app for a while now and compared it to my scientifically proven axbo sleep cycle alarm clock (www.axbo.com) and i have to say I don’t know what the hell the app was tracking but it sure wasn’t me. The results differ greatly and most likely result in me getting up grumpy because the app isn’t precise enough. sorry, but they need to do a lot of improving before they have me on board.
I’ve had good results with this app so far. It isn’t perfect…but it helps me (i.e. it picks a better time than my set time) about half the time…and I definitely feel more awake when I wake up on a morning where it shows me at a lighter stage when I wake up. It would work better at picking a good time if the window were longer than a half hour…but at a certain point you’re just giving up too much quantity of sleep just to make it easier to get out of bed. I generally know what the graph is going to be wake-up time just based on how hard it was to get to the coffee maker. I make a point to try to predict this before looking at it. As often as I am right, it continually re-enforces my confidence in it, and I would guess increases any placebo effect I’m getting (which is fine by me as long as its helping me get up easier). When it doesn’t help its no different from any other alarm clock, going off at a set time. At 1/200th of the cost of axbo and other popular bio-alarm clocks, I feel this app well worth its $0.99 price tag.
My wife and I have had the app for two months now. I have to admit, I’ve been curious about it’s accuracy because I apparently have some very inconsistent sleep patterns – but then, I also admit I really have been inconsistent with my bedtimes too…
I also find that the alarm is not always the best at judging when to wake me since I have had several mornings where the alarm goes off and pulls me out of a deep sleep I might have naturally left in another half hour. As a self-employed contractor, I do not mind a wider alarm window and wish there was a setting to adjust this on the app.
Best thing about this app: realizing I’ve been averaging an hour too little sleep on a regular basis. Time to change that habit!
Anything to do with sharing a bed with your wife by any chance?
I’ve found that i always wake up seconds before the sleep cycle alarm goes off. It’s quite spooky actually but i think it might be something to do with being in such a light phase of sleep that once it has woken me i can actually remember the last few seconds. If that makes any sense.
On a differtent note, ive been finding it funny how my sleep is affected when im drunk. Take a look at http://christophercharlesrichards.blogspot.com/ to see how i practially died one night.
ccr