Louis Szondy: First, I'd like to let you know how much the Sleep as Android app has helped me, and I've only had it a few weeks. Before this I have had trouble sleeping early, getting enough sleep, and I've been functioning badly as a result. I have to admit I did not know about the importance of waking up during "light sleep".
I am sure this application will be of help to most people, since I suspect very few people these days get either enough nor the right type of sleep. Already I've been getting more and better sleep since using your app: I am taken to sleep gently by nice sounds that slowly decrease in volume and woken up during light sleep phase close to alarm time by music of my choice slowly increasing in volume.
What I find really amazing too is that I can see a graph of my light and deep sleep, as well as listen to recordings of any talk, snoring or other sounds that took place while sleeping. So I have many questions and I'm sure that most of our readers will benefit from better sleep if they have an Android or iPhone. This app is available for iPhone users too, is that correct?
Petr Nalevka: Currently we only have an Android version "Sleep as Android", although there are alternatives for IPhone from other parties such as "Sleep cycle tracker".
Q: Please tell me, how is it that a mobile phone on the mattress can know when we are in deep sleep and light sleep with such accuracy, and give us the times and graphs of our sleep cycles as they occurred?
A: In medicine there are different applications where accelerometers are very useful to deduce various conditions of a patient based on his movement patterns. This method is called actigraphy and has proven to be useful also for measuring sleep cycles. It is not as precise as EEG for example, but it delivers comprehensive results and it is much simpler to use in home conditions.
Contemporary smartphones have accelerometers built-in mostly for screen orientation changes, gaming or augmented reality. But they are quite precise ? on par with some medical devices ? and may also be used for actigraphy and sleep cycle tracking.
During your sleep your body is going through various phases. To simplify, light sleep and deep sleep phases are taking turns. Deep sleep phases are followed with limited muscle activity up to fully relaxed muscles toward the end of each deep sleep phase. This allows us to assume your sleep cycles from your movement based on accelerometric data delivered to your phone through the mattress.
Q: This is something many people may not realize, thinking that the phone is relying on *sound* not movement. So it relies exclusive upon movement, and can even notice the slightest movement?
A: Yes, sleep cycles are estimated based on movement exclusively. You may start Sleep as Android in the "test sensors" mode and see the accelerometer is really precise so that even the slightest movement gets captured. The curve in the graph is never flat, even when you leave the phone on the table.
There may be some relation between sound and sleep cycles but it is probably very much individual and not as straightforward as movement. Still capturing sound during your sleep may be another good idea to do. It may reveal some other characteristics of your sleep such as snoring or sleep talking. Also different serious sleep disorders may be detected using the audio information. For some people even common snoring may have serious consequences and may for example lead to further development of sleep apnea if not treated.
LS: Yes, and this is a part of the app that many may find useful or interesting: that the app records any noises during the night, so if you sleep talk or snore, this can be played back later.
We spend perhaps a third of our lives asleep. Assuming that when we are awake we are really awake :-) And that time is really important. It determines much of our health and productivity as well as state of mind during the following day(s). Waking refreshed, and not groggy from a deep sleep phase, is so important, and yet, your app which helps us to do exactly that, costs only $2?!
Q: Why is the price so low, how do you manage to constantly develop and bring in new features, and also answer questions and support mail? You do a really great job of customer service, how many of you work on this project?
A: Exactly as you say, Sleep as Android is not only measuring sleep cycles, but it is trying to make maximum use of this information to help you improve your sleep experience. This includes: finding an optimal moment for your wake up to feel better in the morning, advice on your sleep habits (SleepStats) ? e.g. what is a good time for you to go to bed, measuring sleep quality (deep sleep %) etc.
The price may be so favorable (just ~$2) for two main reasons. First, the incredible progress in mobile technology and devices we achieved recently - basically all you need to track and improve your sleep is already in your pocket and its called the smartphone.
Second, the great idea of app markets and the progress in micro payments which allow to offer the app to a great amount of people and divide your development costs among them.
Those two factors allow us to offer the app at minimal cost and still keep improving it. We do release a new version roughly each 2 weeks and beside bug fixes and more device compatibility we try to introduce new features in each release. For example the most recent improvements include: nature sound lullabies, experimental lucid dreaming support, backup alarm or ringtone playlists.
We take our support task very seriously and we try to answer vast majority of the requests, even we are getting around 30-50 requests a day. We are two guys doing the job mostly in free time.
Q: You mentioned "lucid dreaming support", can you say something more about that?
A: Regarding lucid dreaming, currently this feature is not well documented and it is really for the enthusiasts to play with and give us feedback. In general it plays some audio hint which you train yourself for during your deep sleep phase to allow you to realize you are dreaming. The idea is you can than control your dreams and have a lot of fun :).
That's why I say it's really for enthusiasts as people mostly want to have a calm sleep rather than having some audio triggers during the night.
Q: What actually made you start this project to make this "app" (application/program)?
A: Several years ago I got interested in the use of actigraphy to enhance a telemedical project which became the base of my dissertation thesis. I did want to test actigraphy myself and was looking at some single-purpose sleep cycle alarm clock devices which appeared on the market. But those devices were quite expensive and I was thinking, why should I buy such a device when I already have an Android smartphone with accelerometer (it was an Android 1.6 at that time). And that's how we started to code "Sleep as Android".
LS: Looking at the reviews by other users, I see mostly either five stars or one star. I see five stars from those who are clearly using the application correctly, and one from those who seem to be making mistakes such as putting the phone under the pillow, or not having it plugged into a charger, or unable to dim the screen and leaving it face up. Yet others who write in for help are happy though as they then get the answers how to use it correctly.
Q: What are the reasons or limitations of use?
A: I agree the app is not yet as user-friendly as it could be. On our website we have a quick start guide, explanation of sleep tracking principles, a FAQ and a forum with over 500 topics all answered. We are working to improve this aspect and we are preparing a tutorial and help within the app itself.
Also the app is accessing all soft of hardware functions of the phone (mic, accelerometr, flash light, audio playback...) which makes it hard to keep all aspects functional on the huge zoo of Android devices out there. According to the Play store, our app may run on more than 2600 devices (and there are unofficial devices not listed). We are supporting up (down) to Android 1.5 and 1.6 where we still have thousands of users.
To make it even more complicated we are suffering from a bug in the Android system introduced in Android 1.6. It was partially fixed in 2.3.5 but it is still present on several >4.0 devices. The bug causes the accelerometer to stop providing data when the screen turns off. For the affected devices we need to keep the screen on all night (at minimal level) and we need a sophisticated detection system to recognize whether it is an affected device or not.
Those issues may be the source of some negative ratings, but we are trying hard to deliver a functional app on most devices out there and our average rating is now 4.53 stars out of 5.
LS: I am not one of those who normally has to be up at a certain time, my main worry is falling asleep, and waking up after enough sleep, not before. But I found Sleep as Android makes me go to bed earlier by alerting me when it is time to sleep, gently and persistently even if my wife often tells me the same thing. It helps me get to sleep faster by playing the right sounds. It then gently wakes me in the morning at optimal time during a light sleep phase with nice music of my choice slowly rising in volume. But others set it to make sure they have really woken up in the morning, those heavy sleepers who have to wake up by a certain time, no matter what, or they'll miss the train to work, for example.
Q: Can you tell us about those features that make sure that someone is really awake and does not either keep hitting the snooze button, or even switch off the alarm and fall back asleep?
A: We call this feature CAPTCHA. Even though we are not using it for telling apart spam bots from people but we are recognizing people who are fully woken up and ready to go to work from sleepy "zombies" whose only concern is to dismiss the alarm as quickly as possible and continue sleeping even they will miss their work and get into a lot of troubles later!
Apparently there is a numerous group of people with real difficulties to get out of bed in the morning and Sleep as Android may help here.
The basic concept of all our CAPTCHA's is: the alarm won't stop ringing before you solve a little task which proves you are fully awake. Simple Math CAPTCHA was the first we introduced. To dismiss the alarm you had to solve a very simple mathematical equation. But some people did not like math in the morning so we introduced "Sleeping sheep" where you have to find an open-eyed sheep in a herd of sleeping ones.
Than we also have CAPTCHAs where you need to do some physical activity to stop the alarm. For example shake your phone for a while.
For the heaviest sleepers we have a QR code CAPTCHA. You print out any QR code you like and put it on your bathroom mirror for example or on your fridge. Later when the alarm rings the only way to stop it is to get out of the bed and scan the QR code in your bathroom or kitchen.
Q: As your price is so low, as soon as the 2 week trial expired, I purchased the license. I also bought the extended stats ($2 also?). What happens if someone does not buy the license and opts to continue to use it for free, I saw some advertising on the app, and I think it would only work every two days?
A: By the way thank you very much for purchasing our app and to all our other users who did that too. We use your contribution to bring you new features and to make the app available on as many devices as we can.
Anyway, if you decide to not purchase the unlock you are free to continue using the app but as you said sleep tracking will only work every second day. Still the alarm clock will wake you up in the morning with all the other features (CAPTCHA, gradual volume, time to bed etc.) but will not use smart wake up at that particular day. Also some lullabies and nature sound ringtones are available in the full version only.
Q: And what of the extended stats? I've only had those for a day, so can you tell us what they do and how they can help us improve our sleeping habits or patterns, or what purpose they serve?
A: SleepStats provide you with more inside into your sleep data. It provides several visually rich and informative charts. You can see how does you average sleep length and average deep sleep develop over time. You can see your actual and cumulative sleep deficit visualized. Sleep patterns show your wake up and fall asleep hours in a range-bar chart.
The highlight of SleepStats is definitely sleep advice. We apply a polynomial regression model to your sleep data history to see which sleep characteristics lead to best sleep results. Based on that we can advise you on the best sleep length and fall asleep hour.
Q: Can I ask, how old are you, and what is your background and where are you located?
A: I'm 32 years old, I have a PhD in computer science, I'm working as an IT consultant but most of all I'm a technology geek. I really enjoy all the new possibilities technology has brought to our lives. I'm located in Czech republic, Prague.
Q: How do you use the App yourself, if that is not too private to ask... do you listen to recordings, use the go to sleep sounds, if so which one, do you use the "time to sleep" alarm, and which of the waking methods do you use? And how has the App helped you?
A: I'm a big fan of the app myself :). I use it every day and so does my girlfriend. She likes especially to accuse me of snoring using the recording feature as evidence.
During the work week I use a 30 minutes smart wake up period. On the weekend I use 2 hours. I use a playlist of nature sounds to wake me up and recently I really enjoy lullabies as I fall asleep very fast when I listen to "diving with whales". This lullaby is really calming me down although I also like "thunderstom" or "fireplace".
As I'm a bit of a workaholic the app especially helps me to keep my sleep deficits low. I use an insistent "time to bed" notification with an ideal sleep duration of 8 hours (although 7 and 7.5 may be more preferable for others).
During the work week I use the math CAPTCHA which not only gets me out of bed, but also it is a small exercise to get my brain started in the morning.
Q: What else do you do of interest, or is this a full-time job? It sure sounds like it!
A: I'm working in business IT on short-term projects. Beside Sleep as Android we have a small but interesting portfolio of other Android apps such as Dock4Droid, AppReactor or Apps Watchdog. In Czech republic we are running probably the biggest public fuel price database (www.pumpdroid.com) allowing our users to save money on gas using their smartphones. Recently I had a lot of fun presenting our app's at various local tech conferences.
Q: When did you start making this App, and what is now in the works? I see some people complain about the look of the interface, but personally I love the existing look.
A: We started 2.5 years ago.
One of the things in front of us is the migration to the Android new Holo-look where we face backward compatibility issues, but we already have a holo-styled version which is now available to anyone who is willing to test it on our website.
In addition we have many other plans on our task list. For example we would like to introduce sleep graph tagging and do a data mining analysis to provide you with more detailed advice on your sleep, improve snoring detection and noise recording quality, implement proper REM sleep phase detection, more cloud synchronization possibilities and many more. Also we are starting to cooperate with a few sleep researches where Sleep as Android may help collect sleep data.
Q: I notice that sometimes the "lullaby" to help me to sleep, goes back to louder volume when I've been a bit restless. Does it respond to me not falling asleep by restarting so that I get more time?
A: Yes, currently the lullaby feature uses accelerometric data to adjust volume and the idea is to turn the volume down as you land in the first deep sleep phase. If we recognize you are still in light sleep we get the volume back.
Q: How can we find out what our optimum sleeping length is? I thought mine was 8 hours, but now realize I never seem to get that, perhaps 7 is closer. Is it possible I became accustomed to too little sleep, and can increase my sleeping duration over time, and that this App can help me to do that?
A: There are several studies on this topic. For a long time 8 hours was suggested but more recently it gets more toward 7 hours. We thing that this figure is individual and Sleep as Android is a tool to get advice on that. For example you can rate your sleeps in the morning and than use advice in the stats add-on which tells you what sleep length maximizes your sleep rating.
Q: What happens if two people are in the bed, and go to sleep and get up at different times?
A: In some cases the other person in the bed may cause interference with your sleep tracking. This depends on the mattress, on the position of the phone. From our own experiments I can say that interference may be eliminated if you have a separate mattress or if you keep the phone on your side of the bed. Also using a smartphone armband will solve this issue. You may need to do a few experiments and find proper settings in your home conditions to eliminate this issue.
Thank you very much. I highly recommend our readers, if they have either an iPhone or an Android phone, to download and try this App. Also, the information on your web site is very much worth reading, it is not to long, and very informative. Here is a link to it.
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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/mathaba/latina/~3/GrSOE4jfeCM/
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