I tried an experiment last night with an iPhone app called Sleep 101. It's supposed to be able to tell you how well you're sleeping based on the movement you make during the night. It also has an alarm clock that can wake you up w/in twenty minutes of your alarm by figuring out when you're in the lightest sleep and waking you then.
I'm not entirely sure how well it worked, since it reported that I had 99% efficiency in sleeping last night and I happen to know that I woke up at least 3 times and actually got out of bed once. Not sure how efficient that is. Lol. Still, I thought it was an interesting concept for an app. You put it on the corner of your bed and it uses the gyroscope in the phone to sense movement in the mattress so it can tell how restless you are. It figures if you haven't moved in 5 minutes that you're probably asleep.
Tonight I'm going to try the Sleep Cycle app. It promises to be a little more accurate in the monitoring, and also has a graph for when you're (supposedly) in deep sleep, REM sleep, etc. I've always been curious to know my sleep cycle, so this well be pretty interesting if it's at all accurate. It works much the same way as the Sleep 101 app (placing it on your mattress while you sleep), but I like the aspect that it also records your sleep stages.
Another cool thing about this second app is that it has a "sleep aid" feature where it plays nature sounds until it knows you're asleep. That's an interesting aspect to this, as I've tried mp3's of nature sounds before, but then it's like... do I leave it playing all night or just try to remember to turn it off before I've completely fallen asleep? Or if you use the iPod snooze feature (which turns off the iPod after a certain amount of time), it always seems to turn off before I'm actually asleep. I'll be curious to see if having a "smart" sleep sound will be more relaxing since I won't have it in the back of my mind that I need to stay awake long enough to turn it off. Lol.
So anyway, I'll definitely report back to let you know what I think after using this one! Have you ever used either of these apps (or a similar one)? What did you think? Did it help you sleep?
I'm not entirely sure how well it worked, since it reported that I had 99% efficiency in sleeping last night and I happen to know that I woke up at least 3 times and actually got out of bed once. Not sure how efficient that is. Lol. Still, I thought it was an interesting concept for an app. You put it on the corner of your bed and it uses the gyroscope in the phone to sense movement in the mattress so it can tell how restless you are. It figures if you haven't moved in 5 minutes that you're probably asleep.
Tonight I'm going to try the Sleep Cycle app. It promises to be a little more accurate in the monitoring, and also has a graph for when you're (supposedly) in deep sleep, REM sleep, etc. I've always been curious to know my sleep cycle, so this well be pretty interesting if it's at all accurate. It works much the same way as the Sleep 101 app (placing it on your mattress while you sleep), but I like the aspect that it also records your sleep stages.Another cool thing about this second app is that it has a "sleep aid" feature where it plays nature sounds until it knows you're asleep. That's an interesting aspect to this, as I've tried mp3's of nature sounds before, but then it's like... do I leave it playing all night or just try to remember to turn it off before I've completely fallen asleep? Or if you use the iPod snooze feature (which turns off the iPod after a certain amount of time), it always seems to turn off before I'm actually asleep. I'll be curious to see if having a "smart" sleep sound will be more relaxing since I won't have it in the back of my mind that I need to stay awake long enough to turn it off. Lol.
So anyway, I'll definitely report back to let you know what I think after using this one! Have you ever used either of these apps (or a similar one)? What did you think? Did it help you sleep?
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