A lot of us suck at sleep. But exactly how do we suck at it? Do we toss and turn a lot? Snore? Are we roused by outside noises? Well, the new Misfit Beddit Sleep System promises to answer those questions.
You might remember Misfit as the makers of the Shine — one of the most attractive fitness trackers out there. It’s a pretty excellent wearable, but it’s much better in your pocket than it is on your wrist. Really any wearable that requires you to remember to transfer to your wrist and then back into your pocket in the morning is kind of asking for trouble. The Misfit Beddit System is really two separate devices, though. You’ve got the Shine, which you keep on your body by day, and you’ve got the Beddit, which is a full time resident of your bed.
The Beddit really looks pretty slick. It’s a thin piece of film that goes on top of your mattress but under your sheets. That film attaches to a little box that hangs over the side of your bed, out of the way. It uses ballistocardiography to measure heart rate and respiration, and to measure snoring, it uses the sensor and your phone’s microphone (which measures ambient sound for a baseline) to gather data. Pretty smart. It’s also sensitive enough that it can isolate your heart rate and respiration from another person’s, should you be sharing your bed with someone (though they’d need their own Beddit if they wanted to track their stats, too).
All of that data will be integrated into the Misfit app, where it will be aggregated with your daytime activity data from the Shine (assuming you’ve purchased both). It can also use the sleep data to help determine your sleep phase, so it can wake you up when you’re in a light sleep phase, instead of a deep sleep phase (which may increase grogginess).
Now, this is the first time we’ve seen this idea. Withings announced the Aura way back in January, which offers a lot of the same functionality (plus lights and sounds), and would integrate into the same ecosystem as the Withings Pulse activity tracker. Unfortunately we still don’t know when we’ll be able to buy the Aura or how much it will cost. In contrast, the Misfit Beddit is real and buyable today for $US150.
There’s still a lot we don’t know, of course. How thin is that strip of film, really? Will it be annoying to sleep with it under you, or will you not even notice? How accurate is the system? Unknown, but rest assured we’ll be trying it just as soon as we can. [Misfit]
