We’ve gotten accustomed to tracking sleep with smartwatches and fitness trackers, but wearing something on your wrist to bed can be annoying. Companies like Google have come up unique ways to track sleep using radar, and now smart bulb company Sengled is applying the same technology to its lights.
Sengled’s new bulbs feature Frequency-Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) radar, which combines with Sengled’s AI can measure your sleep quality through the night, along with your average heart rate and body temperature. It works similarly to Google’s Soli chip, which is baked into last year’s 7-inch sleep-sensing Nest Hub smart display.
This sort of radar-based technology has gained traction in recent years as it’s less invasive at tracking vital signs for multiple people. If Sengled bulbs detect abnormal changes to your baseline of measurements, the light’s colours will change to alert a potential issue.
The data tracked by the smart bulbs is synced to the Sengled Home app, though the company has plans to integrate with other third-party health apps. If you buy multiple bulbs, you can set them up to monitor general behaviour, like whether someone has fallen in the home and requires emergency help.
Aside from its health features, Sengled’s latest bulbs are pretty classic smart bulbs, with both Bluetooth and wifi so you can set them up on your home network with using a hub as a controller. The bulb itself features a Colour Rendering Index (CRI) of 90-plus, which means it gets nice and bright. Sengled’s bulbs are also compatible with Alexa and Google’s voice commands, and they natively support Apple’s HomeKit. Sengled didn’t mention Matter support for integrating its bulbs with other smart home products from other companies.
Sengled’s health-monitoring bulbs are still in development, but the company says the bulbs are expected to launch Q4 of this year — that’s a long way off, so we’ll see.