Blasting through a $80,000 funding goal on Indiegogo, the Beddit sleep tracker is a new type of health and wellness device that keeps tabs on the quality of your nightly eight-hour naps. Rather than having to wear the device around your wrist like the Fitbit Flex, the Beddit tracker is an extremely thin film-like sensor strip that’s attached directly to your mattress with adhesive. After sleeping on the Beddit tracker for a night, the user will be able to view data related to heart rate, breathing rhythm, noise and light levels, snoring, general movement, sleeping stages and an overall quality score for each night of sleep.
Ideally, this data could help users improve their sleeping conditions in order to optimize the bedroom for a great night of sleep. The Beddit tracker is powered by a USB power supply, thus there’s no need for recharging a battery each night. According to the creators, the sensor doesn’t emit any type of electromagnetic field or radiation, so it’s safe to sleep on each night. Data collected by the sensor is automatically transferred to a mobile device over Bluetooth and can be viewed at any time within the mobile application.
Beyond the raw data, the application also offers suggestions on how to improve the quality of your sleep during the night. It also comes with an smart alarm clock that can be set to wake you up during the best sleeping stage in order to feel refreshed in the morning. On the weekends, it can be set to wake up users when they have had enough restorative sleep. If sleeping in a bed with a partner, users will need two separate Beddit trackers in order to collect data for both users. In addition to a regular mattress, the Beddit tracker is also compatible with memory foam mattresses. However, the creators don’t recommend using the tracker on a waterbed if there are more than two people in the bed.
After hitting the $200,000 mark in funding, the creators are also planning on building a cloud service that backs up all sleeping data, allows for data exporting in spreadsheet form, provides simple social media sharing options and presents graphic visualizations of sleep data over time. In addition, users can opt into sharing their sleep data anonymously with other Beddit tracker users in order to see how they stack up against everyone else. The creators didn’t specify which social networks would be included in Beddit Cloud, but it’s likely that Facebook and Twitter are at the top of the list. The group also plans to release an open API for third party integration into other apps.
At this time, the Beddit sensor is available for preorder at a $99 price point on the Indiegogo project page. There are also other options available for couples, families and businesses. The group plans to ship the first batch of Beddit sleep trackers to early backers by November 2013. However, be aware that manufacturing delays often push back estimated shipping dates on these types of projects by weeks or even months in some cases.
