Understanding our sleep can help us get more of it. So it’s no wonder sleep tracking apps are so popular. By using sound to track your movements throughout the night, sleep tracking apps can help you discover what you’re doing while you sleep on your best mattress.
But these apps often have a downside: Outside noises (such as a busy road or a barking dog) can be mistaken for sleepy sounds and skew your data. Sleep wave, the latest innovation in sleep tracking apps, aims to avoid this problem by turning the tables. Instead of just listening, it actually creates its own sound.
Well, maybe not noise exactly. Sleepwave describes the tone used in its patented PureWave Motion technology as a “low-power ultrasonic sound wave.” You can’t hear it (and neither can your pets), but if you move, you disrupt the sound wave. Your phone’s microphone picks up the disturbance, the app recognizes this as activity and can use it to build up an image of your sleep cycle.
Even if you spend your nights face down in your pillow, Sleepwave should still be able to record your rest. “(The user) will still be breathing, and the technology can detect chest movements to estimate their breathing rate,” explains Jules Goldberg, founder of Sleepwave. “The breathing rate is used to predict the user’s sleep phase.”
Sleepwave overcomes the major problem that plagues most sleep tracking apps: mistaking outside sounds for movement. But while Sleepwave won’t think a car backfiring is a sudden snore, could it be that your partner’s nighttime waking is mistaken for your own? According to Jules, filtering users shouldn’t be a big problem.
“The low-power ultrasonic waves decrease in power the further they get from the phone, so the signal will be strongest within a range of about 1 meter. If your partner gets up at night, they will often detect some movement , but the signal will be weaker compared to when the primary user is moving.”
Sleepwave acts primarily as a gentle alarm, waking you up when your body is in a lighter phase of sleep. Users can also explore the recorded data to learn more about their sleep patterns and consider new ways of sleeping. For those who have found that a noisy household has rendered traditional sleep tracking apps essentially useless, it has a lot of potential. However, can ultrasound technology replace even the best sleep trackers: wearables?
Right now – probably not. Wearable sleep trackers can collect data directly from the source (that’s you), for an accurate read of your sleep chronotype. Soundwave technology may be able to track your movements, but it can’t provide the same in-depth view of overall sleep quality, and even Jules admits that Sleepwave’s user filtering is an “ongoing project.” But if you’re looking for an affordable sleep tracker that won’t confuse an upstairs neighbor with a restless night, Sleepwave may be the solution.