

Show HN: weekend project, an attempt at a simple bed time calculator - riskish
http://www.waketimes.com/

======
ddw
What if I don't fall asleep exactly when I should?

For instance, let's say I had to get up at 8AM. The recommended times are:

11PM 12:30AM 2AM 3:30AM

What if I go to bed at 10:40 but don't fall asleep until 11:30? I'd be in
between sleep cycles, right? And am I correct in assuming that the closer I
fall asleep to when it recommends, the less groggy I would be in the morning?

I tried out the Wakemate a while back but it wasn't syncing with my Evo and I
had to get a refund. It was a shame because I really want to get better sleep
somehow and the Wakemate seemed to best product out there. I'll try the Lark
when they have an Android app.

~~~
Shenglong
Most people don't take 50 minutes to fall asleep unless they've just slept.
It's been a while, but I believe the well-rested person carrying no sleep debt
(according to Maas) takes about 20 minutes to fall asleep. If you're over-
exerted (as most of us are), it should take less time than that. You just need
to time this stuff properly, and get a sense for about how long it takes you
to fall asleep.

Also, the 1.5 hours between sleep cycles isn't completely accurate - but it
makes more practical sense to time it this way. Add to this, that not everyone
has the same internal functionality, and you have a really complicated
problem. Everyone needs a different amount of sleep each night, and I believe
the cycles are different as well.

However, if you wake up around the times it suggests, you have a higher chance
of feeling better. It doesn't ensure anything, but if you were going to wake
up around that time anyway, might as well adjust 10-20 minutes for a better
chance.

------
mshron
I think the typography and design are easier to read than
<http://sleeptyi.me>, but it is uncomfortably similar wording and navigation
if they're not made by the same person.

~~~
mise
<http://sleepyti.me/>

------
stravid
Interesting, I'm currently working myself on a mobile friendly clone of
<http://sleepyti.me/>

Because using either of the two sites is not easy on a small screen. And who
has his laptop with him when lying in bed and checking the wake up time.

~~~
reemrevnivek
> And who has his laptop with him when lying in bed and checking the wake up
> time.

Me! ^

I'm a poor college student with a dumb phone and a single room. My laptop sits
on my desk, which is in the same room as my bed. Unless your mobile version
works on an 07 Motorola Razr, and doesn't require a data plan, I can't use it.
I assume this is not the case, so if you want to cater to my demographic,
please make sure the site is usable through a normal browser without a
touchscreen.

Note that my demographic isn't likely to drop a lot of money on an app that
does this, but I'm not sure it's worth much at all.

^ OK, so I actually use a normal alarm clock and I get up and go to bed at the
same time every day (calculated with this in mind).

~~~
stravid
Same here, I'm also a poor student with a really dumb phone :-)

I just think the majority would use such a site on their mobile. That's why I
go mobile first. And I won't charge money, it's more like a little side
project to try out new stuff!

------
redidas
What if this was taken one step further and integrated with an alarm app for
your phone? That would be a more useful implementation of this idea to me than
a web page would be.

You could provide a time range of 60 to 90 minutes of when you need to get up,
then press a button on the app to "set" it when you go to bed. The alarm could
then figure out when the best time would be for you to get up in your provided
time range.

Granted this assumes your audiences bed time varies from day to day, which
probably isn't the best for someone trying to get the best sleep in the first
place.

You could also do the reverse, set a wake-up time and have an alarm go off as
a reminder for upcoming bedtimes...

~~~
reemrevnivek
The YC 09 startup WakeMate (<http://wakemate.com/>) took this much further:
(Edit - Took down my run-on sentence describing them, here's their pitch)

 _The WakeMate is a comfortable wristband that you wear when you sleep. It
measures subtle body movements—a scientifically proven method (Actigraphy) to
map dips and peaks in your sleep cycle. The wristband communicates directly
with your mobile phone to calculate the ideal wake time closest to your alarm
setting. When you wake up, your night's sleep data is automatically uploaded
to Wakelytics™, our online analytics platform._

Their blog (<http://blog.wakemate.com/>) and live support seem to be down at
the moment. Anyone know how they're doing?

~~~
truthseeker
I do not know if wakemate made any improvements lately but after giving it a
try several times after I got it, I gave up. It sits in a box alongside old
power adapters and other cables.

The main problem for me was when I toss and turn at night, it loses contact
with the phone (sitting on the end table) and starts screaming 'Lost contact,
lost contact'.

If I continued to use it, my wife would have thrown me out onto the patio to
sleep.

There were several other occasions where wakemate never woke me up.

I would have loved to see wakemate work, I wanted to root for a startup, see
them succeed. You only get so many chances with a single customer. In my
books, they failed badly on their promise. continuously. starting with their
delivery of the product and then later with the product itself.

------
abailin
Have you seen <http://sleepyti.me> ?

~~~
davedx
Wow, no locale detection.. telling me what time to go to sleep in US times
when I live in Europe is pretty crappy for a web app.

~~~
abailin
Never thought of that, good point. I usually just do the "find out when to
wake up if I go to bed right now" mode. I'm assuming that works for you, since
they use javascript to determine your time.

------
tcarnell
I think finding your individual recipe for a good night sleep is really
important. From what I have read people seem to have their own patterns etc.
If the app also had some kind of feedback/tuning system so you could use it as
a tool to find your perfect routine, this might be great...

TYPO: "try to get into bed around 15 before one of these times" - change to
"15 mins"

------
raphman
Bug: If I do not select a value for the 'minutes' field, the suggested bed
times are 12 hours off.

~~~
reemrevnivek
Suggested quick fix: Set the default 'minutes' value to '00'.

~~~
riskish
done

------
tobylane
It's not likely I'll go to sleep now. It'll be in half an hour for me
personally, it varies between people. You might want to add a box called
something like typical time from computer to sleep.

------
wccrawford
An interesting idea, but I think the other way made more sense. I'm going to
go to sleep when I'm tired. Waking up should be done according to the rhythm.

------
zokier
The form is partly obscured in a narrow window. I'd remove the negative
margin-left from #bedtime_calc in the CSS.

And 24h clock would be nice.

------
oacgnol
Not meant to be a petty criticism, but the shade of purple used hurts my eyes
after looking at it for 3 minutes. Just something to think about.

------
kaffeinecoma
Constructive criticism: change "goto" -> "go to". Unless you're targeting
programmers. :-)

------
puj
This is really nice. Simple. Could you make one for parents of infants and
toddlers? :)

------
riskish
clickable: <http://www.waketimes.com/>

------
ahmetalpbalkan
Needs scientific proof to users at the page. Otherwise looks too meaningless.

------
jamesgagan
dumbest thing i've ever seen. do people really need an app to tell them when
to go to bed??

~~~
ikarous
Potentially. A full sleep cycle is approximately ninety minutes in length. If
you wake in the middle of the cycle, you take a cognitive performance hit for
the rest of the day. So, in some cases, sleeping for thirty fewer minutes can
lead to higher subsequent alertness. This is a crucial consideration when
you're only allowed to get a few hours of sleep at a time.

Case in point: I've known a number of individuals with highly variable sleep
schedules imposed by their work who performed this calculation manually. I
imagine that they would find an application or a cycle-aware alarm clock on
their phones to be quite handy.

Aside from that, calling someone's work the "dumbest thing you've ever seen"
is both unnecessary and probably untrue. Please don't be uncivil.

~~~
jamesgagan
I say call a spade a spade. This is dumb and perhaps only useful to obsessive
compulsive individuals who feel some need to micromanage every aspect of their
life.

