
Wakemate (YC S09) helps you kiss groggy mornings goodbye - aberman
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/24/wakemate-sleep-aid/
======
iamdanw
That $5 pre-order is far too easy to do. I bought one without stopping to
research other products like the <http://www.fitbit.com/>. Brilliantly
designed pricing.

It's a lot like Glastonbury ticketing. Deposits in autumn, full payment in
January. This is extra profitable because in January many people are short on
cash post-christmas and either can not or choose not to pay the full amount.
You get to keep the non-refundable deposit and then sell the ticket/product
again to another person.

As an aside, any idea on how hackable the Wakemate is? Presumably other
devices could talk to it over bluetooth, eg a homemade arduino based alarm
clock. Will the bluetooth protocol and data format used be published?

~~~
spydertennis
We're definitely open to the idea of letting people play with communicating to
our device.

~~~
fa
I've been aiming to write a Rayleigh random number generator-driven alarm app
for my iTouch (to do random-phasic sleep, e.g., countdown 20+X minutes, X
drawn from a Rayleigh(20) distribution). If something like that could
integrate with your app, that could be really cool. Crowdsourced sleep
research :)

------
aberman
I was fortunate enough to know these guys while they were building the
wakemate prototypes, and even luckier to have had the opportunity to sleep
with one (of the devices) for a week. It has made a tremendous difference in
how I feel when I wake up. Congrats guys!

~~~
sounddust
Can you give us some more details about your experience with the device?

~~~
aberman
Yeah, no problem.

I didn't get to use one of the new, super sleek, production quality ones. I
used an early prototype that slipped inside a wrist band (like tennis players
wear). It was actually still pretty comfortable to sleep with - I didnt even
feel it after the first night.

It definitely woke me up at the optimal time in my sleep cycle. The alarm app
was a really simple web app, and the bluetooth was simple. It was cool to see
my sleep analyzed with all our different metrics and quality rated. The sleep
analytics software was pretty simple, but definitely did the trick.

~~~
physcab
Can you elaborate more on how your sleep changed?

I don't have trouble getting to sleep if I put in a full day of productive
work topped off with exercise. Is this product only for people with sleep
problems?

~~~
aberman
I am actually a pretty good sleeper. I naturally sleep about 8 hours a day,
and if I wake up naturally, I usually wake up feeling pretty good
(haha...people are going to hate me for that).

The problem is when I go to bed really late and/or need to wake up earlier
than I would naturally. As it turns out, I am more affected by when I wake up
in my sleep cycle than I am by how long I sleep. If I need to wake up at
7:30am for a call with east coast people, the wakemate would wake me up at
"around" 7:30 (you can set a hard stop), during the point in my sleep cycle in
which I am most amenable to being woken up. It's the difference between
feeling like shit, and feeling like I woke up naturally.

------
prodigal_erik
I really like the idea, but putting "(works on all phones)" on your front page
is kind of shady if the actual requirements are bluetooth _and_ internet
access _and_ third-party app support. No phone I've ever owned has all those
features.

~~~
pavlov
Those features have been practically ubiquitous on GSM phones for about five
years (except for the cheapest 3rd world models). That's as close to "all
phones" as you can get.

~~~
nollidge
Yes, most phones have internet _access_ , but I strongly doubt most people
have that included in their monthly plan - I know I don't.

So do I have to pay extra charges for that? How much data is being sent? Can I
view stats on my phone? Can I tether my phone to my computer to look at stats?

I can't find any of these answers on their site. Which is frustrating, because
this almost sounds like something that would interest me.

------
codexon
This looks like the same technology used in the ubiquitous sleeptracker.
<http://www.sleeptracker.com/>

I've heard complaints that it doesn't accurately monitor your sleep cycles
because it uses an accelerometer which obviously doesn't work if you don't
move enough.

There is a product called Zeo that supposedly detects your brainwaves but then
people complain about having to wear a strap on your head.
<http://www.myzeo.com/>

Anyone want to share their experience with these sleep aids?

~~~
ryanwaggoner
ubiquitous seems a bit of a stretch... :)

~~~
codexon
Well seeing how it was mentioned all over the media like Dr. Phil, 37 Signals,
and Wired, Associated Press, G4TV, etc... I would say it is far more
ubiquitous than the zeo.

<http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=sleeptracker>

------
Steve0
What kind of battery does it use and how do you charge it? How long before it
needs to be charged. Your website is quite informative about the science but
seems to leave out this basic operation information. Looks cool anyway, with
free shipping to Belgium I'll definitly order one.

------
lunchbox
Can someone in the know comment on the soundness of the scientific principles
behind this product?

------
Caligula
I worked at a sleep company up until 2008 and there are a lot of startups and
big sleep companies getting into lowcost devices that a customer would own or
rent instead of going into a sleep lab. They would do more diagnosis or pre-
diagnosis rather than just wakeup timing but I think some had that feature. I
know there is a watch that does this.

One tip I would do if I were them were to contact all those huge sleep lab
companies and try to get them interested. Insurance covered prescribed factory
sleep labs drive the industry.

~~~
flooha
I think this is pretty significant advice. My daughter broke her foot one day
before getting on a plane to Barcelona, where we planned on doing a lot of
swimming, I had a waterproof cast cover over-nighted and they sent two. One
for me and a free one for the foot doctor. The product worked so well, it
literally saved our vacation and I couldn't say enough good things to the
doctor when we got back. I'm sure giving the free sample to the doctor was a
win for them, especially considering the doctor had never heard of the
product.

------
unohoo
>>The wristband tracks the movement of your wrist through the >>night, which
it can use to analyze your sleep patterns.

How is wrist movement co-related to sleep patterns ? Is there any scientific
study / data out there that explain the co-relation ?

Co-relation of pulse rhythm is more obvious - cant say the same about wrist
movement.

Anyone care to explain ?

~~~
gcheong
They have a paper about the actigraphy technology they use on their website
under the "How It Works" link.

------
jacquesm
Of all the recent YC announcements this is the first one that has me go: Yes!
solve a real world problem. Runner up is the flight delay guys, but I no
longer fly a lot for business so it is not as much of a factor as it used to
be.

Congratulations, excellent idea and a very nicely priced implementation.

I sincerely hope you'll sell these by the containerload.

~~~
physcab
I wonder how lucrative the market is though. As hackers, we're naturally
inclined towards products like these.

If actigraphy is an established sleep-study technique, then you have to wonder
why there aren't more players.

------
dskhatri
One of the first pages I navigate to when evaluating a product is the About Us
page. If I didn't know that Wakemate was a YC funded company I would not take
the product very seriously. Luckily the 'How it works' page
(<http://www.wakemate.com/about/>), and the references cited there make up for
the absence of an About Us page (that would hint at your credibility - at
least say you are YC funded!). I think it's worth a try! Pre-ordered one

------
petenixey
Love the idea of this. Pre-ordered.

~~~
sounddust
I pre-ordered, but there was absolutely no info about whether or not it ships
internationally (even after paying). Hopefully they'll be shipping outside the
US!

~~~
thalur
On the home page: "For a limited time: free worldwide shipping with pre-
order!"

~~~
sounddust
Yeah, they added that recently. I guess they got that question often.

------
zargon
I have been using a Now & Zen alarm clock for the last 3 years.
<http://www.now-zen.com/> (It looks like they are now calling the one I have
the 'zen timepiece.') I was fed up with electronic noises. These clocks have a
brass bowl that produces very pleasant gongs to wake you up. And it doesn't
jab you awake like most all other alarm clocks I could find. It gongs and then
waits a few minutes. If you haven't gotten up after a few minutes, it gongs
again, and waits a couple more minutes. It gradually gongs more frequently
over a period of 10 minutes.

Sometimes I am up at the first gong and sometimes it takes several. Now,
hooking up my bowl gong to the wakemate could make for a great combination.

------
Asa-Nisse
So does it ship internationally or should we just assume this is US only right
now? Clearly interested in this product but I'm from Scandinavia.

~~~
p0ppe
Excellent service from the guys! Sent them an e-mail about shipping and got a
reply in eight minutes - "we ship worldwide for free if you pre-order".

~~~
zvikara
Thanks. Pre-ordered.

~~~
nanexcool
That did it for me as well. Pre-ordered.

------
SwellJoe
Does it support polyphasic sleep? And is there an Android version?

~~~
forensic
Polyphasic sleep for knowledge workers has been thoroughly debunked by real
science.

<http://www.supermemo.com/articles/polyphasic.htm>

The science has been done. The tests are clear. Polyphasic sleepers suffer
performance losses in mental tasks compared to normal sleepers. In particular,
it significantly impairs long-term memory coding.

Charlatans like Steve Pavlina always refused to do even basic scientific
testing. His results simply can't be trusted, especially since he has a
massive vested interest in it being effective.

If there is some reason you need to sleep less than 3 hours per day, then
polyphasic is the best way to do that. However you will always have reduced
performance compared to those who get a full 7 hour sleep.

If you want a sleep schedule optimized for creative/intellectual performance,
free-running sleep is the best available. Piotr Wozniak has plenty of science
of his website showing that this is the case.

~~~
SwellJoe
_The science has been done._

I'm afraid I don't see any citations in that article for studies done
specifically on polyphasic sleep. I see citations for the natural length of
the human day (24.2 hours), sleep deprivation effects, maximum waking time for
humans, etc. But nothing but unbacked, though strongly held, assertions about
polyphasic sleep. I may have missed it, but every time the article goes into
discussion of polyphasic, it seems to talk _around_ the issue when providing
citations, and explicitly to the issue when it is clearly the authors opinion.
It has the feel of a religious tract, rather than a scientifically sound
article.

I'm not saying the author is wrong. I've never had much luck with polyphasic
sleep, as I mentioned above, and I'm certainly not going to argue that it's a
great idea without having had any success with it myself or at least having
seen good science on the matter. But, if this is the best "science" there is
to offer suggesting it does not work, then I don't think I'm convinced.

That said, I'm leaning towards one of the "core sleep plus naps" variants this
time around rather than the 6x20 minute routine. I do enjoy sleeping. At
least, I seem to, since I do it a lot, and frequently roll over and drift back
to sleep in the morning. I also love a couple of cups of jasmine green tea in
the morning with breakfast...it's a one to two hour ritual that makes me
happy. And a polyphasic schedule would throw all of that for a loop...though I
might try kicking caffeine for a while, too. I won't have an Asian market
nearby from which to buy my Yamamoto tea, so I probably won't want to drink
tea, anyway.

I don't read Pavlina and am unfamiliar with his arguments regarding sleep, so
I don't know anything about his results.

~~~
forensic
Claudio Stampi tested all the various forms of reducing sleep and found
polyphasic - the uberman style - to be the best out of them all.

At the same time, he found that polyphasic sleep results in poorer performance
compared to normal sleepers. And this was considered non-noteworthy, since
obviously 2 hours of sleep is worse than 8. You can find his articles on
Google Scholar.

Steve Pavlina is the only person I know of who has claimed to be polyphasic
for an extended period of time and claimed that there is no performance
decrease. Unfortunately, Steve refused to do any scientific testing and relied
entirely on his own subjective judgment. He gave it up after 6 months anyway,
but still maintains it is effective.

Steve's Pavlina's experience however exactly fits in with the best scientific
understanding of sleep (which Wozniak perfectly elucidates). Steve Pavlina was
never able to maintain the schedule without an alarm clock, which indicates
that his body did not adapt and was not co-operating or behaving in a
"natural" way.

The theory that Steve was only getting REM is shot down by his own journals
which indicate that he was getting both Delta and REM. My own experience with
polyphasic also indicates that while the proportion of REM may increase, you
still get delta sleep. I was fully (and rigidly) polyphasic for some weeks but
never stopped having delta sleep. I also consistently showed decreased
performance that could only be overcome by surges of adrenaline and autonomic
excitation in general - which is easily caused when a loud alarm clock wakes
you up when your body desperately desires sleep. You are tricking your body
into a state of permanent fight or flight.

Anyway the studies were done in the 80s that directly measured performance.
But in the modern day extensive studies have been done on sleep and everything
we know about sleep now shoots down all the theorizing that the polyphasics
use to justify their crazy. The idea that delta wave sleep is useless has been
utterly rejected because it has been shown that delta wave sleep contributes
to long-term memory encoding. If you cut down on delta wave, you cut down on
long-term memory. If you cut down on sleep in general, you cut down on
cognitive abilities in general.

This trade off may be worth it for some people, but they should be aware that
it is a trade off. Magical thinking like that displayed by Steve Pavlina does
not magically make you immune from the negative side effects of sleep
deprivation. You get over the drowsiness with sheer strength of will and
adrenaline, but the fogginess doesn't go away. (Steve considered the fogginess
to be a benefit. But remember this is a guy who believes ghosts tell him how
to win at blackjack.)

~~~
SwellJoe
So, talking about this and reading what links I could find from your
originally linked article, as well as reading up on Claudio Stampi leaves me
no more illuminated. Stampi's book _Why We Nap_ is out of print, my library
does not have a copy, and I can't find any other references to actual studies
that prove the arguments against polyphasic sleep, though the opinion of most
folks does seem to be that it's not a replacement for a full nights sleep. I
just can't figure out how they _know_ , rather than merely think so. There
seems to be a tremendous amount of regurgitation of party lines and mentioning
of the same few, mostly dubious, sources. I think damned near everybody
involved in the conversation, including you and I, understands less about
sleep than they think they do.

You're right, however, that there is a cult-like feeling around polyphasic
sleep discussion, and I view that sort of thing with extreme skepticism...but
I'm surprised to find it happening on both sides. The "debunkers" are just as
guilty of making unbacked claims, and poorly citing their opinions.

Every time I've seen a straight up assertion about how long one should sleep,
whether napping can reduce the total number of hours needed, etc. I'm unable
to find a study that directly backs the assertion. I guess such studies must
exist, but no one is linking to them. Even Wikipedia is surprisingly lacking
in citations of _directly_ relevant scientific research on the matter.

~~~
dgreensp
SwellJoe, I'm with you in that the "debunkers" seem quite dogmatic. Then there
are people who have had personal success with polyphasic sleep and rave about
it, typically doing it for a period of months but not on a permanent basis.
Science doesn't have a lot to say, and everyone else is left wondering what to
think.

References I found enlightening about the actual practice of it (in favor of
it) are the book Ubersleep:

<http://www.lulu.com/content/2649551>

and Hacker News threads like this one:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=673726>

I've read enough anecdotal evidence to be convinced that when it polyphasic
sleep works, it works -- that after a potentially rough (and potentially
impossible, depending on the person) period of adaptation, the practitioner is
not significantly impaired in day-to-day functioning. Skeptics' arguments
usually boil down to "it's unnatural", "you can't get something for nothing",
or "it didn't work for me".

In terms of needing to set an alarm, I don't know if the body can learn a
polyphasic schedule or not; even if it can, the reasons busy monophasic people
use alarms to regulate their sleep would apply all the more so to polyphasic
sleepers, and I get the sense polyphasic sleep is a sort of "unstable
equilibrium"; and if the body can't learn it, that still doesn't mean it's
unnatural.

Science could come along and discover a long-term deleterious effect of
getting so little sleep, in which case I'd be all ears, but it seems doubtful.
I hope the science catches up, though, and we figure out what the deal is with
sleep, so we don't have to argue quite so irrationally. There's a lot of
interesting recent work on whether being unconscious for eight hours is mostly
a behavioral adaptation rather than a biological necessity.

My general philosophy is "if it works, do it", and it definitely works in some
instances. Reducing total time spent sleeping per day isn't like smoking
cigarettes, it isn't going to slowly poison you. Lots of people get very poor
sleep and are definitely impaired during the day, more so than a skilled
polyphasic sleeper would report, and they aren't doing long-term damage.

~~~
forensic
The debunkers are cultish because the proponents are cultish. Just like
atheists are cultish in response to cultish cults.

If reducing delta wave sleep by 10% significantly decreases performance on
memory and reasoning tests, why should reducing delta sleep by 90% fail to
decrease performance?

Lots of studies are done on sleep, but they are never as extreme as polyphasic
because it would be considered unethical to perform those studies. Those few
insane people like me who actually did go polyphasic don't get scientifically
tested.

It _did_ work for me but I recognized that my performance had decreased
because at the time I was in memorization-oriented schooling and using Anki to
manage my memorization tasks. With the help of Anki, I could see quite clearly
that my memorization abilities had decreased.

It was also never a natural state. It was a constant state of heightened
autonomic response - fight or flight. Especially at nighttime, my body was
surging with corticosteroids. This stress response is what provides the
capability to stay awake so long, but it comes at the price of high-level
thinking and memorization.

Typically in nature, humans will adopt polyphasic sleep in times of war and
other extremely stressful situations. This is adaptive because their life is
threatened. This is not the case for the modern knowledge worker.

There is tons of science on sleep. The polyphasic people base their theory on
the outdated and discredited idea that we only need REM sleep. This has been
categorically disproven by modern sleep researchers. Slow wave sleep provides
many benefits, the most clear being improved memory but also better
performance on other cognitive tasks.

------
danielrhodes
Just a question that popped into my head: why choose to release the product on
so many mobile platforms? That becomes very expensive development-wise,
whereas the most active platforms cover most of the target market.

------
mmelin
One thing I don't understand: how does the wristband/app tell when you are
awake and when you are asleep? The screenshot shows several spots of "time
awake" during the night, how does it know this?

Preordered, anyway. I've always wanted to try this but the price point of
similar gadgets have been over the "cool thing to try" level (>2-300 bucks).

It must be extremely motivating to see all of these $5 payments come into your
account, too :)

~~~
pkulak
I tend to move while awake and lie still when I'm asleep. It probably has
something to do with that. ;)

~~~
mmelin
I don't know about you, but I move around a _lot_ during sleep. Sure, if it
only knows that I'm awake if I go to the bathroom or kitchen during the night,
I understand the difference. Would be interesting to know how it makes the
distinction, though.

~~~
drusenko
You (supposedly) only move around when you're in certain sleep stages, and not
others. When you're moving around, you're still asleep, but you're much more
lightly asleep than when you're not moving around, so it's a much more optimal
time to wake up _and_ you can also track how "restful" your sleep is.

------
martythemaniak
This seems brilliant. I've wanted to try the SleepTracker, but its a bulky,
expensive watch and I never went for it. I'm pre-ordering this :)

[http://37signals.com/svn/archives2/stresseraser_and_sleeptra...](http://37signals.com/svn/archives2/stresseraser_and_sleeptracker_tech_that_can_make_your_life_better.php)

------
dilanj
Congrats on finding a hair-on-fire problem, and totally rooting for you guys.
Just 2 weeks back I ordered an aXbo
(<http://www.axbo.com/axbo/CMS/CMS.aspx?Language=E>) for the same purpose, but
this is a much more convenient implementation.

~~~
gnemeth
The axbo uses similar technology and works well, but it is much more
expensive, more difficult to use and less comfortable. Also they do not do any
of the sleep analysis and personalized recommendations on how to improve the
quality of your sleep.

~~~
altano
I tried the axbo and it didn't work at all.

------
crxnamja
Weird. I am actually tempted to buy one.

------
carterac
Can one of the Wakemate people please respond?

First off, I love this product. But before I click purchase, I want to know:
how good of a proxy is the wrist accelerometer for brain wave activity?

Someone else asked this already but I didn't see a response. Ideally, I would
love to know what the quantitative results were from your testing. For
instance, if sleepers rate their grogginess after waking up every day, what
kind of an improvement do you see in those ratings? What is the distribution
like? Are there a certain percentage of people who don't respond to the
Wakemate because for some personal reason their wrist movements don't
correlate with brain wave activity?

I think this data would help sell a lot more of these since that's definitely
what made me pause - and I was very ready to purchase.

Thanks!

~~~
brown9-2
You might be better off contacting them directly:

    
    
      Questions? Comments? Send an email to contact@wakemate.com, or call us at 1-800-951-4761
    

<http://www.wakemate.com/about/>

------
jordyhoyt
It would be really cool to see what they could do for those who would like to
wake up with their partner. If both could wake up without being groggy, that
would be amazing. I'd imagine you might need a bigger window of possible wake
up time.

~~~
oscardelben
It also depends on how many 'good times' for waking up you have in 20 minutes,
and how much they last. For example if you have 2 minutes optimal waking time
two times, you might have a 1% chance that a given moment is optimal for both
of you.

------
bmalicoat
I asked this in the Techcrunch comments but I'm thinking it will be more
visible here:

In terms of the iPhone app, how do they trigger anything without having to
keep your iPhone on and in their app the whole time? Other than that I am
sold.

~~~
iamdanw
The iPhone has to be on and the app open for it to work. No way around this
limitation without 1) jailbreaking 2) digging around in private apis or 3)
applying to be an approved accessory maker.

------
WesleyJohnson
Sounds really interesting. It's a shame it's not shipping sooner. I just had a
7 month vacation and getting my sleep pattern back to normal has proved nearly
impossible. Some days I wake up super energized after 5 or so hours and then
days like yesterday, I get 7 hours in and I wake up feeling like I haven't
slept in days. Pre-ordered one for sure.

On a side note, this page is terribly hard on the eyes.
<http://www.wakemate.com/about/> I don't know if it's just me or not, but I
think they need some more spacing between the letters??

~~~
kellishaver
It does sound interesting, and for $50, I'd be very tempted to try it.

But yeah, who puts -1px letter spacing on their body copy? Ouch. Painful.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
It works quite well with the Lucida Sans Unicode, if only they'd spelt the
font name correctly.

------
dasil003
Love the idea, too bad I have a baby :)

------
zacharypinter
I'm particularly interested in using this to help trigger lucid dreams. For
the past few years, I've had a song on my playlist that I've trained myself to
always ask if I'm dreaming when I hear it. The idea being that this song would
play at the right time during my sleep cycle to get me to realize that I'm
dreaming.

However, so far I've had trouble triggering the song at the right time.
Perhaps this app will be configurable enough to play an MP3 when I'm in REM?

~~~
jerf
Where did you get the idea to trigger lucid dreaming with a song? I am both
very musically oriented and a frequent lucid dreamer, and I rarely ever have
any music in my dreams, let alone any sort of recognizable tune. I'm talking
months between each such event. Unless you frequently dream about music
already (as we are all different), I would suggest sticking to the more
conventional triggers.

One of these events took the form of a dream that I had written the most
powerful, moving song ever, one that could forcibly move people to tears due
to sheer awesomeness. Bear in mind I'm not talking about an abstract
assessment, but a deep belief that this was awesome. For once, I managed to
actually drag the song back up to the waking world, whereupon I discovered
that my brilliant song was, in two-second-long quarter notes, the following
incredible melody line: C, C, D, C, repeat.

(The full moon seems like a good one to me; I get a lot of circles in my
dreams, only due to my science-fiction viewing proclivities, they tend to turn
into Stargates.)

~~~
zacharypinter
I don't usually have any music in my dreams. However, I have frequently found
myself incorporating outside noise into my dreams (a television left on, a
radio alarm clock that plays the morning talk show, my cat meowing, etc).

Using a song as a trigger for lucid dreaming seems like a reasonable enough
way to send myself a signal, though I honestly don't have much to back it up.

------
gojomo
Is there any reason to suspect its timed-wake-alarm could be better than just
sleeping until you wake naturally?

Also, I presume the analytics can be used without the alarm?

~~~
ahlatimer
Allowing yourself to sleep wake up naturally is probably the best option, but
you could easily oversleep that way. Waking up when you are at one of your
arousal periods is going to be the next best thing.

------
gommm
Just bought, having live chat like this on the first day is a very good idea
that I'll have to keep in mind when launching a new product... And as others
have said the 5$ preorder in exchange for free shipping is a great way to make
us impulsive buyers.

I confirmed with them that worldwide includes China too (so many companies do
not ship there that I've become wary) so will be getting one :-)

------
zmimon
Too bad they aren't shipping until January. I would definitely buy one as a
present if I knew I could get it for Christmas.

------
swolchok
Does it work with iPod touch + home WiFi?

~~~
blasdel
Not directly on the first-gen iPod Touch, since it doesn't have bluetooth, but
the later ones do with OS 3.0 and up.

You could load the analytics app without it, but you'd need some device with
bluetooth to trigger the alarm. Someone will inevitably release desktop apps
to interface it, especially since all Macs ship with bluetooth and tiny USB
dongles for your PC cost about a dollar.

------
RevRal
I have had issues with sleep for a very long time. Problem is: I love to
sleep. I can sleep 10-12 hours a day, no problem.

I'd be quite happy sleeping like this, but it effects my personal life.

This sounds like it was made for me!

*e: Just to be sure before I pre-order. Any bluetooth enabled phone that has access to the internet will work, correct?

~~~
tptacek
It needs Internet access?

~~~
abstractbill
From the article: "It then transmits your sleep data to your phone, which in
turn uses its cellular data connection to upload it to the WakeMate servers."

~~~
tptacek
I figured it needed network for the pretty graphs, but not to actually wake
you up.

------
dot
Pre-ordered. Can't wait to try it.

The techcrunch post has an error, by the way. It says you get $5 off when you
pre-order.

~~~
elai
When I looked at the actual pre-order page, it doesn't seem like that is so.
You pay $5, then you pay $45 later. Or you pay $50 when it comes out. What
incentive is there, especially with an unreviewed product such as this? Will
they tack on a subscription fee to use the device like the fit bit?

~~~
gommm
The biggest incentive I think is the free worldwide shipping if you preordered
(at least for me living at the other side of the world)

------
JeffL
Sounds awesome, but I don't use a cell phone. =( How hard would it be to get
it to work with a laptop?

~~~
Shamiq
They're planning on opening an API.

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jasongullickson
That is slick...both the device and the purchase process.

My wife and I discussed something similar using EEG measurements but couldn't
find a practical way to apply the electrodes in a consumer-grade product. This
is a good example of solving that problem obliquely.

Pre-ordered.

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yumraj
Sounds very cool. Though the only problem is that if I were to rely on it, I
will most likely be late everyday to drop my kid to school :D.

On a different note, if this is bluetooth, whats preventing it from working
with a computer etc. Why only phone??

~~~
cschep
I think it sets a time you will be up by, you just might get woken up earlier.
Heck you might even be on time to drop your kid off if you can get that little
bugger out of bed as well. :)

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dhimes
_You may have followed all the rules: no caffeine before bed, an early
bedtime, and all the rest_

I need something for the mornings after I don't follow all the rules ;)

Congratulations to the Wakemate team! I think you've helped me with my
Christmas shopping.

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latortuga
I hope you guys get enough orders to start shipping because I just put in my
preorder. Very interesting looking product and chatting with a cofounder at 1
AM is a huge plus.

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rksprst
This seems great, but what about couples that sleep together. Each person
might have a different "optimal stage" of waking up. Did you guys offer any
solutions for that?

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ntoshev
Why not just an iPhone app: tie the phone to your wrist and let the
accelerometer record the movements. Would it drain the battery, or is the
iPhone too heavy?

~~~
kalvin
It exists. But yes, people don't like attaching the phone to their arm.
[http://www.iphoneappsfinder.com/productivity-apps/absalt-
eas...](http://www.iphoneappsfinder.com/productivity-apps/absalt-easywakeup-
smart-alarm-clock/)

~~~
gnemeth
We have an app just like this, but haven't released it because a lot of people
expressed concerns about not being able to charge their phone at night as well
as breaking their phone. The WakeMate is a much better user experience in
terms of comfort and convenience.

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joubert
This reminds me of the gadgets sold in inflight magazines.

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dminor
How does the data collected compare to sleeptracker?

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quizbiz
Why do you need a smartphone to use the product?

Why doesn't the device just use wifi to call any number so that I could have
it call my cell and wake me up?

~~~
spydertennis
You don't need a smart phone to use the product! Also, wi-fi is expensive,
there's a reason we can price it so low :-).

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billclerico
congratulations guys! the demo unit I tried is amazing. pre-ordered for sure

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gojomo
Anyone here tried the Zeo?

~~~
nixme
Yep, and I love it. See my comment above:
<http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=960532>

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RyanMcGreal
Techcrunch needs an editor. That article was full of typos.

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malditogeek
Awesome idea, awesome product. Just pre-ordered mine :D

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ashishb4u
with all this stuff they could have come up with sleepmate... take care of my
sleep hours, hint me that i should sleep and stuff!!!

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FreeRadical
Often the time you have to wake up is dictacted by factors out of your control
(get to work/lecture/event at a certain time)

~~~
FreeRadical
Can the downvoter let me know why this is down voted when it's a valid/decent
point?

~~~
aka-
i'm not the downvoter, but the device does let you specify limits for when you
have to be up.

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alexpm
very cool

ive always had trouble with sleep, and especially functioning in the mornings

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johns
Can I get one with GPS?

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pclark
Pre-ordered.

~~~
dbz
You think it's a good gift as well? I mean. If I am saving five bucks for pre-
ordering...

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albertcardona
So myself integrating the alarm clock beeping into my dreams is just a built-
in way to delay the wake-up point until it hits one of the light-sleep
windows?

In any case, cool gadget.

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vaksel
so how come wakemate can get their product built and shipped in 6 months, and
techcrunch is still working on the crunchpad since 2008?

Especially when you consider that wakemate is doing something a little bit
more complicated than just throwing a bunch of common components together?

~~~
tptacek
Probably because (1) Wakemate has simpler price constraints, and (2) because
the software integration required for Wakemate is simpler than for that of an
entire general-purpose computing device?

~~~
ladyada
A big part of it is power supply (a tablet ps is extraordinarily hard to
design whereas this can run on a large coin cell or AAA battery), and display
(blinking LEDs are easier to get a hold of than nice color LCD with good
touchpads).

~~~
tptacek
What she said. What I said was comparatively dumb. Good to see you, Limor.

