Saturday, October 29, 2011

Sleep Tracking

So I just finished night one with the new Zeo sleep tracker.  Its not much data yet, but I think its interesting to compare with the FitBit data from the same night.  Since Zeo is tracking brainwaves and FitBit is tracking arm motion, I was curious to see how they compare.  See the graphs below:
Zeo Sleep Data

FitBit Sleep Data
My first impression is that they are pretty similar.  Clearly the Zeo shows more data, breaking my sleep time up into Awake, Light Sleep, REM Sleep and Deep Sleep.  Both show the awake time at 1:30am and again at around 2am when Monika got up to move the laundry to the dryer.  It is interesting to see that the FitBit shows that I was moving around at a little before midnight, and a couple times between 3 and 4 am.  During these times, the Zeo shows that I am in deep sleep.  The FitBit interprets any movement as an indication that you are awake.  If we believe the Zeo data, I was certainly not awake at that time.  I certainly don't remember being awake at that time.  This makes me think that the combination of the two devices may give more information than either one on its own.  The FitBit can tell whether or not I'm having a restless sleep while the Zeo can help me interpret which motion on the FitBit was due to being awake or just to restless sleep.
Another interesting bit of data the Zeo gives you is a chart showing the percentage of time you spend in the various modes of sleep.  With only one night's sleep, I don't have much of an interpretation yet to tell me if this is interesting information yet, but that may come later when I start using the weekly summaries and other data analysis tools.


So far my biggest complaint with the Zeo is that it isn't all that comfortable to wear.  I definitely know it is there.  Additionally, it leaves marks on my forehead that take hours to go away.  I'm hoping that I can adjust the headband to fix this problem.

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