For the sake of my biorhythm, I went to bed with him. And what was? Inner clock out of control, sheets cruelly rumpled – and I’m exhausted in the morning. But not through the passion of the first night. But on the one hand because of the “stackiness” of my bedfellow, the “Sleeptracker”. It hung close to my wrist, pressing me. A no-go for a woman like me who belongs to the faction of the “unadorned sleepers”. And then the programming: it took hours. If only I had an IT bachelor’s degree in my pocket! In the technical Chinese, English-language accompanying booklet, there was talk of setting the “almost awake” moments, of “data review”, “to-bed feature” and of the “window function”. Sometime after midnight the fight was over: alarm clock set – I just don’t get tired anymore.
Further information
The “Sleeptracker” is available in several versions. Eg for a delicate wrist or with a compact metal housing. Price: from around 150 euros.
And why all the fuss now? Good question! The “Sleeptracker” should primarily wake me up on time, like any normal alarm clock. He does, too, but according to my biorhythm. That means: It only wakes me up when I’m not in the deepest sleep , but in a light sleep phase. This should make me jump out of bed fresh and happy and not torment myself out of bed in a bad mood and heavy as lead, as with conventional alarm clocks. That convinces. Just theoretically.
This should work with a built-in motion sensor. In the second half of the night, the body is in the so-called REM sleep phase. In them we snorkel deep and tight, dream and lie motionless like a board in bed. In between there are phases of lighter sleep. We then unconsciously wake up briefly to turn around. The “Sleeptracker” should record this like a motion detector. And it saves the individual architecture of the sleep phases for twelve hours. The alarm clock owner can then use the supplied software to analyze his “groundhog patterns”. That’s all well and good – but I don’t want to become a sleep researcher, I just want to wake up easily and on time.
Now comes the highlight that is supposed to turn the “Sleeptracker” into an alarm clock of a whole new dimension: I can program a wake-up time window. So I set the latest possible wake-up time. Let’s say seven o’clock. Then I program an upstream time window. I’ll take 30 minutes. So the “Sleeptracker” wakes me up between half past six and seven. And that’s exactly when I’m in a light sleep. The end of the song: For six nights I woke up an hour before the “Sleeptracker” every morning because of the sleep phase awareness. Light sleep phase or not. Conclusion: I don’t think the wrist alarm clock really “slept well”. Because if you always get up at the same time in the morning, you are already in a light sleep before the vibration alarm sounds. So: a lot of technical fuss about nothing!
