Believe It or Not, the Camera Phone Turned 20 Today
https://www.macobserver.com/columns-opinions/editorial/camera-phone-turns-20/
Happy 20th birthday to the camera phone
It’s hard to imagine a world without selfies.
It is difficult to believe that the first ever mobile phone photograph was only taken 20 years ago.
The first photograph, like so many since, was taken by a proud father of his new-born baby daughter. Sophie Kahn was born on June 11, 1997. During her mother’s labour, her father Philippe had been banished from the birthing suite for a period of time.
The “Camera-Phone” is 20 years old today
Philippe Kahn did not manufacture the first real cellphone with an integrated camera. But he was able to cobble together a Motorola StarTAC, a Toshiba laptop, a Casio QV-10 digital camera and a rat’s nest of cables inside of a hospital in Santa Clara, California, to capture the first picture of his newborn daughter, Sophie.
The Creation of the Camera-Phone and Instant-Picture-Mail
Twenty years ago on June 11th 1997, I shared instantly the first camera-phone photo of the birth of my daughter Sophie. Today she is a university student and over 2 trillion photos will be instantly shared this year alone. Every smartphone is a camera-phone. Here is how it all happened in 1997, when the web was only 4 years old and cellular phones were analog with ultra limited wireless bandwidth.
First step 1996/1997: Building the server service infrastructure: For a whole year before June 1997 I had been working on a web/notification system that was capable of uploading a picture and text annotations securely and reliably and sending link-backs through email notifications to a stored list on a server and allowing list members to comment. Remember it was 1996/97, the web was very young and nothing like this existed. The server architecture that I had designed and deployed is in general the blueprint for all social media today: Store once, broadcast notifications and let people link back on demand and comment. That’s how Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and many others are function. In 1997 this architecture was key to scalability because bandwidth was limited and it was prohibitive, for example, to send the same picture to 500 friends. Today the same architecture is essential because while there is bandwidth, we are working with millions of views and potential viral phenomena. Therefore the same smart “frugal architecture” makes sense. I called this “Instant-Picture-Mail” at the time.
Digital cameras and cell phones in 1997: For the first time in 1997 there was a successful and broadly available digital camera at a reasonable price – the Casio QV. It was 1/4 VGA and made pixelated but nice 320 by 240 pictures. Also, there was a very successful StarTAC Motorola flip phone in the U.S. It was so successful that it had a car speaker kit with a modular plug that allowed for hands-free use of the phone in the car. (That becomes important as part of this invention)
Before June 11th 1997: I had the server-service infrastructure functional as I mentioned. Today we’d call this the “cloud infrastructure”. I also had a Casio digital camera, a Motorola flip phone and a laptop. The camera was designed to upload pictures to the laptop with a special cable. However, there was no practical way to connect the laptop to the StartTac and control batched jobs of for example, uploading a series of pictures to a cloud based system. The laptop didn’t talk to the phone. Yet the phone could send data at 1200 baud over U.S. wireless analog networks. The combination of the Casio Camera, the Toshiba laptop, and the Motorola StartTac were the prototype of a camera-phone that I rapidly integrated on a breadboard thereafter: The Casio Camera because a miniature CMOS imaging sensor, the Toshiba Laptop a small embedded MCU all integrated with cell phone module, both analog for the US and Digital for Japan for example.
The first “Instant-Picture-Mail” picture shared with 2000 friends and family across the globe: June 11th 1997, Sophie’s birth picture
On June 11, 1997: When we arrived at the Sutter maternity center we had a nice, large private room, with a big desk. We were told that we came “early,” and that we could either go home or stay. We stayed and settled in. I had the camera, the phone, the laptop and the service-server-system was running at home and functional. It was clear there was a hardware challenge in interfacing the phone to the laptop. I had written a control program on the laptop that uploaded pictures from the camera, used a modem and could upload them to the Service-Server-System with a tag as to which list of friends and family to notify. Then I remembered that I had a StarTAC speakerphone kit in my car. I literally ran down to my car, took out the whole speaker phone kit and started working frantically at creating a software/firmware/hardware interface using the “butt plug” of the Car-Kit to interface the laptop modem to the StartTac 1200 baud modem. My wife Sonia gave me some time because we were 18 hours early. When Sophie took her first breath, all was working and tested. About 2,000 friends and family received the picture around the world. I called it “Instant-Picture-Mail”. We immediately started getting emails and annotations back asking “How did you do this?” and “Can I have one of those?”. That’s when we realized we had something and what we needed now was to integrate the hardware in one elegant component.
Integrating: Immediately it became clear that we needed a CMOS sensor and an MCU integrated into phones. We built these prototypes that were interfaced with the exact software/server/service-infrastructure “Instant-Picture-Mail”.
Integrating, CMOS Imaging Sensor, MCU and Cellular phone modules, late 1997
Paradigm shift and Instant-Picture-Mail success: It was clear to me that this was all a game changer and that this was the future of two of America’s most successful companies, Kodak and Polaroid, so I met with their CEOs and core teams. They all had wireless projects, and all could transmit pictures wirelessly and could not envision “Point shoot and share instantly”. No printing, no film, no paper, and no silver halide film. They all had billions of dollars in business, comfortable suites, armies of management consultants, tech consultants and pundits that just didn’t get it. Yes, I was trying to convince them that the future was digital photography “inside the phone” with the Instant-Picture-Mail software/server/service-infrastructure. They hired consultants, market pundits and they all collectively came to the conclusion that phones would be focused on voice (this is before texting) and that cameras would become wireless. Both Kodak and Polaroid went bankrupt and so did Motorola. Nothing could stop this paradigm shift. I couldn’t find anyone in the U.S. with the vision to launch “Instant-Picture-Mail”. I also had no success with my good contacts at big players in Japan, such as NTT Docomo. However, a small Japanese carrier – J-Phone – was enthusiastic and brought in Sharp to design a “Instant-Picture-Mail phone”. In Japanese Sha-Mail means Picture-Mail. It was a great success and it really put J-phone on the map. J-phone is now owned by Softbank. We launched the Camera-Phone with Instant-Picture-Mail in Japan in late 1999.
Return to the U.S. with success: Wired Magazine noticed our success with “Instant-Picture-Mail” in Japan, and in its “Death of Napster Issue” (the one with the funeral black cover), writer Bob Parks wrote “The Big Picture,” cover story which described my creation and some of my IP. The management team at Sprint and in particular two visionary executives: Pierre Barbeau and Danny Bowman, read wired and called me up: “We want to be the first with “Instant-Picture-Mail” in the U.S.” Sprint, Casio and my company LightSurf worked together to launch the first camera-phone in the U.S. in 2002 with the Instant-Picture-Mail software/server/service-infrastructure. This differentiated Sprint, and our partner became the fastest growing carrier for several years. It took two years for ATT and Verizon to launch in the U.S.
What about other claims of inventions: Many companies put photo-sensors in phones or wireless modules in cameras, including Kodak, Polaroid, Motorola. None of them understood that the success of the camera-phone is all about instantly sharing pictures with the cloud-based Instant-Picture-Mail software/server/service-infrastructure. In fact, it’s even amusing to think that none of these projects was interesting enough that anyone has kept shared pictures. You’d think that if you’d created something new and exciting like the camera-phone you’d share a picture or two or at least keep some!
It’s great to reflect 20 years later how the camera-phone is a game-changer for society in so many ways. In the last decade I have assembled the best team of scientists, mathematicians, engineers at Fullpower we are now looking forward to the next paradigm shift. We believe that Sleep will become Digital Sleep focused on measurable, quantified sleep efficiency and performance. We’re pioneering artificial intelligence, machine learning and data science with our Sleeptracker technology to bring a long term roadmap to digital sleep. That’s a game changer for an industry that has been focused on foam and coils for the last 200 years. Just like Kodak and Polaroid were focused on their large profitable brick-and-mortar silver halide empires before they fell into oblivion. Paradigm shifts are both a great opportunity for newcomers and a challenge for incumbents.
The reason the camera phone was invented hits close to home…
My baby, Bjorn, was born 4 months ago and I currently have 6,078 pictures on my phone. Now, not all of them of him… but, let’s be honest, it would be no where near that number if he wasn’t around.
Sleep Cognitive Behavioral Therapy with Fido
Yes, Fido can teach us humans a lot about sleep. For dogs and humans our scientific approach to analyzing sleep cycles shows us that dogs and humans have similar sleep cycles but that dogs are much more opportunistic in finding opportunities to nap than humans.
We co-evolved with Fido for at least 25,000 years and given the reality of genetics and epigenetics our sleep cycles are similar. Yet our sleep patterns are slightly different. Ballistocardiographs have shown correlation between the study or micro-motions of the human wrist with sleep cycles in humans. That is also true for dogs. When we watch our dogs sleep we observe similar phenomena: Fido twitches her legs as she runs/dreams, snores, growls and smiles through her naps. Fido is really great fun to watch and shows those micro “wrist movements” characteristic of REM sleep and other phases of sleep in humans. Further analysis of brain waves shows similar patterns too.
Of course dog sleeping patterns are a little different than humans. The main differences are in Fido’s sleeping habits. In general Fido is a better sleeper than most humans and a very smart opportunistic sleeper.
Research shows that “Cognitive Behavioral Therapy” is the simplest way for humans to improve sleep, and our best friends can help guide us to better quality sleep. Of course, first we must understand sleep, and there is no better way to understand sleep than to quantify sleep with a solution such as the Sleeptracker.com Monitor. The Sleeptracker monitor gives you a comprehensive daily “Sleep-Score”, analysis and personalized coaching insights to improve sleep quality without changing any of your bedding or habits, completely non-invasively, in the privacy of your home. For us humans it’s essential to quantify first in order to form a good understanding of where we stand and what our goals can be.
And now with a good quantified view of our sleep, watching Fido carefully can complement our quantification with practical cognitive behavioral therapy practical advice.
First question: How much sleep does a dog get (and how much sleep does a dog need?)
Dogs are opportunistic in their sleep patterns. They get all the sleep that they can get when they can get it. They are always ready for any canine future. This is what we can learn from Fido: If there is an opportunity to nap, even for 10 minutes, Fido will. Intuitively dogs feel this. Fido is ready to go for a walk any time, well rested, full of energy. At 5 pm or 3 am, Fido has the same enthusiasm for a walk. On the other hand, we humans are generally not ready to go for a brisk walk at 3 am an get back to bed. That’s because we are all chronically sleep deprived, perhaps partly because we are all missing the opportunities that we may have to “recharge”during the day. Practically, to get some regenerative sleep, we need as little as 10 minutes and 45 minutes is about a complete sleep cycle and wonderful. But we always have “something better to do”. Facebook never sleeps! (But better sleep habits can make us “better at Facebook”!)
Depending on your dog’s size she may need more or less sleep. In general smaller breeds like Border Terriers need less sleep than larger breeds like St. Bernards that may need as much as 18 hours of sleep a day. This article is based on my practical work for the last 5 years with several Border Terriers as well as published research. Border Terriers are athletic and very smart working dogs, bred for their abilities and seem to have a functional and instinctive approach to most of what they do. They are working dogs and they are ready to work hard. And they sleep about 12 hours a day in the aggregate on the average, with limitless energy for hunting rats or taking endless walks/runs on the beach any time of the day or night.
Second Question: How much sleep do human’s need?
Practically as much as sleep as humans can get. We are busy with family, work, hobbies, exercise, Facebook and our sleep budgets are shrinking.
From a CBT perspective we need to learn from Fido:
Be as opportunistic to nap as possible.
From a sleep quality standpoint we need to:
Improve our Sleep Score using advanced non-invasive quantified-self tools such as the Sleeptracker.com Monitor.
By making simple little CBT changes such as eating less before bed and avoiding carbohydrates, drinking that last glass of water 30 minutes earlier, burning that extra stored energy by working out with more intensity (Long leisurely walks are great for the soul but don’t do much for the body) etc…
Yes, one last thing: High Intensity Exercise Can Help Sleep Quality and recovery.
Take a look at Fido, go for a one hour leisurely walk. Great smells great experience, meet other canines and humans. But once Fido gets home, Fido is ready to play ball and run and sprint and do ludic intervals. Then Fido crash into deep sleep. That’s CBT right there. I need not say more!
PS For our Cat loving friends, sleep cycles and patterns are fairly similar. Cats tend to sleep even more than dogs and when cats play and hunt it tends to really be HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training). They are now focused and ready to go at it for as long as it takes and then, deep restful sleep!
In Conversation With The Inventor of The Camera Phone
Philippe Kahn, a French entrepreneur, was waiting for his baby daughter to be born when he hit upon the inspiration for the world’s first camera-photo.
It was a summer evening in 1997, and Philippe Kahn was anxiously waiting for his daughter Sophie to be born. Desiring to share her birth instantly with family and friends, he conceived what would become the world’s first camera phone. The Internet was only four years old and only good for simple email with limited wireless connection. So he bought a Casio QV-10 digital camera and inserted it into a Motorola Startac phone. When Sophie was born, her photo became the first ever camera-phone image, something that, 20 years on, we take for granted.
Newborn Sophie Kahn — the person who inspired the first camera phone.
Now Kahn runs several companies, including Fullpower, founded in 2003, which provides a patented ecosystem for wearables and Internet of Things products. The inspiration for his main product, the Sleeptracker Monitor, stems from Kahn’s passion for sailing — he owns a team called Pegasus Racing. During a demanding race that means sailors have less than an hour’s sleep in a 24-hour period, Kahn began experimenting with biosensors and three-axis linear accelerometers that could detect micro-movements. Kahn created prototype sleep trackers using biosensors that optimised 26-minute power naps to maximise sleep benefits and sail time.
Beautyrest® Launches the New Beautyrest® Sleeptracker® Monitor
Bedding Industry’s First Stand-Alone Sleep Monitoring Device Empowers Individuals to Optimize Daily Performance
(ATLANTA, Ga. – March 21, 2017) – The Beautyrest Brand is proud to introduce the Beautyrest Sleeptracker monitor – a patented sleep monitoring system that pairs with any mattress or foundation, allowing individuals to make their bed a smart bed. This non-invasive breakthrough device is the bedding industry’s first stand-alone solution to monitor a broad range of factors affecting high-quality sleep for two individuals simultaneously. Offering an unprecedented level of accuracy, the monitor is 90 percent accurate when measuring heart rate and breathing rate for the vast majority of the population, 90 percent of the time.
“As one of the most trusted and recognizable bedding brands nationwide, we are proud to embrace the smart home movement with technology that provides a deeper understanding of how we sleep,” said Jim Gallman, Executive Vice President, Beautyrest Marketing. “The Beautyrest Sleeptracker monitor allows consumers to optimize their sleep habits and make improvements that can have dramatic implications for their overall quality of life.”
The monitor provides consumers with an in-depth analysis of each user’s sleep ecosystem – including current behaviors, comparisons to biometrical similar users and personalized tips to help them perform better every day. By analyzing a variety of sleep variables, it also provides personalized recommendations and expert insights designed to improve daily performance. While everyone has an individual definition of what performance means, the Beautyrest Sleeptracker monitor enables users to get the optimal sleep necessary to accomplish whatever may come in the day ahead – whether that is a full day at the office, managing a complex family schedule or even running a marathon.
“The Sleeptracker artificial intelligence (AI) engine represents a dramatic improvement over other sleep monitoring devices, and is the result of significant resources invested in research and development,” said Arthur Kinsolving, Chief Technology Officer of Fullpower Technologies, Inc., the technology partner of the Beautyrest Brand. “With the power of AI and machine learning, the Beautyrest Sleeptracker monitor will continue to stretch its lead and deliver unprecedented deep insights into consumers’ sleep patterns.”
According to the Better Sleep Council, “a good night’s sleep sets the optimal stage for, not only physical, but also mental performance. If you are well rested, you will approach social, professional, and physical challenges in the most advantageous state of mind and body.” The Beautyrest Sleeptracker monitor will provide individuals with a new understanding of what is keeping them up at night while also offering easy-to-implement solutions that recognize long-term trends and become more personalized over time.
The Beautyrest Sleeptracker® Monitor Benefits and Features:
- The only device in its class that can monitor sleep patterns of two individual sleepers simultaneously due to an advanced AI engine
- While wearables must be worn on the body and charged regularly, the Beautyrest Sleeptracker monitor plugs directly into a wall outlet, is completely non-invasive and requires no changes to day-to-day bedding
- Patented system that accurately measures both respiration and heart rate for deeper sleep analysis (wrist-worn wearables can’t monitor the essential respiration vital sign and are notoriously inaccurate for continuous heart rate monitoring)
- Can be set to automatically monitor sleep data when users fall asleep unexpectedly
- Pairs with the Sleeptracker iOS and Android smartphone app to offer an unprecedented level of detail – providing users with a minute-by-minute snapshot of their journey through each sleep cycle: light sleep, deep sleep and REM
- Features a Sleep Cycle Alarm that detects a light stage of sleep in order to wake users at the ideal time in their sleep cycle
- Offers an AI Sleep Coach that monitors improvement over time and provides effective, easy-to-implement, personal sleep tips based on a comprehensive analysis of individual sleep patterns and external factors that may impact sleep quality
- Integrates with Amazon Echo – soon allowing control of other smart home elements from a single device, such as thermostats, lights, music, alarm systems, door locks and more
The Beautyrest Sleeptracker monitor is compatible with all mattresses and foundations (results may vary depending on the type of mattress and foundation used) and is available on Amazon.com for $199. The Sleeptracker app is available for download on the App Store and Google Play. Visit Beautyrest.com for more information and to find a retailer near you.
Related Links
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About Serta Simmons Bedding, LLC
Serta Simmons Bedding, LLC (SSB) owns and manages two of the largest bedding brands in the mattress industry National Bedding Company L.L.C. (the largest licensee and majority shareholder of Serta, Inc.) and Simmons Bedding Company, LLC. SSB is based in Atlanta and operates 33 manufacturing plants in the United States, five in Canada and one in Puerto Rico. Its subsidiary, National Bedding Company L.L.C., is based in suburban Chicago and markets a broad range of products under the Serta® brand, including Perfect Sleeper®, iComfort®, iSeries®, Sertapedic® and a portfolio of licensed products. In addition to National Bedding Company L.L.C., Serta, Inc. has five other independent licensees in the United States and one in Canada that manufacture and market Serta-branded products. SSB’s other subsidiary, Simmons Bedding Company, LLC, is based in Atlanta and markets a broad range of products including Beautyrest®, Beautyrest Black® and BeautySleep®. Both companies also serve as key suppliers of beds to many of the world’s leading hotel groups and resort properties.
About Fullpower Technologies, Inc.
Fullpower is the leader for cloud-based IoT smart-home and wearable solutions powered by AI, machine-learning and data science. With more than 125 patents, the Fullpower IP portfolio covers the AI-powered Sleeptracker® and the MotionX® IoT technology platforms. Fullpower’s business model is to license technology and IP as a PaaS to brand leaders such as Nike, Beautyrest, Serta, Movado and others. Founded by Philippe Kahn, creator of the first camera-phone, and based in Silicon Valley, the Fullpower team is passionate about AI, machine learning, IoT and PII.
Beautyrest Press Contacts:
Hunter Public Relations on behalf of Beautyrest
Blake Kaufman
bkaufman@hunterpr.com
(212) 679-6600 x 41-228
Beautyrest Public Relations
Cameron Purcell
cpurcell@simmons.com
Sensor Fusion Market Analysis and Value Forecast Snapshot by End-use Industry 2016-2026
Sensor-fusion is at the heart of our work at Fullpower together with AI, Machine Learning and Sleep and ambulatory sciences.
Click to view the complete analysis:
http://www.openpr.com/news/418860/Sensor-Fusion-Market-Analysis-and-Value-Forecast-Snapshot-by-End-use-Industry-2016-2026.html
An Introduction to Understanding Sleep
Introduction: As my colleague Mark Christensen and I were sailing across oceans double-handed (just two of us on a fast high tech sailboat), chasing and beating records, we discovered that we were both so busy that neither of us slept much more than 30 minutes at a time for weeks on end. And it worked. I mean we were performing. Why did it work? We decided to use the scientific method and to build sleep monitors and a software system that would monitor both our sleep and wake performance.
Wired Magazine on Sleep and Sailing
What we learned defied common wisdom. Mark and I were back in an evolutionary environment with no constraints but that of Mother Nature and our whole beings were adapting and shedding all sorts of misconceptions. Just like intermittent fasting makes us healthier, there is magic to understanding sleep budgeting and optimization. Here I share some of our findings based on over 100,000 nautical miles sailed across oceans around the world.
I hope that you find this first installment useful and look forward to your feedback.
Your Sleeptracker® statistics and what is “normal”
Preface: We are all different. However, we can learn a lot from the Sleeptracker® community, comparing our own sleep to “people like me” to help us gain a better understanding of our sleep. So these “normal” values and ranges simply reflect Sleeptracker® stats for 90% of the population, 90% of the time. If you are an elite athlete or have a chronic condition you may find yourself out of range for some of the stats. It’s important to understand where you are and make small improvements over time. Be patient with yourself.
Total Sleep is not the time spent in bed, but the time when you were actually asleep. A restful night’s sleep for most people ranges from 6 to 9 hours. Statistically, females on average tend to sleep a little more than males. Everyone is different. What counts is how rested you feel and making small improvements. For example, if you find initially you sleep for 6 hours on average, try to set your goal for 6 hours 15 minutes. Iterate until you feel more rested.
Time to Sleep is the time elapsed between starting a sleep recording and actually falling asleep. If you fall asleep in less then 3 minutes you are probably sleep deprived. If it takes you more than 30 minutes to fall asleep (once you’ve decided to fall asleep, not if you are simply reading a great book), it would be good to look at factors which can impact time to sleep such as when and what you ate and drank before bed, caffeine consumption, and how much exercise you’ve had and when that occurred. It helps to finish eating and drinking a couple of hours before bed, stretch your muscles, and keep your bedroom cool and quiet.
Light Sleep, REM Sleep and Deep Sleep: Sleep occurs in waves, with a crest called REM (rapid eye movement) when we dream, and a trough called deep sleep when we are in maximum recovery mode, together with several intermediate stages. All stages of the “sleep wave” are necessary, and sleep typically comes in multiple waves. Depending on the individual, each wave of sleep lasts 45 to 90 minutes and we experience between four to six waves of sleep (complete cycles) per night. The highest percentage of deep sleep is experienced during the earlier waves.
Awake time displays how long your “awake events” are during the night. Often, we don’t even remember some of these awake events if they are short. However, if you are awake for more than 12 minutes, it may be a good idea to get up and do something relaxing. Pascal, Newton, Mozart, Debussy, Einstein, Nadia Boulanger, and many other geniuses would actually sleep in “two shifts”: they called it “First Sleep” and “Second Sleep” and claim they did their best work in the middle of the night. That’s hard to do in a modern world with standardized work hours.
Wakeup displays the number of awake events you experienced during your sleep. If they are short, you may not remember them. Up to 3 to 5 awake events is quite normal and with young children or pets, some of us experience several awake events each night.
Sleep Score (range 1 -100): Sleeptracker® makes it easy to rate your sleep from day one, with your “Sleep Score”. For example, there are people with a sleep score of 50 out of 100 initially, who after a few months of using Sleeptracker® improved their sleep score to 75, and continue to improve. The ideal sleeper will look for a sleep score of 90+ over time. But many healthy individuals function well at 75 or above.
Sleep Efficiency is the percentage of time spent sleeping. For example, spending 8 hours in bed and 6 of those hours asleep is a sleep efficiency of 75%. Some people start at 50%, and after a few months reach a sleep efficiency of 75% and continue improving incrementally. With an 85% sleep efficiency or higher, you are doing well.
Percentage of Sleep Goal: This is a great tool to incrementally increase your total sleep time. Set your initial sleep goal at a realistic time for you, then increase your goal by 10% until you beat it, then iterate. Unrealistic goals are demotivating. Small incremental wins are empowering.
Average Breathing Rate is the number of breaths you take per minute. Sleeptracker® measures your breathing rate continuously throughout the night and produces an easy to understand line graph. For healthy individuals between age 16 and 65, resting respiratory rate between 10-22 breaths per minute is considered normal. After about 67 years of age, it’s common for respiration rate to increase by up to 20%. Snoring and sleep apnea affect breathing rate, as well as illness, pain or fever.
Average Heart Rate is the number of beats your heart takes in a minute. Sleeptracker® measures your heart rate continuously throughout the night and produces an easy to understand line graph. A heart rate between 40 and 85 is considered healthy. Snoring and sleep apnea affect heart rate, as well as alcohol, caffeine and sugar consumption, illness, pain or fever. Sleep is your recovery mechanism, and you will notice the more restful your sleep, the lower your heart rate when you wake up. Throughout the night as sleep rebuilds your body, your heart rate decreases in small steady increments.
What is sleep and why do we, and mammals, sleep?
Sleep is the recovery mechanism for all of us. It’s when we rebuild our bodies, our muscles, cleanse our organs, and rewire our brain. Sleep is necessary. The Sleeptracker® monitor helps us understand and improve our sleep. Here is an example: Sleeptracker® will automatically measure your heart rate through the night, and you can see that as your cardiovascular system repairs and rebuilds during sleep, by the morning your resting heart rate is often significantly lower for a healthy individual.
How do I sleep?
Sleeptracker® makes it easy to rate my sleep from day one, with your “Sleep Score”. For example, there are people with a sleep score of 50 out of 100 initially who after a few months of using Sleeptracker® improved their sleep score to 75, and continue to improve after that. The ideal sleeper will look for a sleep score of 90+ over time. But many healthy individuals function well at 75 or above.
What does how I sleep mean?
Practically, how we sleep in the long-term has an important impact on how we perform at work or at the gym, on our mood, and on our overall health.
What are sleep cycles, and how do they affect my sleep?
Sleep occurs in waves, with a crest called REM (rapid eye movement) when we dream, and a trough called deep sleep when we are in maximum recovery mode, together with several intermediate stages. All those stages of the “sleep wave” are necessary, and sleep typically comes in multiple waves. Depending on the individual, each wave of sleep lasts 45 to 90 minutes and we experience between four to six waves of sleep (complete cycles) per night. The highest percentage of deep sleep is experienced during the earlier waves.
What does it mean to improve my sleep?
The consequences of improving sleep are profound and measurable over time, even as we age. Improving sleep means improving overall health, work and physical performance, mood, and even relationships. There are only upsides to improving your sleep.
How can I personally improve my sleep?
You can improve your sleep by making small incremental changes. The power of Sleeptracker® is that we can quantify the effect of these little changes, and the Sleeptracker® AI-powered engine will deliver personalized insights based on your own sleep performance, as well as based on the sleep performance of “people like you” who are part of the Sleeptracker® community.
Can I really improve my sleep that much with Sleeptracker®?
In a nutshell, yes! Let us consider the amount of time that we, as humans, sleep. We sleep for a third of our life. At the same time, we live in a sleep-deprived world. Due to the demands of our modern world, it’s not feasible to increase the amount of time we spend in bed attempting to sleep. Instead, we need to better understand our habits to improve the efficiency, performance, and overall quality of our sleep. Now consider a night where you spend 8 hours in bed, but only sleep for six of those hours; your sleep efficiency is 75%. If we increase that efficiency by only 13 percent, your six hours of sleep becomes seven hours. This increase gains you a full hour of sleep. Sleeptracker® can help you improve the quality of your sleep so you can sleep more, and sleep better.
What happens in the first 30 days when I use Sleeptracker®?
From the first day you start monitoring your sleep, Sleeptracker® will be helpful. Yet, the first step to understanding how to sleep better is understanding how you sleep. In the first 30 days of use, Sleeptracker® gets to know you, gives you personalized insights to help you improve your own sleep over time, and understands how you are sleeping compared to “people like you”.
What does periodization of sleep mean?
By carefully analyzing several million nights of sleep of Mr. and Ms. Everyone, Sleeptracker® has come to the conclusion that sleep performance comes in waves, just like athletic performance. There will be times in life when our sleep performance decreases. For example, if we catch the flu, tear a muscle or have other aches and pains, or if we have busy times at work. It’s important to accept and understand this fact of life, and with the help of Sleeptracker® start improving our sleep score again, patiently a little bit at a time. Many things in life seem to go in waves and in cycles. While Sleeptracker® helps you improve your sleep over time, it is important to realize that improvement does not occur on a consistent continuous slope. Improvement in any realm doesn’t occur at a constant rate, but overall improvement is periodized, and consistency and daily practice make a big difference. That’s true with Sleeptracker® too.
Why is it important to store my sleep information over time as I age gracefully?
Identifying correlations and trends in long-term sleep data helps us understand how our bodies, health, and habits change over time. As we age, our sleep habits change. Sudden changes in our sleep as reported by Sleeptracker® can be indicators of how something in our well-being may have changed and provides a good reminder to continue improving our sleep performance. That’s true with any health condition and at any age. We can always make small incremental improvements to sleep. Sleeptracker® is a key to better understanding our health, and to building a healthier future.
What vital signs does Sleeptracker® monitor?
Sleeptracker® continually monitors respiration and breathing patterns, as well as fluctuations in heart rate, and qualitative and quantitative body motions.
Should I take power naps during the day?
Yes! Taking power naps is a great idea. This is completely natural, particularly if your sleep wasn’t ideally restful. In Spanish, “siesta” comes from “seis” which means “six”, and in general you will notice 6 hours after waking up you will feel a bit sleepy. If you have an opportunity, try a 20-30 minute power nap to recharge; no more than 30 minutes or you risk waking up groggy.
