Sleepme's Non-Wearable Sleep Tracker: How it Works

Co-Author:
Michael Chatten
Sleepme Director of Sleep Tracking and Integration

Sleep trackers have become increasingly popular in recent years as people have become more interested in monitoring and improving their sleep. In general, there are two different types of sleep trackers. Ones you wear and ones you don’t. For the sake of this article, we will be focusing on non-wearable, mattress-based sleep trackers.

Sleep trackers have surged in popularity in recent years owing to their ability to aid in understanding the quantity of the various types of sleep. Over time, they can even determine the optimal amount required for peak performance, and furnish valuable sleep data that can potentially enhance one’s overall health.

How Does Our Mattress-Based Sleep Tracker Work?

If you’ve ever wondered how a non-wearable sleep tracker actually tracks your sleep if it isn’t touching your body, you’re not alone! In this article, we’ll dive into the science behind our technology and how it’s able to pick up your sleep metrics while it's contactless.

Our mattress-based Sleep Tracker leverages ballistocardiography, a type of technology used to measure the body's movements during sleep. Specifically, it identifies and monitors the slight movements caused by the heartbeat and respiration.

When developing our tracker, we drew valuable insights from expensive medical-grade equipment used in hospitals. This allowed us to create a more affordable and accessible consumer version with comparable functionality and accuracy.

And unlike medical-grade monitors that require numerous sensors placed on your head, heart, and other parts of the body, our device is designed to be comfortable and unobtrusive so you sleep soundly without even noticing it's there.

Read our blog, Unlocking Better Health: The Benefits of Monitoring Your Sleep, to learn more about how tracking your sleep can enhance your overall health and well-being.

Our Sleep Tracker is designed to be placed underneath your fitted sheet (or under your Chilipad Pro if you have a Chilipad Dock Pro Sleep System on top of your existing mattress and uses advanced sensors to detect the tiniest movements caused by the normal function of your heart and lungs.

Since the Sleep Tracker is placed underneath the fitted sheet, you won’t feel it and it won’t disrupt your sleep.

The tracker operates by sending the raw sensor data to our cloud, which analyzes the data using patented algorithms which then translate the raw signals into sleep metrics. This process is done in near-real-time (every 5 minutes). These insights or sleep metrics are provided to you every morning in the sleepme app once the tracker detects you've finished sleeping.

What is Ballistocardiography?

Ballistocardiography is a non-invasive medical technique used to measure the mechanical activity of the heart. [1] It was first introduced in the 1940s and has since been used in the medical field to diagnose various heart conditions.

The technique involves measuring the movements of the body caused by the pumping of blood from the heart during a standard heart beat. As the heart is beating, the body experiences a recoil, which can be measured as a tiny movement.

This movement is recorded using specialized medical-grade equipment, amplified, and analyzed to identify individual heart beats and filter out any background noise.

What Metrics Can Sleep Trackers Capture?

Our non-wearable Sleep Tracker can capture a wide range of sleep metrics. These metrics include:

Total Sleep

The total amount of time spent in deep sleep, light sleep, REM sleep during the sleep session.

Sleep Latency

Measure of the time required to initially fall asleep once you’re in bed.

Movements

These are disturbances larger than those caused by heart beating and respiration, such as twitching legs or rolling over.

Out of Bed:

These events are times when you physically leave the bed temporarily during a sleep session.

Don’t Just Track, Act!

Your data from the sensor is sent to our cloud and analyzed every 5 minute. Unlike other sleep trackers that provide a sleep report after you sleep, we want to know, in near real-time, your sleep state.

Why, you ask? Because if you own a Chilipad Dock Pro sleep system, we can optimize the temperature of your bed while you are sleeping based on your personalized sleep metrics resulting in the best sleep possible.

We trained our AI model on thousands of sleep sessions to regulate the temperature of your sleeping environment and help you achieve the best quality sleep possible.

Other trackers can only tell you how well, or how poorly, you slept the night before. Our Sleep Tracker can do that, but thanks to near real-time sleep metrics and our proprietary AI, we can also help you get better sleep when you need it most, while you sleep.

3rd Party Integrations

Want to get the full picture of all of your health metrics in one place? You can view your sleep-tracking data captured by our Sleep Tracker on your smartphone’s native health-tracking app!

Learn more about how to sync your sleepme data to Apple Health and Health Connect by Android.

Final Thought

In conclusion, the sleepme Sleep Tracker is a game-changer for monitoring your sleep. The non-wearable design makes it a convenient and comfortable way to track your sleep without the hassle of having to wear or charge.

By using the tried and true scientific methods rooted in ballistocardiography, our Sleep Tracker provides accurate insights into your sleep quality, heart rate variability, and resting heart rate. With our tracker’s advanced sensors and easy-to-use mobile app, it's a must-have for anyone who wants to wake up feeling refreshed and ready to take on the day.

And with every night you use our Sleep Tracker, you're helping our mission to bring better sleep to everyone. By sharing your data, you're helping us to unlock more insights and develop even better sleep solutions for all!

Say goodbye to restless nights and hello to a better night's sleep with the sleepme Sleep Tracker. If you’re looking for a convenient, zero-maintenance, accurate way to track your sleep, our non-wearable is for you!