new user would like to know more about stats

[soldamerican]

I am still confused by the results my machine reads. I have a REMstar Auto A-Flex. A few months ago when I discovered how to look at the limited stats the machine gives I would check it religiously every morning. I wanted that "golden" display of 7 and 30 for the "days>4". It seemed to me though that even when I got a few consecutive weeks of 7 the second number would never get higher that 25. So then I started searching on the Internet, came across this forum (and this very thread) and read what a previous poster wrote about how the Day>4 stats are calculated and it made sense. Then I installed both Encore Viewer and SleepyHead so I could really look at all the metrics and saw that yes, there was always a non-compliant day (or two) in there somewhere to keep me from my golden reading.

But now is where things get confusing for me. My readings on the machine have fluctuated between 5 and 6 days for the past couple weeks. They currently read "6" for the past seven days. But when I download the results to both programs I see compliant days for the past 13 days! The 30 days reading is correct but not the 7 days reading. I guess it really doesn't matter now that I have the program(s) but it still bugs me.

I should say too that I typically wake up maybe 1-3 times during the night. When this happens I will typically stop the machine for a few minutes to maybe get a drink or go to the bathroom or maybe take the mask off for fresh air. I used to pull it off and go back to sleep but I have broken myself of that habit for the most part. (I use the full face mask). My point is that when I look at the graphs there are sometimes gaps during the night of may 2-10 minutes. But when you add up the times it comes to more than 4 and the graphs show green and compliant.

Any ideas on why it's not saying 7 days?

[chunkyfrog]

"That's mathematics", by Tom Lehrer.

[Pugsy]

Any ideas on why it's not saying 7 days?

It may be related to where you live and the time zone you are in and when you check the on screen data.
The machine's LCD screen doesn't actually do an update until Noon GMT time. That is when the next day starts.

So if you are sleeping past noon GMT time then those hours are applied to the next day's session. So depends when you check your data relative to GMT time and if you happen to sleep past GMT Noon.
Might not affect Eastern time zone early risers nearly as much as West coast users who sleep "in" a bit when compared to GMT time. The machine's Noon GMT thing cannot be changed on the machine. Our software uses the computer clocks to straighten things out on the report and what you see there.

Also if one sleep session was borderline on the 4 hour thing for reporting and part of the time the machine applied a partial hour to a different session...one day might come up short and on day might be a bit longer in terms of how the machine looks at it.

[robysue]

soldamerican,

What time zone do you live in?

I suspect that part of the problem may be caused by sleeping past noon GMT on a regular basis combined with some irregular bedtimes. Sleeping past noon GMT causes the current night's data to be split over two LCD days. And my guess is that's where the problem somehow crops up. For "today" to be "compliant" on the LCD, you have to have:

(sleep time after noon GMT on the previous day) + (sleep time before noon GMT today) > 4 hours

In other words, let's suppose that you live in the Pacific Time zone. Noon GMT = 5:00 AM Pacific Daylight time. Lets suppose you are looking at the display on Saturday morning. And let's suppose your sleep time on Thursday night and Friday night are the following:

Thursday night: You go to bed at 11:00 pm (on Thursday) and wake up at 6:00 am (on Friday). Let's throw in two twelve minute bathroom breaks, with one of them occurring after 5:00 AM. Note that 6 minutes = 0.1 hours. So the total usage is 6.6 hours. But notice that 5.8 hours occur before noon GMT and 0.8 hours occur after noon GMT. Those 0.8 hours after noon GMT don't count in the LCD data that you look at on Friday morning. But they will be added into the data available on Saturday morning.

Friday night: You've got big plans for Friday night. And so you don't get to bed until 1:30 AM Saturday "morning". And you sleep in until 10:00 AM Saturday. Let's say that again there are two twelve minute bathroom breaks, but they both occur before 5:00 AM. So total usage time is 8.1 hours. Also note that only 3.1 hours of the usage occurred before noon GMT.

So the machine computes your FRIDAY usage as:

3.9 hours = 0.8 hours from Friday morning + 3.1 hours from Friday night (between 1:30 and 5:00 minus two 12-minute long bathroom breaks)

And hence the machine labels FRIDAY night as a non compliant night that shows up in the 7-day average.

How likely is this to happen? I really don't know. It would depend on an individual's sleep habits.

But if you could give me the following data for the last 14 days or so, I might be able to figure out why the machine's 7-day days >4 number is still showing 6 instead of 7.

I need:
The time zone you are in.
The time the machine is turned on for the night.
The time the machine is turned off in the morning.
The total usage time.

I should be able to take that much of the data and sort out why the LCD is still reporting only 6 days of compliance in the last 7 days of use.

[soldamerican]

What you wrote makes a lot of sense. I just installed Encore Pro and compared the graphs with EncoreViewer. It seems that Pro doesn't adjust for my local timezone but rather keeps the weird times... (GMT?) I live on the west coast and in the Pacific Time Zone (GMT - 8:00) and we're currently in daylight savings time. I've posted a pic showing the stats from the two programs which show the dates and times of use for the past two weeks.



So I guess the GMT time is coded into the machine at the factory. That's kinda weird - seems like there should be a way to set it for local time. Since not everyone lives in Britain!

[Pugsy]

So I guess the GMT time is coded into the machine at the factory. That's kinda weird - seems like there should be a way to set it for local time. Since not everyone lives in Britain!

Encore Pro has a time adjustment setting that you need to make that will fix the broken up sessions.

The default Time Zone is GMT and if you don't change it the reports will be split and look weird. Go to Company Settings tab. Then double click on the blue Encore Company under office names to open this page area where you can click on the "EDIT" button and change the time zone to your time zone.

[soldamerican]

soldamerican,

What time zone do you live in?

I suspect that part of the problem may be caused by sleeping past noon GMT on a regular basis combined with some irregular bedtimes. Sleeping past noon GMT causes the current night's data to be split over two LCD days. And my guess is that's where the problem somehow crops up. For "today" to be "compliant" on the LCD, you have to have:

(sleep time after noon GMT on the previous day) + (sleep time before noon GMT today) > 4 hours


But if you could give me the following data for the last 14 days or so, I might be able to figure out why the machine's 7-day days >4 number is still showing 6 instead of 7.

I should be able to take that much of the data and sort out why the LCD is still reporting only 6 days of compliance in the last 7 days of use.

Thanks for the info and also the other poster who told me about resetting the timezone for EncorePro.

However, by looking at the EncorePro data set to GMT, that would seem to explain what you were saying about the machine itself. The machine's timezone cannot be set (by me, anyway). When I looked at the EncorePro data set to GMT it jibes with the machines readout for past 7 days >4 and 30 days >4.

Nice to get this solved - it was bugging me for months!