Zeo Personal Sleep Coach?

The data is record in a file on the card and after three nights it is only 22 kb.

It is a .dat file and my computer warns to be cautious in opening it. I did not risk it, but have a sneaking suspicion it would be easy to decode it and transfer to a spread sheet. I would not be surprised if some kind gentleman might not write a simple application to do this. Of course, they could have devised a more complicated coding device to force you to continue to pay $99 every six months. Alternatively, they make a simple recording program available at some point.

I did not read their privacy statement in details, but I could see some interesting research done by them with this data which could improve the produce, even if just by giving better norms (what is typical for a 65 year old male who drinks two cups of coffee per day).

In the set up they do offer the option to receive further marketing as well as messages from other parties (sales pitches). I might be a little cautious here since you don’t know what you might get. I can easily imagine them going under and selling their lists (a good lawyer could arrange a merger of this firm with another so they technically had not sold their lists, but that might be the practical effect of selling other assets and then merging the firm with one that wanted use of their data).

I suppose the record be a little legal risk in them having your data. Suppose in swerving to avoid a drunk you happen to go into a crowd of school children. A greedy lawyer might be able to get hold of possibly inaccurate records that suggested you had been asleep only two hours the previous night even though in bed for six, and had reported feeling very sleepy when waking up (the device has a way to record how you feel upon awakening without having to turn a computer on) to make it worse, imagine you had been honest in recording how much alcohol you had consumed. in the notes section on the site (an alcohol definitely affects how you sleep). I could imagine this being used to document that you were a drunk who recklessly tried to drive when you not had not had adequate sleep. And what about the case where they discovered you had recorded fights with your wife (which will affect sleep) and how hard you had to beat her before she saw reason <g>. Or where you noted you were not in your usual bed or were disturbed by your sleep partner (when your spouse was traveling) even if you did not mention your mistress. <g> I did not notice whether there was a way to delete records after you no wanted them. They do provide a small paper diary with the package. Perhaps you might consider laying out even more money, and buying a paper notebook <g> also.

However, there is considerable value (if it is accurate) in just being able to see the last week's data (which you can do).

I have not tried the fancy feature of waking you up during a non-deep sleep period, but if that works it could be nice. I sometimes find I am awake and afraid to look at a clock for fear it would show I had only a little more time to sleep and this would keep me from dozing off. Some times I have discovered it was well past when I should have gotten out of bed and much later than I thought. If it does time the awakening to a time when you are not in deep sleep, it could be very valuable in maximizing your productivity (you are apparently not at your best for a while after being awakened from a deep sleep).

I don’t think this can be programmed to wake only during REM or just after REM stops, but if it could it would be nice (I typical enjoy my dreams and don’t like having them interrupted).

It is also a nifty alarm clock and an attractive one. (It should be for $400 of course). You can select the wake up sound from several attractive sounds (I heard several and liked them).

There appears to be some type of battery because it got the date and time right without being set.

Again, thank you, ProfessorEd. I still fail to see why we would want to spend $400 to share our sleep info that we haven't been able to analyze first ourselves w/a bunch of strangers. I prefer to have the control over what info I share and what I don't.

Just saw a segment on Fox & Friends (Sunday) with two of the two Zeo inventors that had one of the news host wear one Zeo headband last night before the interview. It showed by his five hours of sleep and showed times when he was awake and REM sleep. I saw two different patterns that showed when he was almost awake and fully awake and times with deep REM with different sleep cycles between. They didn’t give the two Zeo guys time to talk about each sleep cycle indicator from the report. They said Zeo would know if you were rolling or moving in your sleep so it Detects motion. They said you can use your home computer to run the software and upload it to Zeo Website that shows your graphs. The news host said it was comfortable last night and didn’t cause him trouble. It was not a good interview since the two Zeo guys wanted to talk sleep cycles and explain how people go through different sleep cycles but the host were just trying to keep it fun and fast.

Its too bad the talk show host didn't give the Zeo guys more opportunity to explain things. It would be nice if they could cadge a guest spot w/some talk show host who would even allow call-in questions from the public, eh?

It would be interesting to don both the Zeo AND that SleepTracker and see how well their data coordinates.

ProfessorEd wrote: . . . it is showing much more time awake than I expected or believe. . . .

ProfessorEd,

Although the machine might be able to recognize delta sleep with some consistency, I would think that it would take some seriously good sensors and some major-league powerful machine logic to recognize consistently the differences between a person's waves when awake, when in stage 1, and when in REM.

So I wonder if the estimates of how long you are awake are reliable at all, myself.

jeff, still trying to figure out if it is accurate, or mostly just a toy.

It seems clear from the sleep tracker description it uses a simple motion sensore. I am not aware of much research that relates stages of sleep to body motion in normal sleepers. The obvious exception would be the evidence that periodic leg movements disturb sleep so I would not expect deep sleep when they were occurring.

A product that might be useful for those of us suffering from periodic limb movement might be a simple motion tracker that told you your legs were moving and recorded the data. this could then be combined with data from the zeo possibly to see if there was an effect on sleep and if say drugs were controlling it. Does any one know of such a product (or could the sleep trcker be worn on a leg to give useful data).

I let my 10 year old try the Zeo, partially to see if it gave reasonable results for him(and patially to teach him a little about sleep). It showed him as spending little time awake (looking at him when the machine said he was asleep, he looked asleep). It showed him as spending much time in deep sleep (I had virtually no such time). that children spend much time in deep sleep is well known and his results are what I would expect.

Well that is rather interesting! Your 10 year old son gets plenty of deep sleep according to the Zeo - but you don't. What about setting up a video cam of your sleep thru the night? I've read of others doing that here in the forum.

Thanks Professor. I thought the Zeo concept was sound and your experiments seem to confirm it. This also gives credence to results from the SleepTracker watch, IMO.

Now the question is what practical results can you get from using the Zeo. It will be interesting to see future posts from you.

Regards,

Yeah, but .... I still say, no home software, no fun. Especially not for that kind of money. And - at some point they could strip our ID'ing infro from the data we send them and sell it to some researchers and we will have paid for the research by buying the Zeo. Pure profit w/no risk. For them.

I bought a Zeo and received it 3 nights ago. I don't have a sleeping problem but I love measuring and analyzing things so I was interested in trying this device. At first I was excited by the results and then shocked at disappointed by the inaccuracy.

The first night, I was sick with a cold and a sore throat, so I took 2 Tylenols PM before bed.
The Zeo told me my total sleep that night was 7:34 (which seemed correct). Time in deep sleep was 1:27, and time in REM was 2:04. Time in wake was 4mns, and times woken was 3. I was pleased with the great REM time, which according to their literature, is even better than for a 20 year old person (I'm 41). I'm a novelist and pride myself on my imagination. I read that REM sleep is good for creativity, so I thought it makes sense that I'd have a strong REM number. Nevertheless I was aware that these great sleep numbers could be entirely due to the Tylenol PM, which always knocks me out, and did that night.

The next night, I did not take Tylenol PM, and did not feel I slept quite as well. Nevertheless, the Zeo results corresponded to the kind of night I felt I had: The only thing that surprised me was the REM result.
The Zeo told me my total sleep was 6:55, time in deep sleep was 1:11, and time in REM was 3:00! Time in wake was 14mns, and times woken was 9.

I Googled maximum REM time and saw that the max is generally 2 hours per night. So I felt very special and proud.

Then I had a nap that day and wore the Zeo for the nap. At one point I woke up and was staring at the Zeo, and its graph was indicating that I was in light sleep even though I was fully awake. So I waited for the next five minutes (it takes a measurement every 5 minutes), and at that point it said I was still in light sleep. So without moving I again waited for the next five minutes, at which point it said I was in deep sleep (even though I was staring at the Zeo, fully awake). Only at the next five mintues did it finally say I was awake. Their literature does say that occasionally the Zeo may have trouble telling the difference between wake state, light sleep, and REM sleep, because those three states are rather similar to each other. But it did not mention deep sleep. So I called them, told the woman what happened, and she said she'd never heard of that problem regarding deep sleep.

So that night I decided to have my husband wear the Zeo. He doesn't usually sleep as well as I do. He only wore it for part of the night because he said he had trouble getting used to the strap and plus the data was being inaccurate, so I guess he got irritated. He said it took him 20 to 25 minutes to fall asleep, and he was staring at the Zeo graph that whole time, which was telling him he'd fallen into light sleep 5 minutes after putting on the strap. Then, 2 hours later, he woke up and got up to go to the bathroom and then went back to bed, and the graph was telling him he was awake for five minutes (which was correct), and then at the next five minute mark, while he was still staring at the graph, fully awake, the graph suddenly told him he was in deep sleep for those 5 minutes. Then the graph told him he was in light sleep for 10 minutes. But he was still awake, staring at the graph. That's when he got fed up and took off the strap.

So far it seems as though I'm having the opposite problem from ProfessorEd. Could it be that the Zeo company made an adjustment to the device, and now, instead of telling people they're not asleep when they are, the updated Zeos are telling people they're asleep when they're not?

I'd be interested in reading other people's experiences with the Zeo.

Hi Yellow,

My name is Derek Haswell, and I work for Zeo. It looks like you noticed some interesting things going on, and I wanted to see if I could help.

Our research (some of which has been conducted by third parties and showcased at professional sleep conferences around the world) has shown that Zeo is accurate at phasing sleep over the course of the night. As you mentioned, at occasional points in time, Zeo can have some difficulty in determining if you are in Wake, Light sleep or REM sleep – but the aggregate data (your total Z, time in REM, time in Deep over the course of the entire night) compares very well with the results of a PSG (the gold standard for assessing sleep).

As our customer support mentioned, seeing Deep sleep while you are awake is very uncommon. If this does happen, however, the level of inaccuracy is minimal when you look at the aggregate data over the course of a night, or even more so over the course of several nights.

We hope that you continue to use Zeo over a longer stretch of time, and continue to find the information (like that from your first two nights) interesting and useful.

Thanks for sharing! Hope this helps.

Regards,
Derek

jnk wrote:Although the machine might be able to recognize delta sleep with some consistency, I would think that it would take some seriously good sensors and some major-league powerful machine logic to recognize consistently the differences between a person's waves when awake, when in stage 1, and when in REM.

I'm not sure I agree. Once we understand more about what sleep stages are it might be easier to monitor them. I recommend watching this video on a technology for a single electrode sleep stage detector.

http://thesciencenetwork.org/programs/w ... philip-low

joeb989 wrote:Does anyone have know the price of a Watch-PAT200 with software? Would they sell this to patients?

They want about $1000 CND for the zzzPat Software for the Watch-PAT. When I got a quote they wanted about $4,000 CND for the Watch-PAT100. Plus you have to buy a new probe for each night you use it. (~$70)

Derek@Zeo wrote:Our research (some of which has been conducted by third parties and showcased at professional sleep conferences around the world) has shown that Zeo is accurate at phasing sleep over the course of the night. As you mentioned, at occasional points in time, Zeo can have some difficulty in determining if you are in Wake, Light sleep or REM sleep – but the aggregate data (your total Z, time in REM, time in Deep over the course of the entire night) compares very well with the results of a PSG (the gold standard for assessing sleep).,

Hi Derek,

Are you able to tell us a little more how exactly the Zeo works? Is this based at all upon Philip Low's single electrode sleep stage rescearch?