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Ask HN: Best sleep trackers?

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Re: Ask HN: Best sleep trackers?

#111
post #49

Anecdata: Have sleep apnea, so am interested in better sleep, and I'm hooked up to a CPAP machine which registers every breath I take. I've tried several devices (withings, 2 garmin smart watches and a fitbit), and quite frankly, the results have been appalling. Some random observations: * My latest garmin has an "SpO2" sensor. Which is basically a random number generator with red LED. When I compare the results with…

I had an AHI of 150 and my CPAP has absolutely saved my life and massively improved my quality of life. The data it provides is also so empowering. I've been doing long term studies on pillow types for me.

Re: Ask HN: Best sleep trackers?

#112
I have a Garmin Fenix 6 Pro and I find it pretty accurate. I set the watch to watch for sleep between 10pm and 8am. Recently with COVID-19 I've been going to bed past 2-4pm. In the morning the first thing I do is check the sleep stats. I find them very accurate. They correctly track my pit stop runs in the middle of the night as well. Today I woke up at 11.43am and the watch got it right. Interestingly after I wake up and lay in bed for a few more minutes, while I'm still in bet, I also start to get bazillion of notification from phone on my watch. I feel very confident about the watch's ability to track the start and the end of sleep right. I cannot tell about the REM time but it seems within the correct ball park. There were some rough nights where it showed no REM at all. The truth is that I was pretty low energy in those next days and not at my full potential. However, when the watch tells me I had >2h of REM, I'm an energy bomb.

The body battery is another thing that is quite magical in indicating my resources. Two days ago I found myself at 10/100 midday. At 4pm my concentration and deep thinking ability was almost inexistent.

From the engineering perspective I noticed that the SP02 sensors attached to the finger, to the smart watches and other devices tracking pulse, O2 and heart functions they use pretty much the same technology to read the pulse, blood oxygenation levels etc.

There is a lot of software and signal engineering that lays on top of the sensor readings that differs on each manufacturer. To get these settle to accurately predict REM and VO2 and other more advanced activity labelings they do need a lot of data and iterations. Fitbit and the Apple watches went through thousands of data points and they do seem to be miles away now.

So far I found that with each software update the Garmin Fenix is getting a lot better at these predictions. Certainly for all these devices there is a learning curve and we are quite frankly at the beginning of it.

Re: Ask HN: Best sleep trackers?

#113
post #32

I recall reading a paper that found that compared to clinical sleep study equipment (you know, electrodes all over your head) that most devices were random at best in terms of measuring REM sleep. I did a lot of research when a friend went all in on sleep monitoring and wound up worse than when he started (worrying over data). I didn't exhaustively research but based on un-biased available science I found at the time…

I have pretty big doubts about the usefulness of clinical sleep tests after having had one a few years ago. Perhaps they work well for very deep and immediate sleepers. But with the electrodes, a strange location, multiple interruptions, a sleep position I never sleep in, etc, it was probably one of the worst nights of sleep in my life. The doctor seemed to disregard all of that and treat it as my typical night sleep…

> The doctor seemed to disregard all of that and treat it as my typical night sleep and based the treatment recommendations on it

What did the doctor recommend?

Re: Ask HN: Best sleep trackers?

#114
post #49

Anecdata: Have sleep apnea, so am interested in better sleep, and I'm hooked up to a CPAP machine which registers every breath I take. I've tried several devices (withings, 2 garmin smart watches and a fitbit), and quite frankly, the results have been appalling. Some random observations: * My latest garmin has an "SpO2" sensor. Which is basically a random number generator with red LED. When I compare the results with…

As I understand it, Fitbit doesn't provide a detailed breakdown of your sleep unless it registers "more than 3 hours of sleep". Do you regularly idle in bed or otherwise for 3+ hours? While I take their stats with a hefty dosage of salt, I've not encountered the situations you have. I'm a fairly sedentary person and I don't think I can idle for more than 30-45 minutes.

Re: Ask HN: Best sleep trackers?

#115

I have a Garmin Fenix 6 Pro and I find it pretty accurate. I set the watch to watch for sleep between 10pm and 8am. Recently with COVID-19 I've been going to bed past 2-4pm. In the morning the first thing I do is check the sleep stats. I find them very accurate. They correctly track my pit stop runs in the middle of the night as well. Today I woke up at 11.43am and the watch got it right. Interestingly after I wake u…

I have a Forerunner 45 - concur on the body battery metric, not so much on sleep. It often interprets me lying in bed as "sleeping" and recalculates my sleep time through the morning - I can wake up and see that I slept 7 hours then on my next sync with Connect later in the morning, it says 9 hours 49 minutes.

Re: Ask HN: Best sleep trackers?

#116

Do you feel tired? You didn't sleep enough. Do you feel fine? You slept enough. C'mon OP. What's a computer going to tell you that you 3-million year-old endocrine system doesn't already know?

Maybe not a bad first approximation, but this approach would suggest I should be asleep always...

Sometimes information can be handy, even if all you're getting is an automated way of collecting information you already had access to.

Re: Ask HN: Best sleep trackers?

#117
post #16

Are some of the suggestions FOSS and/or privacy-respecting?

There's an Android app called Gadgetbridge which is open source and keeps your data local. I use it with an Android watch (I forget which one exactly). I don't know how it compares in quality with the phone-home vendor app, since I replaced that immediately.

https://gadgetbridge.org/

Re: Ask HN: Best sleep trackers?

#118
post #32

I recall reading a paper that found that compared to clinical sleep study equipment (you know, electrodes all over your head) that most devices were random at best in terms of measuring REM sleep. I did a lot of research when a friend went all in on sleep monitoring and wound up worse than when he started (worrying over data). I didn't exhaustively research but based on un-biased available science I found at the time…

I have pretty big doubts about the usefulness of clinical sleep tests after having had one a few years ago. Perhaps they work well for very deep and immediate sleepers. But with the electrodes, a strange location, multiple interruptions, a sleep position I never sleep in, etc, it was probably one of the worst nights of sleep in my life. The doctor seemed to disregard all of that and treat it as my typical night sleep…

Now there are devices for clinical at-home sleep monitoring, say for screening for apnea. Still uncomfortable but at least you are at home.

Re: Ask HN: Best sleep trackers?

#119
post #32

I recall reading a paper that found that compared to clinical sleep study equipment (you know, electrodes all over your head) that most devices were random at best in terms of measuring REM sleep. I did a lot of research when a friend went all in on sleep monitoring and wound up worse than when he started (worrying over data). I didn't exhaustively research but based on un-biased available science I found at the time…

I have pretty big doubts about the usefulness of clinical sleep tests after having had one a few years ago. Perhaps they work well for very deep and immediate sleepers. But with the electrodes, a strange location, multiple interruptions, a sleep position I never sleep in, etc, it was probably one of the worst nights of sleep in my life. The doctor seemed to disregard all of that and treat it as my typical night sleep…

Much of the test interpretation has to do with the correlation of sleep structure to changes in your vitals, I.e., I don’t care if it was the worst night of your sleeping life, if you had X number of apnic events per unit time sleeping, that data is unchanged by the fact that you had trouble sleeping.

Re: Ask HN: Best sleep trackers?

#120
post #7

I have found the built in sleep tracking of my samsung active 2 to be good. Maybe you could strap the watch to your ankle instead of your wrist?

I've found my Samsung Galaxy Watch Active2 to be hilariously incorrect with estimating sleep tracking, and I miss my Fitbits for getting that measurement. Example: on Sunday, I woke up, drove 20 minutes to a trailhead, proceeded to strenuously hike for an hour, drove 20 minutes back. When I checked the sleep log later that day, the watch had automatically assumed I had been sleeping through the entire hike. I like mo…

Geez, that almost sounds like faulty hardware. Do you find it counts steps accurately?
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