Because using either of the two sites is not easy on a small screen. And who has his laptop with him when lying in bed and checking the wake up time.
Me! ^
I'm a poor college student with a dumb phone and a single room. My laptop sits on my desk, which is in the same room as my bed. Unless your mobile version works on an 07 Motorola Razr, and doesn't require a data plan, I can't use it. I assume this is not the case, so if you want to cater to my demographic, please make sure the site is usable through a normal browser without a touchscreen.
Note that my demographic isn't likely to drop a lot of money on an app that does this, but I'm not sure it's worth much at all.
^ OK, so I actually use a normal alarm clock and I get up and go to bed at the same time every day (calculated with this in mind).
I just think the majority would use such a site on their mobile. That's why I go mobile first. And I won't charge money, it's more like a little side project to try out new stuff!
You could provide a time range of 60 to 90 minutes of when you need to get up, then press a button on the app to "set" it when you go to bed. The alarm could then figure out when the best time would be for you to get up in your provided time range.
Granted this assumes your audiences bed time varies from day to day, which probably isn't the best for someone trying to get the best sleep in the first place.
You could also do the reverse, set a wake-up time and have an alarm go off as a reminder for upcoming bedtimes...
The WakeMate is a comfortable wristband that you wear when you sleep. It measures subtle body movements—a scientifically proven method (Actigraphy) to map dips and peaks in your sleep cycle. The wristband communicates directly with your mobile phone to calculate the ideal wake time closest to your alarm setting. When you wake up, your night's sleep data is automatically uploaded to Wakelytics™, our online analytics platform.
Their blog (http://blog.wakemate.com/) and live support seem to be down at the moment. Anyone know how they're doing?
The main problem for me was when I toss and turn at night, it loses contact with the phone (sitting on the end table) and starts screaming 'Lost contact, lost contact'.
If I continued to use it, my wife would have thrown me out onto the patio to sleep.
There were several other occasions where wakemate never woke me up.
I would have loved to see wakemate work, I wanted to root for a startup, see them succeed. You only get so many chances with a single customer. In my books, they failed badly on their promise. continuously. starting with their delivery of the product and then later with the product itself.
Case in point: I've known a number of individuals with highly variable sleep schedules imposed by their work who performed this calculation manually. I imagine that they would find an application or a cycle-aware alarm clock on their phones to be quite handy.
Aside from that, calling someone's work the "dumbest thing you've ever seen" is both unnecessary and probably untrue. Please don't be uncivil.
For instance, let's say I had to get up at 8AM. The recommended times are:
11PM 12:30AM 2AM 3:30AM
What if I go to bed at 10:40 but don't fall asleep until 11:30? I'd be in between sleep cycles, right? And am I correct in assuming that the closer I fall asleep to when it recommends, the less groggy I would be in the morning?
I tried out the Wakemate a while back but it wasn't syncing with my Evo and I had to get a refund. It was a shame because I really want to get better sleep somehow and the Wakemate seemed to best product out there. I'll try the Lark when they have an Android app.
Also, the 1.5 hours between sleep cycles isn't completely accurate - but it makes more practical sense to time it this way. Add to this, that not everyone has the same internal functionality, and you have a really complicated problem. Everyone needs a different amount of sleep each night, and I believe the cycles are different as well.
However, if you wake up around the times it suggests, you have a higher chance of feeling better. It doesn't ensure anything, but if you were going to wake up around that time anyway, might as well adjust 10-20 minutes for a better chance.
TYPO: "try to get into bed around 15 before one of these times" - change to "15 mins"
And 24h clock would be nice.
