Thread: Has anyone tried Zeo?

It looks really interesting! I've read a few reviews on it since I heard it mentioned here and I'm really impressed by what I've seen. I'll probably buy it in a week or two when I have the cash to afford it (Since I have some very poor sleep habits that I wouldn't mind dealing with) and if I remember I'll post my experience with it here.

Cheers!

EDIT: Looks like I have the money now! Ordering it today, will hopefully have my initial experiences later this week! Also, make sure you use the promo code FREESHIP to save a few dollars and get free ground shipping if you decide you want one as well.

It looks a little scammy, like an infomercial and the price is just ridiculous.

Be ready to send it back if you find it's not worth the $200 price tag.

Originally Posted by SystemsLock

It looks a little scammy, like an infomercial and the price is just ridiculous.

Be ready to send it back if you find it's not worth the $200 price tag.

On first glance it gave me that impression as well. I read a couple reviews that people had posted on it on various websites from David Pogues review to personal testimonies I found throughout the web. The product seems fairly established, reliable, and above all helpful to the ones using it. Mine should be here by the middle of the week so I'll see if it lives up to the hype I've been reading.

I would also like to point out that they do have a 30-day money back guarantee try-out period to see if you like it.

Write a review on your experiences if you get it.

EDIT: I just checked out the website, it looks interesting, I'll definitely look more into it. I liked this page, it has links to it appearing in the news. I was surprised that it's been shown in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and other popular magazines/newspapers.

http://www.myzeo.com/pages/293_in_the_news.cfm

yes please let us know how you like it!

I just read something off the website that may be more relevant to lucid dreaming.

"SmartWake™ Alarm
With our optional SmartWake alarm feature, our SoftWave sensors search to find what could be a “natural awakening point” - when it could be a little easier to get out of bed in the morning. SmartWake will look for a moment when you transition into and out of REM sleep when the brain is highly active, a moment Zeo is uniquely able to find since it detects all phases of sleep. The result may be a slightly easier way to wake up. Zeo will awaken you as early as a half-hour before your set wake-up time, and SmartWake will never wake you later than your set wake-up time.

Zeo also features a standard wake-up alarm feature, which is like a normal alarm clock and will wake you at the exact time you set the alarm."

Couldn't this be useful for dream recall? Can't dreams be recalled better when woken up during REM?

I just chatted with customer support or whatever on their website...the weren't that much help, it looks like they mainly copy and pasted when I asked for more details. But it seems like you just set your alarm, and set a time frame from that alarm. The machine will try to wake you up at some point during REM, but only REM that falls in the time frame from your alarm.

I then asked if alarm noises could be customized. Unfortunately...

"Zeo has five different alarm tones to choose from: daybreak, meadow, sunrise, forest, and duo. All tones are designed to wake you gently by ramping in volume. To change the alarm tone, press the Settings button (third button on the left next to the arrows). The words “alarm music” will appear in the lower left hand corner of the bedside display. The center of the display will indicate the current alarm tone setting."

I was hoping that a short alarm could be customized for potential DEILDing. I also wish that you could set the machine to wake you up after every REM cycle, instead of just the one closest to your set alarm time.

It's a good idea for people who are really struggling with sleep or are just curious to see how it works. But whew, that's a bit pricey... Two to three hundred dollars won't persuade me to buy it, that's for sure.

Yeah, I've seen plenty of raving reviews about how it helped sort out some sleep issues. I've also seen quite a few negative ones as well, most of them are similar in that it's people with sleep apnea, but it also points out some of the other things that might be bad with the product. One of the things I didn't like was that it only updates in intervals of around 5 minutes, I understand this is to probably help the battery not drain insanely fast but a faster update cycle would have been awesome. Another thing is that some people get the odd unit that doesn't seem to detect what stage of sleep you are in, or even detect correctly the difference between waking and light sleep/REM. There's plenty out there on both sides of the coin, so it's hard to get a truly accurate picture without trying it out yourself.

My Zeo will arrive tomorrow, and if I have time I'll post my initial out of box impression of it as well as some pictures before I attempt my first night with it.

Originally Posted by Nunosi

Yeah, I've seen plenty of raving reviews about how it helped sort out some sleep issues. I've also seen quite a few negative ones as well, most of them are similar in that it's people with sleep apnea, but it also points out some of the other things that might be bad with the product. One of the things I didn't like was that it only updates in intervals of around 5 minutes, I understand this is to probably help the battery not drain insanely fast but a faster update cycle would have been awesome. Another thing is that some people get the odd unit that doesn't seem to detect what stage of sleep you are in, or even detect correctly the difference between waking and light sleep/REM. There's plenty out there on both sides of the coin, so it's hard to get a truly accurate picture without trying it out yourself.

My Zeo will arrive tomorrow, and if I have time I'll post my initial out of box impression of it as well as some pictures before I attempt my first night with it.

Looking forward to it!

As for the fact that it only updates your sleeping state every five minutes, here's an interesting post I read about that, by someone from the company:

5 Steps to Phasing Sleep

It talks about how it records your sleeping state every two seconds, uses those two second updates to determine an average sleep state in a 30 second interval, and then uses the 30 second intervals in a five minute timeframe to determine your main sleep state. Along with some fancy algorithms, I guess.

Also, it seems that you can now import your sleep data to Excel:

Download Your Zeo Sleep Data to Excel

I'm not exactly sure if it includes more accurate data (i.e. the 30 second intervals instead of the five minute ones), but it's interesting nonetheless.

Also, read the comments below the post, especially the ones that have been replied to by people at the company. It seems many people want a software update to alert users when a REM state has started, hopefully we'll get it some day!

If one so wishes it can also be used as an expensive way of finding your average sleep cycle. I read a tutorial on it that required 90 nights of good data to make an accurate average.

Hello everyone - I am one of the co-founders of Zeo and a lucid dreaming novice (but excited by the prospects!) We have had interest from lucid dreamers in using Zeo - and we have some groundswell efforts in place to open up the Zeo platform so that people can hack their own lucid dreaming applications onto the sleep phasing base that exists. There is a thread in our forum on this:
Where Do We Get the Data Decoder Library? | Zeo Data Decoder Library | Forum
Basically we are planning to enable the raw data from Zeo (sleep phase, brainwaves) to be used by developers to do whatever they like - including lucid dreaming. The guy working on this library is a Cornell student who hacked the Zeo LCD protocol to get real-time sleep phase (he explains how on the forum) - we thought this was cool so we hired him to do some work for us over the summer on building out a real raw data library.
Anyways - he is planning to build a simple lucid dreaming app as an example of what to do with the system - if anyone is interested in early access to the library and is a developer he may be interested in getting some help.
Also happy to answer any Zeo related Qs if anyone has them.

bsrubin,

this is great. the lucid dreaming community is actually pretty large and growing exponentially (judging by the number of newbies that show up on here daily.) to have this as a nice built in feature of the zeo would def make good business sense and be a great marketing tool.

the REMdreamer: REM-Dreamer - Lucid Dream Induction Device* is about $200 and while it has many features the zeo does not (such as two way communication) it also does nothing to track your sleep cycle or have the cool alarm clock features

the novadreamer is for sale on ebay for $450

wouldnt you like a slice of that pie? it would be faaaantastic to have an all in one sleep cycle and brainwave tracking, lucid dreaming, and cycle based alarm clock....

you guys get on it and pump out a friendly design (preferably with some open ended architecture in there for further hacking!) in a year or so and i promise i will buy one.

I am the student previously mentioned who is working on creating some raw data output. The current approach is there will be a new optional firmware version that will enable serial output from the back of Zeo. For now we are creating a Python library that will allow you to read this information (waveform, sleepstage, different events such as alarm going off) and incorporate it into your own programs. The serial output is pretty straight forward so it could also later be implemented on other programming languages or on microcontrollers for standalone devices.

zhineTech made a good point that the price is actually comparable to other lucid dreaming tools currently available. Plus the approach we are taking will make it much easier to customize to your advantage. For example, although we probably won't build into it the two way communication bit, there is no reason why a user could not implement it since you can clearly see eye movements in the waveform.

The possibilities for Zeo are enormous. Unfortunately I am currently focused on working on the core library and the documentation that follows. I won't really have the time to work on a real clean lucid dreaming app. I will, however, create a simple example (read sleep stage and signal via sound accordingly). If anyone out there is familiar with python, has a Zeo, and wants to try to develop some fully featured lucid dreaming software (or if you have a great application we haven't thought of), I might be able to give you early access to the raw data library. Feel free to post to this thread or you can contact me directly via email at bgs44@cornell.edu.

I have high hopes for what can be accomplished with Zeo and would love to have some developers join me.

I'm excited at the future of Zeo! Adding features related to lucid dreaming would most definitely make this machine a must-buy for me, along with many other people on this site. As you can see, we're a very active lucid dreaming community, and only one of many. This is an exciting idea for many of us!!!

Giving the Zeo more customization would be a great opportunity for us. As the above posters have said, it compares with the REM reading sleep masks that have gone on sale in the past.

One other thing I'm hoping we can see from the Zeo is customizable alarm tones and durations. It would help in our lucid dreaming efforts!

I'm glad to hear the excitement! I know how devoted the lucid dreaming community can be. I have been a member over on the ld4all forums for many years. One thing I like about Zeo as compared to the traditional sleep masks is that it is so comfortable! Many people don't like sleep masks, with Zeo it would be completely optional.

The library we are developing is in Python and completely open source. As such, what it can do is only limited by your imagination(and your grasp of the Python language). It would be quite straight forward to allow you to use any sound file on your computer as an alarm. The only downside of this I can see is that you will need a computer connected to Zeo and running while you sleep. Eventually I hope to see some stand alone devices that can read Zeo, but for now all the processing will be done via computer in Python.

Good to hear!

When do you think we can expect the release of such a library?

An initial version of the library is almost complete! A lot of testing and documentation remains to be done though, so I'm afraid I can't give a set release date.

First of all, a big thanks to Brian and Ben for taking the time to join the forums to talk to us more personally! I've been extremely impressed by your dedication to customer satisfaction so far, and that's unfortunately something that does not happen much these days. I'm also very excited to read about these proposed additions to what already seems a great product!

I received my Zeo today in the mail, and I am looking forward to my first experience with it later tonight. While I plan on doing a formal review over the coming week or two, I did take a couple photos of my unboxing of my new Zeo, since that seems to be a hot thing to do these days.

Zeo Unboxing - a set on Flickr

Again, a big thanks to Brian and Ben for taking the time to chat with us here!

Enjoy your first night with Zeo! The headband might seem odd for a night or two, but I can personally say that you quickly forget it is even there. Be sure to also check out the Zeo forum, for any general questions about Zeo since a lot of the staff is there to answer questions.

I have read at least two comments that say the "SmartWake" always just wakes you up at the earliest time you set it. If you set the alarm a 8 am, with a window of 30 minutes, it will just go off at 7:30 every morning. They eventually turned it off. With that said, it could be useful for WILDing, because is seems to wake you up "too early", which would seem to be just the right time to try a morning WILD.

bsrubin:

Thanks your contributing!

I would love to experiment with external stimuli during REM. However, Nunosi makes me wonder how the deivce works. I was under the impression that when you woke up, you could look at the device, and see your sleep cycles. Assuming the X axis is time, then what is the Y axis? Dominant wave type (Delta, Theta, Alpha, etc.)? Can you advise or post a link?

Thanks!

Originally Posted by ZoeSeeker

bsrubin:

Thanks your contributing!

I would love to experiment with external stimuli during REM. However, Nunosi makes me wonder how the deivce works. I was under the imporession that when ou woke up, you could look at the device, and see your sleep cycles. Assuming the X axis is time, then what is the Y axis? Dominant wave type (Delta, Theta, Alpha, etc.)? Can you advise or post a link?

Thanks!

You CAN view your sleep cycle via the bedside display. You are correct that the X-axis is time, Y-axis is your sleep state. From top to bottom it is W for Wake, R for REM, L for Light Sleep, and D for Deep Sleep. If I can find a good image of this I will edit this post with it.

EDIT: http://whatiszeo3.myzeo.com/hp/3/whatiszeo.php Under the heading "Visualize your sleep with personalized sleep graphs" is a graphic which shows what it looks like, except the bedside display will have the graphics you can see in that first image.

Interesting, I actually haven't heard that before. I tried to find a post from someone I had read before that about sums up my personal experience, but couldn't find it. Basically for me (and this other person) the experience has been that I'll wake up and look over at Zeo to see that the time is within the wake window. At this point I think "oh shoot, I want more sleep and now Zeo is going to tell me to just get out of bed already!" Sure enough, it tends to do just that and goes off a few seconds later.

That said, no algorithm is perfect. I would be interested to know if those users also had Zeo falsely considering them to be awake at other times in the night... or perhaps they are light sleepers, I'm not sure.

Regarding your second post, check out this blog post: 5 Steps to Phasing Sleep.

And with X axis as time, Y axis would be sleep stage (which we divide into awake, light, REM, and deep).

EDIT: Wow, fast reply Nunosi. You beat me to it.

Alrighty, so my first night with the Zeo comes with some mixed feelings.

The headband was comfortable to wear, although since I usually don't go to sleep with things strapped to my head it did take some getting used to of course. I spent about 20 minutes just playing with different placements and levels of tightness, once I was satisfied with the placement and was fairly confident it wouldn't fall off through a typical night for me I turned over and tried to fall asleep. (I wake up and find half of my pillows and blanket on the floor usually. The assumption is I'm an active sleeper.)

I'll include a picture of the graph from my first night of sleep with the Zeo so you can all follow along.


Hokay, so as you can tell from the graph it took me roughly an hour to fall asleep from the point I put the headband on. Assuming 20 minutes of adjusting the headband + 40 minutes of falling asleep, I would consider that a good night for me in terms of falling asleep. I've been combating insomnia the past few weeks so it takes me on average of 1-2 hours to fall asleep.

I'll note here that I took 50mg of Diphenhydramine HCl prior to sleeping as well, which probably factored into this.

From the point where I fell asleep it looks like I had a fairly normal nights sleep until the early morning where I woke up (Around 6AM, I have no recollection of waking up during the other "Wake" spikes it shows.) From this point I spent the rest of the morning in a toss and turn state, unable to fall back asleep. The curious part of this graph for me was the lack of REM sleep during the period of 2AM - 6AM. I'm not sure if this was Zeo incorrectly determining the sleep state I was in or if it is really indicative of some issues I might have.

Now on to the area I'm fairly puzzled over, the section of the graph from 7AM to 9AM. It shows a strong period of REM sleep, of which I remember with a fairly high level of conviction that I was still awake. Maybe I fell into REM and just don't remember any dreams, who knows. My dream recall in the past few months has been nonexistent, despite my persistence in journaling my waking life as well as emotions felt upon waking. So the validity of that section is questionable.

The blank period between 9AM - 10AM is due to me taking the headband off after resigning myself to the fact I was not about to fall asleep any more that morning.

So all in all I had a good experience with the Zeo on our first night together. I am able to feel some level of confidence in believing what the graph is showing me, and I am hoping to continue seeing improvement over the coming nights.