Thread: Rem-Dreamer - Users offer advice?

Holy crap, 20 seconds. I think that's your problem. I tried the light sleeper setting to begin with. 4 flashes at 1/10 second duration over 2 seconds with brightnesss level 1. Sensitivity level 5.

The lights have yet to penetrate my dreams. They either wake me or cause a false awakening. Are you sure you aren't having FA's? You might be - they're very confusing until you get the hang of it. FA's have some very nce advantages though ( you have a predictable starting point for you LD ).

Lately, the RD has been waking me at that setting. I'll experiment some to change the flash sequence. My first try will simply be to diminish the flash duration to 5/100 ths of a second.

I suspect that your brain gets used to the light squence after a while and you need to mix it up to continue to kep your brain off guard, so to speak.

Anyway, why not try the light sleeper default setting first?

Hi DrTechnical,

Thanks for your reply. Yes I have tried all different settings although ~I have not played with the duration of the flash. I may try that tonight.

As for False awakenings, I don't think I have had one although I do wake up quite often. I will pay more attention when I wake up toinight.

When I first started to use it, I think the lights did penatrate a few of my dreams. One dream I was in a forrest and there was a something flashing at me in the distance, like someone one was holding a mirror. I remember thinking in my dream, that's strange but I did not twig that it was the RD until I woke up.

Thanks anyway for sharing your experience with the RD, if you have any major breakthroughs with it, give me a shout.

Paulh

One other piece of advice. Since you do very little dreaming over the first 4 hours or so, I don't bother putting on my RD when I first go to bed. If I intend to use it on a particular night, I get up after 5-6 hours and put it on then. As you may know, your REM periods are longer as the evening goes on.

For example, if you put it on first thing in the evening, even if it does detect REM, you won't get light cues for about 5 minutes afer the initial REM detection becuase of the detection averaging and delay (as I understand it). So by the time it's ready to flash, you might not even be dreaming anymore. Putting it on later in your sleep cycle will tend to avoid that problem.

Hi DrTechical,

Yes I do that myself, the mask isn't the most comfortable of things to wear, especially as I sleep on my side or belly, so I wake up about 3.5 hours into the nights sleep and stick it on then.

Thanks again for sharing your tips

Paulh.

I think this is the biggest downfall of these products. It would be nice if they had the leds and rem dectors on the mask. The rest could be on a circuit board (in a box) attached to a cable or whatever. I had the DreamMaker and couldnt sleep with that mask and circuit board on my face. When is some design team going to get this right? Wierd.

I got to the point where even at the lowest brightness and short flash duration my Rem Dreamer was still waking me up.

I took two thin pieces of low adhesive paper tape and put them over each LED. This resolved my present problem and I used it successfully last night. If you try this, insure that your not shorting out anything with the tape - which may or may not be conductive.

Do you have both Rem Dreamer and Dream Maker. Is Rem Dreamer any more comfortable? Did you trust ordering from those guys? I heard they are hard to get a hold of etc?

I have both devices. Here's my high level opinion:

Dream Maker is much more comfortable. Even though it touches more surface area of your face, it's a soft uniform pressure that I can tolerate easily. It's easier to configure but in part because there is less control over the device (e.g. - you can't control REM detection sensitivity).

The REM Dreamer has better REM detection, at least per my experiments. It's a little work to configure but you'll get used to it. Removing the batteries loses the config - it would have been nice to leverage a NVRAM to eliminate that dependency. This also has a feature were the queues get stronger and stronger until you become lucid and use eye movements to shut off the queues. That's a very cool idea but since I'm such a light sleeper I haven't played with it yet.

Bottom line, I take my REM dreamer board and put it in my Dream Maker mask. It doesn't fit perfectly into the pocket which is too big, but once I strap it on the PCB stays perfectly stationary just based on the pressure the mask puts on it.

Thanks! I had hardtime with the dreamMaker mask. I must be in trouble. Maybe I should give it another try. I didnt think the REM detection was so hot either. Were you able to catch some of the queues though?

I've successfully had LD's with each device. I've gravitated to the REM Dreamer because of the better REM detection. Another nice feature is you can determine the number of cues sent to you while you were sleeping (it's stores that info and you can use it to fine tune the sensitivity setting).

The nice thing about these masks, is even if I'm uncomfortable and can't fall asleep, I'll kill 30-60 min trying. If I give up and take off the mask and roll over, I'm still much more likely to have a natural lucid because it's basically WBTB.

The Dream Maker really helped me alot when I was starting out. I think they're especially good for beginners. Like I said above, by and large I have false awakenings as a result of the light cues. I didn't even realize this for a while, as FA's can be very confusing.

Originally Posted by DrTechnical

I've successfully had LD's with each device. I've gravitated to the REM Dreamer because of the better REM detection. Another nice feature is you can determine the number of cues sent to you while you were sleeping (it's stores that info and you can use it to fine tune the sensitivity setting).

The nice thing about these masks, is even if I'm uncomfortable and can't fall asleep, I'll kill 30-60 min trying. If I give up and take off the mask and roll over, I'm still much more likely to have a natural lucid because it's basically WBTB.

The Dream Maker really helped me alot when I was starting out. I think they're especially good for beginners. Like I said above, by and large I have false awakenings as a result of the light cues. I didn't even realize this for a while, as FA's can be very confusing.

Thanks! Well Bruce had sent me a couple of circuit boards for testing and really didnt have the time to put into true testing so perhaps I'll give it a whirl since he knows me and can work with me on the product.