I found an advertisement for Zeo, which tracks your sleep (NREM, REM, etc). I'm wondering if anyone has tried this to verify their sleep patterns, so that could set an alarm to wake them when they hit REM. It's expensive, but it looks pretty cool...
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I found an advertisement for Zeo, which tracks your sleep (NREM, REM, etc). I'm wondering if anyone has tried this to verify their sleep patterns, so that could set an alarm to wake them when they hit REM. It's expensive, but it looks pretty cool...
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.
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by SystemsLock
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.
Looking forward to it!Quote:
Originally Posted by Nunosi
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. :D
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 [email protected].
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!
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by ZoeSeeker
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.
http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a2...sleepgraph.png
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.
I got a Zeo yesterday! Here are my impressions:
A lot of effort went into the design of this product. The headband is made of a soft elastic fabric and is adjustable. The sensors and wireless transmitter contact your forehead. Unless you sleep on your stomach, it should be quite comfortable. More comfortable, I would think, than a LD sleep mask, although I have never used a sleep mask.
The display is about 7 1/2" x 4 1/2" x 4", not much bigger than a standard digital alarm clock. There is a cradle on the back of the display for recharging the headband. A nice feature is a magnet that holds the headband in place while it is being charged.
Like most electronic devices these days, the Zeo uses a menu system to set preferences and to retrieve various types of information. There are dedicated buttons along the top which pull up menus for things like alarm, time setting, sleep data, etc. In the top center there is a cluster of four directional buttons for traversing menus.
The packaging, although not really important, is extremely slick and reflects the care and talent that went into the design of this product. (see Nunosi's unboxing above). All in all, I would have to give the Zeo an A+ on product design.
I've only used the Zeo one night, so my take on performance is superficial and subject to revision. The graph of sleep phases seemed to be mostly accurate. As expected, deep sleep occurred in the first few hours, and REM occurred mostly in the last part of the sleep cycle. Unfortunately it is impossible to verify the time and duration of REM unless you wake up and record the time, but subjectively the graph of REM seemed about right.
There did seem to be some confusion between wake and REM. I was awake for about an hour after an initial period of deep sleep (too much caffeine). During this one hour period the graph showed several brief, 5 minute periods of REM interspersed. This was probably wrong. My guess is that during the wake period there was some eye movement that confused the algorithm. Still I judge the sleep phase graph to be quite usable and mostly accurate. I give the Zeo a B on performance.
I'm a hacker, and I contacted BrianS on Friday about getting access to the library that he is developing. Brian was very helpful, and I would encourage any other programmers, if you have the time and inclination, to get in touch with him. The Zeo has great potential as LD tool and developing a really excellent LD application will be an interesting and useful project.
In summary, I like the Zeo and would recommend it.
Glad to hear both of you, Nunosi and DawgBone, have had reasonably good first nights with Zeo. I look forward to hearing how you like them as you spend more time with them.
DawgBone, probably the most common mistake I see my Zeo making is mistaking wake for REM...normally it is easy to tell when it is a mistake though since it'll go back and forth on its decision. Whereas when you are "actually" in REM, it'll show REM consistently for quite some time.
I'll be sending you, DawgBone, the library and associated files for development tomorrow. As a teaser for everyone else, here is a screenshot of a GUI I developed showing all of the data that will soon be available in real time:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4446697/preview.png
The larger up and then down movement you can see in the waveform, is from me moving my eyes left and back to center.
I've been out of action for the past few days due to a fun case of Labyrinthitis, so I've been unable to sleep with the Zeo on without discomfort. However I was able to wear it again last night finally.
Like DawgBone above it does seem fairly easy to confuse Zeo (intentionally or not) about the difference between REM and Waking. Last night according to the Zeo I was awake for a grand total of four minutes before going into Light Sleep however, even though I was doing my usual ritual of tossing and turning for a good half an hour. So I tend to disregard the first and last sections of the Zeo report based on its inability to distinguish between the two. Beyond that though I find it reports your sleep state pretty confidently.
To Brian, do you know how much the placement and tightness on your forehead has to do with the accuracy of it's readings?
Nunosi,
For the most part placement and tightness shouldn't matter for accuracy. The exception would be if the headband is slipping around and moving quite a lot during the night - in which case more wake will often be reported.
It's been almost a month since you last posted. Would you mind updating your review of the Zeo? I'm thinking of buying it but am concerned because of some negative reviews I've read that claim the Zeo "makes up" the data and doesn't really measure your sleep stages. I've read about people doing experiments where they wore the band, wide awake, and stared at the Zeo watching it show their transition from awake to light sleep to deep sleep, all the time being actually awake.
If the people from Zeo are still following this thread, it would be nice to hear from them too.
Hi stjimmy,
Zeo has been repeatedly validated, check out this site to read about some of the studies.
Predicting which sleepstage you are in is a very difficult problem and humans scorers will often even disagree with each other as to which sleepstage you are in. It is not surprising that Zeo occasionally will get things wrong, but I assure you that it does not make data up.
On a personal note, I have woken up from dreams a ton of times and looked at Zeo to see it saying I had been in REM for about as long as I expected. I have not looked over and discovered it thought I was in some sleepstage yet. I have had times where it mistakes my being awake for being a sleepstage, but it usually corrects the problem after a few minutes.
A humorous occasion was a time when I had been going in out of sleep first thing in the morning. That stage where you aren't quite sure if you are awake, or dreaming, or what. Maybe a few delirious thoughts and the such. When I remembered later to look at Zeo it had almost a random distribution of wake, light, and rem sleep for the 10-20mins this occurred. It was an entertaining validation of Zeo for me.
Hope this helps and that the others on this thread will chime in with their own experiences as well.
-Brian
Thanks for the info, Brian. I'll take a look at the page you posted.
I guess that, in any case, if I were to find that the Zeo is not following my sleep accurately I could exercise the money back warranty, right?
This is surely true. What about hypnagogia? You are not asleep, but you are not awake: random specks of light, lines, geometric patterns, etc playing on the inside of your eyelids, etc. etc. The neat division of sleep into wake, light sleep, deep sleep and REM is a bit of a fiction. REM is probably the most clearly defined because of the physical movement of the eyes.Quote:
Originally Posted by BrianS
It's my experience that Zeo is mostly right, particularly the percentage of deep sleep, light sleep, REM and wake. If you want to measure and quantify the effect of 4mgs melatonin, Zeo is the right tool. If you want to measure and quantify the effect of WBTB on the amount of REM, Zeo is the right tool.
You have done this?Quote:
If you want to measure and quantify the effect of 4mgs melatonin, Zeo is the right tool. If you want to measure and quantify the effect of WBTB on the amount of REM, Zeo is the right tool.
I haven't done it in any rigorous, scientific sense, but I have done it informally.Quote:
Originally Posted by stjimmy
And yes, melatonin does increase deep sleep in the first 4 hours while diminishing REM, with a potential rebound in the second 4 hours. Zeo will let you adjust your dosage to get the effect you want, using the minimum about of supplement.
I haven't used it to quantify WBTB yet, but intend to do that.
My Zeo will come tomorrow and I'm excited. Mostly, initially, I'm just interested in understand and improving my general sleep habits. But as I get used to it, I'll surely be pondering patterns and experiments relevant to lucid dreams.
Please let us know your impressions!Quote:
Originally Posted by sisyphus
this is relevant to my interests, i might get one but i'm gonna wait some more :)
I'll probably order one in the next few days, I'll let you guys know how it goes.
In a nutshell, here's how it works:
- You wear a headband at night (battery-powered, recharges while docked to the alarm clock)
- The headband transmits your brainwave readings to an alarm clock
- The alarm clock graphs your sleep state in real-time (wake, REM, light, deep)
- In the morning, you transfer the data to the website via an SD memory card (included, along with an SD to USB adapter)
- On the website, you complete a short survey ("Sleep Journal") of how you felt last evening, in the morning, and throughout the day, considering factors such as eating, stress, and environment
- You can analyze everything on the website with charts that combine your brainwave data with your Sleep Journal scores
- Zeo sends to you emails and offers "Coaching" articles to develop an "Action Plan" to help you understand and improve your sleep
I echo everything DawgBone said about the product design. It's a stylish and well-designed product made from quality materials, even down to the packaging. They put a lot of effort into making the headband as comfortable as possible. The website is also quite user friendly. One thing worth noting is that the electronic part of the headband needs to be replaced every 3 months (probably the battery eventually loses it's ability to hold a charge). The package comes with 2 units, a 6 months supply. After that, there may be an ongoing cost to have a Zeo.
So how can any of this apply to our quest for lucid dreams?
The product is geared more toward improving overall sleep quality; such as falling asleep sooner, staying asleep through the night, and getting as much restorative deep and REM sleep. The coaching mostly has to do with your habits near bed time regarding eating, stress, environment, and such. I think it's a promising product for anyone who wants to improve their sleep, if the price and time investment are right for you.
For lucid dreaming, the most compelling benefit is to know when and how long my REM periods are. Armed with this information, I can experiment and choose the best times to attempt DEILD or WILD. I can also imagine some experiments with WBTB or supplements to make my REM periods longer or more predictable.
It's only been one night, but I'm quite happy with it. Obviously, it's no substitute for the discipline and techniques that we practice specifically for lucid dream. I'll update more after I've collected more data.