Forced Brief Awakening (FBA) Induction Technique - Early Testing

The basic idea: having an electronic device lightly wake you up every few minutes whenever you're in REM sleep.

This has been done before, but most of the time it's had to rely on timers (which are imprecise/unreliable) or headbands (which are uncomfortable to wear every night), as well as tending to be less flexible to customization. This new technique relies on actual detection of REM sleep using the S+ sleep tracker, which is a relatively cheap ($25-$50) external sleep monitor that sits next to your bed, using something akin to sonar to track your breathing and infer your sleep state. You might expect it wouldn't work that well, but I've been using it for over a month, and, at least for rem-sleep, it appears to do a great job. (one point supporting this is the fact that it's almost always been correct on whether I awoke from rem-sleep or not -- as verified by direct dream awakenings, drowsiness levels, and memory)

You can find screenshots of my results so far from the S+ device here: http://www.dreamviews.com/induction-...ique-beta.html

I haven't uploaded the latest version of the app to the Play Store yet, so it's not yet available for others to try, but I'll do so once I've worked out the details more and finished developing the UI. So for now, this thread is meant to collect my results from the technique, as well as any improvements I notice along the way, to be collected together later in a second thread for general usage.

Thus, my evaluation begins! (see the thread above to compare my success with this technique, as I try it, to that of its predecessor)

Attempt (long sleep, uninterrupted): full lucid

Sleep graph (red is awake, green is light-sleep, blue is deep-sleep, yellow is rem-sleep -- I'll improve the screenshot-export later so it's zoomed in to just the one session):

Spoiler for Sleep graph:

http://i.imgur.com/nAXpBoL.png

Had a number of brief awakenings this first attempt, from the audio prompts.

At least once, I succeeded and entered back directly into a dream -- which is pretty rare for me, as I usually have DILDs. It's unusual enough for me that I actually got pretty nervous just from this (it's weird to be sinking into an ocean of vibration and darkness), but I persisted. I remember feeling waves of sensation, especially around my head and chest, which finally lessened as I entered into an interesting vortex-like structure. I began exploring the environment, but I think I eventually got caught back up in the dream, and something of a plot where I tried to save someone stuck in the structure.

Anyway, it wasn't a great one quality-wise, but it was nice to remember what a WILD/DEILD feels like.

Success rate:
Long sleep: 1/1(+0 interrupted) (0 weak, 1 full)
Post-sleep nap: 0/0 (0 weak, 0 full)
Isolated nap: 0/0 (0 weak, 0 full)

Did I understand you correctly that you app signals with sound once the S+ Sleep tracker detects REM? What are the details of interfacing with the tracker, I may like to try it myself.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by FryingMan

Did I understand you correctly that you app signals with sound once the S+ Sleep tracker detects REM? What are the details of interfacing with the tracker, I may like to try it myself.

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Yep, that's correct.

Are you asking as a software developer (api-wise), or as an end-user (app usage/options)?

If as a software developer, you can see the high-level api here (which connects into the lower-level interfacing code): https://github.com/Venryx/LucidLink/...lusModule.java

If as an end-user, you'd have to download the latest version of the Lucid Link app, once I update it on the Play Store to include the new S+ sleep tracker support: https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...id=v.lucidlink

Also, note that what the app signals the user with is actually configurable -- though support for other options isn't really added yet. But other things are planned such as controlling the brightness and color of external bluetooth light strips, bluetooth bed vibrators, etc. But that's down the road a ways since sound seems to be working well so far. (and is the most convenient)

Attempt (post-sleep nap): full lucid

Spoiler for Sleep graph:

https://drive.google.com/uc?export=v...0YwMGZld1g0aVk

This one was brief, and I only remember the last minute or so, where I was conversing with a dream-character, and then heard the voice prompt before awakening a couple seconds later. Sorry for the bad recall; I should get better once I get more used to this new awakened-every-dream (but not having cues while falling asleep) setup, and purchase a bluetooth keyboard for easier sleep-time text entry

Success rate:
Long sleep: 1/1(+0 interrupted) (0 weak, 1 full)
Post-sleep nap: 1/1 (0 weak, 1 full)
Isolated nap: 0/0 (0 weak, 0 full)

P.S. Ignore the two/three other sleep sessions on the sleep graph other than the most recent. They all had a technical issue where my script malfunctioned and kept waking me up even after the S+ sleep tracker determined REM to have ended. Still not sure what caused the malfunction (the code looks correct), but I did implement a workaround that seems to have fixed it for this last session.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Venryx

Yep, that's correct.

Are you asking as a software developer (api-wise), or as an end-user (app usage/options)?

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Both. Thanks for both.

Quote:

---

Also, note that what the app signals the user with is actually configurable -- though support for other options isn't really added yet. But other things are planned such as controlling the brightness and color of external bluetooth light strips, bluetooth bed vibrators, etc. But that's down the road a ways since sound seems to be working well so far. (and is the most convenient)

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Any links to these bluetooth signalling devices you mention here? It's an exciting time for DIY EILD projects if such things are already on the market! You could PM me since admins will delete any URLs. Thanks!

PM sent. (yes, there are some commercially available options for both)

Attempt (long sleep, interrupted): failure

Sleep graph:

Spoiler for Sleep graph:

http://i.imgur.com/m71RhzS.jpg

The prompt malfunction occurred again, which distracted my sleep (and may have messed up the graph some). But I'll count it this time anyway, since it was a partial attempt/chance, and I excluded it last time.

The good news is I finally fixed the prompt malfunction... I'm 85% sure. Which means no more annoying prompts even after rem has ended and I'm just lying in bed falling back asleep. (I was forgetting to clear a certain list of listeners when the scripts were re-applied, leading to multiple listeners and thus multiple timers, only one of which would be canceled by the on-sleep-stage-changed code)

(also, I didn't have a lucid this time, but did have one part with the standard ironic situation... thinking about dreams where you miss your lucidity cues, without realizing you're in a dream right then and are missing the cues :doh:)

Success rate:
Long sleep: 1/1(+1 interrupted) (0 weak, 1 full)
Post-sleep nap: 1/1 (0 weak, 1 full)
Isolated nap: 0/0 (0 weak, 0 full)

Attempt (post-sleep nap): full lucid

Sleep graph:

Spoiler for Sleep graph:

http://i.imgur.com/7s6Pykr.png

Yay! A normal, successful sleep session, without rogue voice prompts keeping me up post-rem.

In this lucid I was able to practice what I intended: emitting fire from my hands. I've done this a few times before, but I've never done it solidly enough that it "sticks" and I can do it easily from then on, so I decided to buckle down and keep practicing it until I can. This was my first training session, and it went... okay.

Spoiler for Dream entry:

For a long time, I could only get slight transparent wisps of it.
Eventually, I got it to show up better.
With it came pretty strong heat, however!
It was tolerable though, so I persisted and used it to put a couple objects on fire.
The main thing on fire was my hands though. : |

Success rate:
Long sleep: 1/1(+1 interrupted) (0 weak, 1 full)
Post-sleep nap: 1/1 (0 weak, 1 full)
Isolated nap: 1/1 (0 weak, 1 full)

P.S. Oh by the way, something to note is that I currently have the volume a bit lower than I would like. I wanted to have it just loud enough that it would almost always wake me, but due to family members not liking too loud noises, I settled for a medium volume that wakes me up about half the time. It's enough that I get some data on its DEILD efficacy (i.e. some are DEILD, some just DILD), but I would have liked to have every rem segment modulated with it instead of just some. Oh well. (I'll probably try it with bluetooth in-ear earphones at some point, which would solve the problem)

I'd say you're getting some great results so far! My LD fire is also quite translucent still, I need a lot of work on it.

Attempt (long sleep, uninterrupted): weak lucid

Sleep graph:

Spoiler for Sleep graph:

http://i.imgur.com/QV3HbWG.png

Dream entry:

Spoiler for Dream entry:

Came to awareness in my bedroom. I remember lying there and sensing something was off, before things then transforming to eventually become more intense, with fire or something on the wall. I eventually got out of bed, and went into a large building where I met with a number of dcs in some plot that I then got wrapped up in.

I realized it was a dream (it's hard not to with fire (or whatever the bright substance was) on the wall), but did not take advantage of that fact or specifically remember my dream goals. (hence a weak lucid)

Success rate:
Long sleep: 2/2(+1 interrupted) (1 weak, 1 full)
Post-sleep nap: 1/1 (0 weak, 1 full)
Isolated nap: 1/1 (0 weak, 1 full)

How should the graph be read? What's the difference between bottom and top? Which of the lucids were due to the sound prompt?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by FryingMan

How should the graph be read? What's the difference between bottom and top? Which of the lucids were due to the sound prompt?

---

Sorry for the non-clarity :P -- that's what happens when app beta's are used. (it will have labels later on)

The graph shows the sleep sessions from today, and yesterday. So only that one on the bottom row is for this session.

As for which ones are caused to the sound prompts... I'm honestly not sure as my memories get very jumbled up at the moment (in part because I don't record them until a good while later, partly because I don't have a good keyboard for my tablet yet). I do know the first night was caused by a sound prompt. And most of the others seem like they were at least closeby to one, given their content. But I don't know for sure.

Certainly the idea is to have more direct-transition-into-dream cases. Unfortunately, as mentioned above, I have to temper the volume at night due to other family members. Perhaps I'll try louder volumes for naps. I didn't like this idea at first since it means inconsistency between sessions, but it might be worth it.

I think I'll stick with the lower volume for now, but try louder volumes in a week or so. (which should guarantee that when the sound prompt plays I wake up, allowing for deild more consistently)

Attempt (isolated nap): failure

Sleep graph:

Spoiler for *:

http://i.imgur.com/ADecipO.png

Okay, I noticed this at first, but am wondering more about it now. Why are the sleep graph's in my app more volatile than those from the official app? (ie, more numerous and thinner slices)

It's possible it's because of the sound prompts changing my sleeping patterns, but it's also possible I got something wrong and that's reducing the accuracy of the sleep-stage calculation. I'm going to investigate it more, to make sure the latter is not the case. (it's also possible I'm just polling it too frequently or something like that)

Success rate:
Long sleep: 2/2(+1 interrupted) (1 weak, 1 full)
Post-sleep nap: 1/1 (0 weak, 1 full)
Isolated nap: 1/2 (0 weak, 1 full)

I tried using a "real time" stream instead of a "night sleep" stream to monitor the sleep-stages today. Wasn't sure if it'd work, but wanted to try it.

Indeed, while it recorded data fine, I found after awakening 5 hours later that real-time streams apparently shut down automatically after 25 minutes. (I'm pretty sure, as results just stopped there without error message or disconnection -- though will confirm later)

So I'll be sticking with night streams. (which work perfectly fine, just wanted to explain why there was no sleep report today)

Attempt (long sleep, uninterrupted): full lucid

Sleep graph: (ignore the red and green segments on the top row, those were from testing)

Spoiler for *:

http://i.imgur.com/zvavbHk.png

Dream entry:

Spoiler for *:

Heard voice prompt. (the very first one of the night, in fact -- as verified by the logs immediately after waking)
Thought about possibility of having it say more than just one short phrase -- of it saying quieter ones in gaps between loud ones, as anchors to think about.
It then happened!
Voice started saying, in male British accent, continuous sentences.
I listened closely and with interest as it said about 4 sentences worth of commentary about an old movie.
It eventually stopped, in glitch on-and-off, then complete absence.
I then felt what I thought at the moment to be an awakening, while noticing my dad folding a blanket in my room.
I started exclaiming, "Dad, it is *so* interesting, how there's a clear cutoff between voice and no voice in lucids."
Then I realized my dad would not be folding a blanket in my room, and knew it to be a false-awakening.
A second after this, I felt a tingle on my chest, like as though my dad had poked me there.
Then I forced myself awake, because false-awakenings still make me nervous to just lie there. (and it was too faded to just go back in-dream)
Getting actually up took a while though (like 30 seconds), as my body was being very difficult to move -- I had to progressively "unlock" my neck, head, shoulders, arms, etc. from their most-of-the-way sleep-paralysis. (I think it was real this time as I don't remember any discontinuity/transition during the process)

This one was nice, as it was initiated directly from a voice prompt. I checked the logs immediately after waking (at 6:59), and in fact the dream was triggered from the very first voice-prompt of the night! (3 minutes earlier at 6:56 -- I increased the delay to 3 minutes between prompts) Which makes me happy since it raises the prospect of gaining lucidity the moment REM begins in each cycle. (you'll see on the sleep graph how quickly it was triggered)

Anyway, very little to report dream-wise :P -- you can see the short dream entry. But nonetheless it was neat and raises my optimism for the technique, after a couple of disappointments. (and not-so-great circumstances at the moment, family-wise, so it was refreshing)

Success rate:
Long sleep: 3/3(+1 interrupted) (1 weak, 2 full)
Post-sleep nap: 1/1 (0 weak, 1 full)
Isolated nap: 1/2 (0 weak, 1 full)

Attempt (long sleep, uninterrupted): failure

Sleep graph: (Fiinally added full-screen mode! Though it could still use some improvement -- such as a larger font for the hour labels.)

Spoiler for *:

http://i.imgur.com/1bDH1cS.png

This one failed, but the voice prompt did come through clearly into my dream. My brain just misinterpreted the words, as being a phonetically similar, but incorrect, sentence. The real phrase was "remember lucid dream", but the dream-me thought it was "are you a member of leadership drew" -- as spoken by an old lady living with her grand-daughter in a small house, as she walked down the stairs. After waking, I waited for the next prompt, and indeed, it sounded very much like that even in waking life. (once I knew what phrase to compare it to)

Anyway, this is a good approach I think, but the voice prompts are just not loud enough to reliably wake me (since my family members sleep next door) -- which is the first step of it. Thus I'm going to, as considered before, try bluetooth earphones. I'll probably pick one out on Amazon tonight, and be able to try it in a few days. Then I can just make it as loud as I want (while still only playing it briefly, as I've done so far). Hopefully I'll be able to find some really comfortable ones.

Success rate:
Long sleep: 3/4(+1 interrupted) (1 weak, 2 full)
Post-sleep nap: 1/1 (0 weak, 1 full)
Isolated nap: 1/2 (0 weak, 1 full)

Hmmm. My app crashed during this last sleep session, so no data for today. I'll have to investigate this. (afaik, this is the first time it's happened, but it's probably good to add an error-reporting system to the app eventually anyway)

In other news, I ordered a bluetooth earbud, so should be able to start using as loud volumes as I want once it arrives (in a day or two).

Attempt (long sleep, uninterrupted): full lucid

Sleep graph:

Spoiler for *:

http://i.imgur.com/wFTjgG5.png

Sleep entry:

Spoiler for *:

=saw thief get caught
They stopped him from flying away.
=went into warehouse
=followed procession toward smaller throne area
=came to throne area, king asked if I wanted to join his government
=everything paused (like in rpg's)
I realized I was dreaming.
I decided, "Sure, why not".
=king asked me to appoint someone as head of police
They gave me three names, of people to choose from.
I asked about first two, but they were problematic, as criminals themselves or the like.
Asked for third description.
=heard noise, and looked up to see group of three criminals arrived
=I fled for the back room with an assistant
=I looked for a gun
=came back out, started pursuit
I fired at the two assistant guys, but didn't really damage them.
=came up to the leader, who was a large green lizard man
=conversed a few sentences
His final statement was "You can't leave me here forever!", before I awoke a split-second after.

I increased the volume this time to 50%, since no one else was sleeping, but apparently was still not enough. I did end up getting a lucid anyway, though not triggered from an awakening as the technique intends. I will keep increasing it 10% each time until it starts waking me reliably.

Also, I think I fixed the crash now, so shouldn't have that issue anymore.

Success rate:
Long sleep: 4/5(+1 interrupted) (1 weak, 3 full)
Post-sleep nap: 1/1 (0 weak, 1 full)
Isolated nap: 1/2 (0 weak, 1 full)

Attempt (long sleep, uninterrupted): weak lucid

Sleep graph: too lazy to upload.

Sleep entry: too lazy to record, other than that it was in a warehouse, and lucidity was triggered when I was tasked with creating a wooden barrier, and I realized I could use dream control to bring it about.

Also, was not from a deild, but may have been from hearing a voice prompt. A few minutes later, another voice prompt occurred and did succeed in waking me, although I didn't stay calm enough so stayed awake after that. I'll need to get used to staying calm even after awakenings so I can immediately enter back in.

Success rate:
Long sleep: 5/6(+1 interrupted) (2 weak, 3 full)
Post-sleep nap: 1/1 (0 weak, 1 full)
Isolated nap: 1/2 (0 weak, 1 full)

Attempt (post-sleep nap): full lucid

Sleep graph:

Spoiler for *:

http://i.imgur.com/wvXVwwu.png

Dream entry:

Spoiler for *:

=in store
realize im dreaming, and that I can walk away from purchase objective in store
fly over to entrance
a couple of dcs are there, who act like they know me
they want me to lift up a manhole cover for them
i do so, and fly up on op of the store id come out of, to put it up there for fun
once there, i decide to bring it back down, as I dont want the dcs to go in the hole afterall (there was standing water just a few feet down)
i settle down on ground again, where I talk with a dc with tablet (unrecorded conversation)
i wake up a minute or so later, and then hear a voice prompt about ~30 seconds after that

Again was not triggered by awakening/deild this time, but at least now the prompts are working and waking me. This time I just reached lucidity before I awoke, so wasn't able to test the deild itself.

Success rate:
Long sleep: 5/6(+1 interrupted) (2 weak, 3 full)
Post-sleep nap: 2/2 (0 weak, 2 full)
Isolated nap: 1/2 (0 weak, 1 full)

Attempt (long sleep, uninterrupted): full lucid

Sleep graph: sorry, no graph this time, as my app has a bug that made the sleep-session data get lost... (will fix it soon!)
Dream entry:

Spoiler for *:

I remember dream goal, of teleporting to desktop background scene, and do so by defocusing and imagining new scene
seems to mostly work at first, but then it becomes more like a 2d texture plane, around which I'm rotating
as I approach the 180 point, I (ill-advisedly) remember concern of negative imagery coming up on places that are nice
realize I should think of positive instead of negative, since dreams are so expectation based, but too late as I see somewhat scary images on the back of the 2d textured plane
I get annoyed by this, and leave the area to another part of what is apparently a museum-like zoo
(Argh! I'm going to redeem the above by revisiting later and having a pleasant, relaxing time!)
use mind control with crocodile thing (keeps trying to attack, but I strongly "expect"/imagine/feel it to be kind, and just moving to smile, and it works each time)
defocus until the scene changes back to the in-building one from earlier

have stressful situation/accusation
fly off
prevent other guy from grabbing power sword
finally force bad lady off
see bad lady go with other lady into police building, held by police
see pair from earlier who had broken up
i fly in to family watching video

Note: I kept hearing voice prompts throughout the dream, which was neat/good. It reminded me of my dream-state and increased my awareness each time, and I began to regard it like a personal coach from the real world, checking in every 3 minutes. (like a pestering mother or sibling, except for something actually helpful!)

I'll still increase it later for my main forced-awakening plan, but may keep it here (70% volume) for a couple days first to see if it continues passing through with this clarity and assistance.

Success rate:
Long sleep: 6/7(+1 interrupted) (2 weak, 4 full)
Post-sleep nap: 2/2 (0 weak, 2 full)
Isolated nap: 1/2 (0 weak, 1 full)

Attempt (long sleep, uninterrupted): full lucid

Sleep graph:

Spoiler for *:

http://i.imgur.com/THFY0l1.png

Dream entry:

Spoiler for *:

=flying around
=family came in police car, looking for me
=we drive a long way
=false awakening
I begin wake-up attempts for real.
=real wakeup

Note that I count false-awakenings (which are known as such) to be full lucids, since they trigger good self-awareness and understanding of the dream state, and open the opportunity (if desired) of getting up out of bed and beginning a lucid adventure right there. I'm usually too nervous to do so, since I'm kind of a scaredy cat in unplanned false-awakenings, but the state-recognition and potential is still there, thus my categorizing them as full lucids (most of the time, anyway).

There was obviously more to the dream than what's recorded, but this is 4 hours later, and after two other sleep sessions (without the app on, because I keep falling asleep while intending to record things!). I could bring back more memories even now, but am too lazy. Oh, well other than that I again heard the voice prompts multiple times throughout the dream. (but not in the ones later without the app on, so they do seem to be actual pass-through rather than just imagining/reproducing it)

Also, I believe they did wake me up at one point, although I'm not sure where.

Anyway, raising the volume to 90% now! If it goes past 100%, I'll have to start boosting the volume in an audio editor (I'm using a bluetooth earbud now, so have full freedom on volume) -- and/or switching to dream integration rather than wake-up + deild as the main lucidity trigger.

But sorry again for the low-quality recordings. It does get harder doing it in detail when you do it every day. : P

Success rate:
Long sleep: 7/8(+1 interrupted) (2 weak, 5 full)
Post-sleep nap: 2/2 (0 weak, 2 full)
Isolated nap: 1/2 (0 weak, 1 full)

EDIT: Oh, I was wondering why I raised it from 70% straight to 90%, and realize the reason is that I also had a weak lucid this morning which I never ended up recording. Unfortunately, I don't actually remember the dream now, so I don't think I'll count it.

Attempt (long sleep, uninterrupted): weak lucid

Sleep graph:

Spoiler for *:

http://i.imgur.com/rip1PRq.png

Dream entry: too lazy, other than that it was long, and had a partial awakening (thought to be a normal awakening) caused by a single prompt.

Success rate:
Long sleep: 8/9(+1 interrupted) (3 weak, 5 full)
Post-sleep nap: 2/2 (0 weak, 2 full)
Isolated nap: 1/2 (0 weak, 1 full)

Great to see all the success you're having so far with this method! To be clear, most of the lucids have been DEILD re-entry's after waking up, as opposed to DILDs induced by the prompts, right?

Also, do you sleep with anyone else in bed with you? Do you think the S+ sleep tracker would be accurate with another person moving around?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by broth

Great to see all the success you're having so far with this method! To be clear, most of the lucids have been DEILD re-entry's after waking up, as opposed to DILDs induced by the prompts, right?

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Unfortunately, most of them have not been DEILD re-entries, the main reason being that the volume's been too low until a couple days ago. I was only raising it 10% each night it failed, which means it took ~5 days to get to the current volume. (I probably should have increased it by 20% each time)

Before/during that, there were other issues such as bugs, and not being able to increase the volume loud enough to keep from disturbing family members. Both of those are now resolved, I believe (I fixed the bugs and got a bluetooth earbud), but it has delayed the testing process.

I now have it at 100% volume, and it's woken me up the few times I've tried it since then. (with the last one being a partial wake-up, I believe, which then dropped me back into a false awakening) (If it's still too quiet, not to worry; I'll just need to have the prompts recorded, then edit the audio file to increase the volume there)

Last night was supposed to be the first "settled" night with the new setup (not just the volume, but some long-standing bugs were finally fixed), however my bluetooth earbud fell out. :mad: (Oh well. I'll retry tonight.)

In other words, so far it's mostly been just DILDs. Many of them have been induced by voice prompts, making their way into the dream and triggering greater awareness; but the DEILD goal has been mostly delayed until about now. Starting tonight onward (or a couple days from now, depending on if this volume is truly high enough), I should start regularly either getting DEILDs as intended, or cases where it wakes me but I (/my disloyal sleepy self) take it out and then fall back asleep without it enabled.

Hopefully I can keep the resolve to leave the earbuds in in those cases.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by broth

Also, do you sleep with anyone else in bed with you? Do you think the S+ sleep tracker would be accurate with another person moving around?

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No, I sleep by myself. The website says it should work in bed with a partner, as long as you have the device aligned properly. I know in my case, the device is at bed-level, directly to the side, so if I were sleeping with someone else, I'd expect it to work anyway since my body would mostly (if on back) or completely (if on side) block the line-of-sight to the other person.

Thanks for the thorough response, Venryx. Nice to see someone carrying out research in this area. I'm still new, but I've had a couple EASY lucid dreams from CAN-WILD (and 1 from DEILD) so this experiment is very interesting to me. Obviously the main issue with CAN-WILD is being woken up during a REM period, when you are still about to enter another dream. I also think this is a problem with DEILD, since many micro-awakenings occur at the end of a dream cycle/rem period, when you are about to enter into NREM sleep.

For those reasons, I'll definitely be following your experiment over the next few weeks. I'm also going to continue practicing CAN-WILD on my own. Right now I have an auto-snooze alarm set to go off several times throughout the night, with the goal being that at least one of those alarms catches me in a REM period. But of course with the S+ sleep tracker, the chances of that go up towards 100%.

Anyways, this is all to say that I appreciate the time you're spending in reporting the progress of your experiment and I hope you keep it up!

Next attempt (long sleep, uninterrupted): full lucid
Next attempt (post-sleep nap): full lucid

Sleep graph:

Spoiler for *:

http://i.imgur.com/j9AYVgB.png

So the last couple nights were interesting.

First, the night before last night, I had the issue again of my bluetooth earbud falling out. I tried again that evening, but my earbud ran out of batteries and turned off. However, I had a DILD anyway. I don't know if it ran out of batteries before or after my DILD. Also, what woke me in the end was a voice prompt that played through my main tablet speaker (since my earbud disconnected), so it may have also been triggered by an over-the-air voice prompt. So anyway, the first night was pretty unclear, so I ignored it.

Last night was much better, though still "messy". The first sleep-cycle, it successfully woke me from sleep. I then fell asleep again quickly, and had a full-lucid DILD. However, on awakening I found my earbud to have fallen out. That's actually fine, since the earbud already did its function (of causing a brief awakening), but thought I'd mention it.

The second sleep-cycle, it did not wake me from sleep. However, I had a weak-lucid DILD anyway. Same thing as previous: I awoke to find my earbud out. Note that both times it was under my ear, so it may have just fallen out. However, it's also possible I (disloyally) took it out, despite not remembering doing so. Anyway, I ignored this result since my earbud had fallen out, and I did not recall having a "brief awakening" triggered by a prompt.

Finally, the third sleep-cycle (after a 40-minute wake-up) actually functioned the way it was supposed to. I went to bed, and awoke later, finding myself in my room. I don't specifically remember the voice prompt sound, but that's to be expected some of the time as the message is very brief (just the quick word "lucid"). I was very much still in a dream-like state, so within seconds I was back in a dream, simply by visualizing some random scene of me standing in front of a large building with a gate in front of it. The visualization soon became full vision, and I "stepped into" it by beginning to walk around.

The last of the three lucids was the longest, and the only one I still remember the ending of. They were pretty fun, though I didn't pursue my dream goals as much as I had planned (I got wrapped up in the dream plots, especially the last one, in part because there were annoying cops that kept pursuing us). I remember parts from all three of them, though am too lazy to write it all out.

Anyway, all in all it went well, as I got another success with the technique in the way it was actually intended. Hopefully I can do so again tonight. (and find a robust solution to the earbud-sometimes-coming-out problem -- maybe tape?)

Success rate:
Long sleep: 9/10(+1 interrupted) (3 weak, 6 full)
Post-sleep nap: 3/3 (0 weak, 3 full)
Isolated nap: 1/2 (0 weak, 1 full)

Just wanted to mention that I finished uploading the latest version of the app to the Play store, so if anyone's interesting in trying this technique themselves (using the S+ sleep tracker to detect rem), they can now do so: https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...id=v.lucidlink

Note that if you have the app already installed, you'll have to manually approve the app update, since it adds some new permissions.

Hi Venryx,
With more data under your belt now, what's your opinion of the accuracy of the REM detection provided by the S+ sleep tracker?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by FryingMan

Hi Venryx,
With more data under your belt now, what's your opinion of the accuracy of the REM detection provided by the S+ sleep tracker?

---

It's held up well; I'd say the typical case is still as accurate as I estimated before. The good majority of the time, it's still correct on whether I awoke from REM (the easy case to check, since you often wake with very recent memories from a dream -- as well as vivid/lucid dreams from which you awake directly). As for knowing the onset of rem, I have less certainty with that, but I can say that I haven't seen evidence against its being accurate (well, other than once when it played during pre-sleep trance) -- which is a good sign, given that my app starts playing prompts a mere 3 minutes in. (conversely, some of the time it's clearly correct, like when it's succeeded in waking me from a dream to start a DEILD attempt)

One thing to note however, is that if you look at the sleep graph of the two days above, you'll notice that the morning of the first day is more "volatile" than that of the second day. That interests me, and I suspect it might be because of a change in sleeping positions, with the second day's sleeping position more receptive to S+ monitoring than the first's. I haven't confirmed this yet, but I suspect that's why -- and if so, it would mean that some nights would probably be less accurate than the typical case. (though that's probably still "good enough", since I haven't noticed issues with it in my testing so far)

Next attempt (long sleep, interrupted): failure

Sleep graph: too lazy

Wow, so apparently even the new volume is not enough. It played about 8 prompts during the night, but I don't recall it ever waking me. Cranking it up again! (either through a custom audio file, or a longer speech message)

Success rate:
Long sleep: 9/10(+2 interrupted) (3 weak, 6 full)
Post-sleep nap: 3/3 (0 weak, 3 full)
Isolated nap: 1/2 (0 weak, 1 full)

Next attempt (long sleep, uninterrupted): ignored (fell asleep without technique active)
Next attempt (long sleep, interrupted): failure (volume too low to wake me)
Next attempt (post-sleep nap): failure (was woken at least once; feel like I may have had a weak one, but don't remember one distinctly)

Sleep graph:

Spoiler for *:

http://i.imgur.com/HyaZjbC.png

The good news is that it's now waking me again, at 70%, because now I'm using an audio file instead of text-to-speech. Also, it's a more distinct buzzing sound, rather than speech, which I think may help if heard in-dream. (could be either way; speech because it has textual content/meaning, sound because it's sharper and more distinct audio-wise -- hence experimentation)

The bad news is that, while I may have had some low-level lucidity, I couldn't verify this, so have two more failures. : (

If I get a few more failures in a row, I will reinstate "setting my intention" to perform deild-type procedures once I'm awoken by the prompts. Atm I'm just brain-deadly going to sleep like normal, which may be causing me to just reenter sleep normally instead of trying to maintain awareness. (I'm guessing this is the case, since I don't remember anything other than the ~2 seconds where I'm awoken)

Another thing to note is that I think the rem-detection was not very accurate for yesterday. If you look at it, it doesn't seem plausible that so much rem would occur at the start like that. I don't know for sure, but I suspect it was a bad rem-detection session.

Success rate:
Long sleep: 9/11(+2 interrupted) (3 weak, 6 full)
Post-sleep nap: 3/4 (0 weak, 3 full)
Isolated nap: 1/2 (0 weak, 1 full)

Next attempt (long sleep, uninterrupted): failure
Next attempt: no data, since fell asleep without turning on
Next attempt: no data, since I took earbud out on first awakening (may have made it too loud/jarring at 90%)

Sleep graph: too lazy

The success rate has dropped some, I think in part because:
* Standard loss of excitement/focus, which means my mind thinks about other stuff more, so is less rememberant of the lucid mindset during awakenings and the like.
* I'm becoming aware of some deficiencies in the rem-detection, which makes me lazier on implementing it each time.

On the first point, this can be fixed by setting your mindset before bed. This is standard advice, although I'm not doing it most nights at the moment, in part because I'd like to see how well I can get the setup working "on its own", ie how well the technique can work "as a base technique", making it work more consistently between users, and allowing distinct combination with MILD and such.

On that second point, I still think the detection is good, but I'm becoming aware of cases where it falters. For example, it does not react quickly enough to awakenings. A number of times it's correctly detected rem, but then after I wake up, and even move some, it still thinks I'm in rem and plays the next prompt. Which can be jarring, and contributes to my disloyalty in taking them out sometimes.

The thing is, I can fix this. I just need to monitor the raw breathing data myself, and whenever sharp movements (which only occur during awakenings, afaik) happen, I can just override the sleep-tracker detected-sleep-state, and tell the other code in my program that those times are actually awakenings. (with the override lasting a few minutes each time)

I do think that with correct configuration, it (rem-detection + deild wakeups) will work reliably. We just need to keep working at it until we clear all the problems. (Shoutout to lucidcoder and fryingman for working on their own setup using infrared cameras! Always good to have multiple teams working in parallel.)

Success rate:
Long sleep: 9/12(+2 interrupted) (3 weak, 6 full)
Post-sleep nap: 3/4 (0 weak, 3 full)
Isolated nap: 1/2 (0 weak, 1 full)

Well I decided to get all Methodical sleep for 10 hours and do long WBTB where I would leave and go write up the dreams
Actual result woke at least twice before 12:30, at 12:30 noted the time and reflected on the dream
Then just before 1:30 went to write up 12:30 and the latter dream then decided to just get up and stay up all night

Attachment 9781

Well time to try again tonight (oh and No 5-HTP was taken)

Oh I did definitely have a dream at 1:00 just before final awakening, but no REM was reported
also as for the last supposed light sleep I think I was just laying there about to give up, I don't think I drifted off at all

My goal is not DEILD, but rather to have signal penetrate at REM onset +2Min for DILD using light vibration scent or whatever
just playing around for now tho, I have no out put devices

Well this Hypno does match up fairly well with what I remember so it is likely fairly accurate

here is a quote from my dreamself in the dream just before mdinite "You're dead, but I often see you in dreams" said non-lucid-self.
(DOH!)

Attachment 9782

tonight I'll take some 5HTP then skip to tomorrow night see if the pattern shifts
In the image above I'm surprised at the strength of the first and second REM, and supprised at the thin-ness of all that follow (the last 2 probably being different parts of the 5th REM cycle)

Well not too much sleep tonight only 5+hours but the 100Mg 5-HTP does seem to have created a lot of blue on the LEFT
Not much Yellow on the right tho, however I often recall dreams at awakening from the green supposed light sleep

Attachment 9784

Wow, I've been gone three days!? Did not feel like that. (I've been busier due to a family health issue)

Very cool to see someone else posting sleep graphs, cooleymd! Will be fun to see how your results end up being trying audio prompts and other stimulus. (in particular, whether you'll have the same experience with needing ever louder alarm sounds!)

Next attempt (long sleep, uninterrupted): failure
Next attempt (long sleep, uninterrupted): full lucid

Sleep graph: sorry, I want to rush off and relax watching anime, so even a 2 minute delay is too much. : P

Also, no commentary other than that the lucid was a nice and vivid one, however I don't remember hearing the prompt. (Which is crazy considering how much I've increased the volume since the start. Why are our brains so resistant to repeating sounds? It's not like it was even making me sleep deprived... Anyway, I will try increasing it again.)

Success rate:
Long sleep: 10/13(+2 interrupted) (3 weak, 7 full)
Post-sleep nap: 3/4 (0 weak, 3 full)
Isolated nap: 1/2 (0 weak, 1 full)

I may be mistaken but I believe I am the most experienced person in the world when it comes to alarm based REM detection DEILD method. I have used every device available and have even crafted some myself. I now use the Aurora headband being the ONLY person in the UK to own one. I have tried the following devices to exhaustion will in depth analysis of the years.

Apple watch with an Android app that rings an iphone which in turn vibrated the watch at set periods during the night for a set amount of time
Headphones with auto-stop alarms
Earbuds with auto stop alarms
Iphones attached to my leg
RemDreamer
Remee
Aurora Headband
Samsung Gear attached to my ankle with a vibration (ditto) device crafted into a ring on my finger
Wired headphones / unwired headphones
Every lucid dreaming app on the market

I really have tried everything on earth every night and I now have a lot of data to work with and have had many dozens of lucid dreams this way

I have reached many conclusions and just some main points are the following...

it doesnt matter what device you use as long as it can rouse you from your dream and then switch off after a few seconds

I now use the Aurora headband and the REM detection is great, and its quite comfortable. It is the ONLY non-mask device on the planet that will detect REM and then flash light cues with sound.

Im happy to answer any questions as DEILD is my passion that I practise every night

I swear it missed several dreams towards the beginning of Hypnos [LEFT side] as I awoke and remembered them

No suplements at all in this one below
Attachment 9786

Attachment 9787
I took 200mg 5HTP in the one above

after this I took like six naps on the third one the machine reported me as absent and scored me with a Zero
but I didn't record the last two and in them I became lucid
in the last of them I became lucid, lost the light, couldn't get it back, lost lucidity, regained lucidity, false awakened checked the clock it was less than last awakening, checked again it was different but still to low, then woke up and checked the real clock that had a much more realistic time :)
(as awlays I counted this as one dream)

Here are what naps look like when well rested in the long Hypno I swear I dreamed before the other awakening too based on recall

Here we see my 7th Nap where the single REM at End was 30+ min :)
Attachment 9788

followed by my 8th Nap of nearly 25 min Rem at the end but unreported (by S+ device) dreaming before the first interuption
Attachment 9789

I just took my 5 HTP for tonight but as you can see in these two late naps There was a lot of Deep Sleep already (BLUE)
so who knows what will happen in 2 hrs when I go to bed, I suspect it will be hard to get to sleep and to stay asleep

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ezzolucid

I may be mistaken but I believe I am the most experienced person in the world when it comes to alarm based REM detection DEILD method. I have used every device available and have even crafted some myself. I now use the Aurora headband being the ONLY person in the UK to own one. I have tried the following devices to exhaustion will in depth analysis of the years.

Apple watch with an Android app that rings an iphone which in turn vibrated the watch at set periods during the night for a set amount of time
Headphones with auto-stop alarms
Earbuds with auto stop alarms
Iphones attached to my leg
RemDreamer
Remee
Aurora Headband
Samsung Gear attached to my ankle with a vibration (ditto) device crafted into a ring on my finger
Wired headphones / unwired headphones
Every lucid dreaming app on the market

I really have tried everything on earth every night and I now have a lot of data to work with and have had many dozens of lucid dreams this way

I have reached many conclusions and just some main points are the following...

it doesnt matter what device you use as long as it can rouse you from your dream and then switch off after a few seconds

I now use the Aurora headband and the REM detection is great, and its quite comfortable. It is the ONLY non-mask device on the planet that will detect REM and then flash light cues with sound.

Im happy to answer any questions as DEILD is my passion that I practise every night

---

DUDE! FIVE MONTHS OF CRUEL SILENCE AFTER YOUR TEASE ABOUT GETTING THE AURORA! Out with it! Details, data! Spit it oot, lad! You've got to have tons of graphs and success rates by now! How accurate is the Aurora REM detection now?

How did you craft the vibration device onto a ring? How was it controlled? How did the smart-phone-strapped-to-the-leg work? I tried it a few times on the arm held in by a sock I cut in half but I found it still bothered my sleep.

I have my own EILD setup in progress based on bedside night vision camera. I have face detection and eye movement detection pretty well working, but it's just bits and pieces of little building blocks that I still need to weave into a working whole and smooth flow. I call it "The Night's Watch" :).

The camera captures movement location and magnitude perfectly (with nothing to wear!) I would like to gather heart rate & temperature info a well probably from an under-the-sheet pad (there's a commercial product that does that, I may try to reverse engineer its communication protocol to see if I can get live data into my own system). I'd also like to create my own (or repurpose where possible, so far all systems I see are closed, nobody wants to give out an API to live, streaming data from their device) notification devices. LED displays are easy as are sound. Vibration devices that are comfortable enough to sleep with are more of a challenge.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ezzolucid

I may be mistaken but I believe I am the most experienced person in the world when it comes to alarm based REM detection DEILD method. I have used every device available and have even crafted some myself. I now use the Aurora headband being the ONLY person in the UK to own one. I have tried the following devices to exhaustion will in depth analysis of the years.

Apple watch with an Android app that rings an iphone which in turn vibrated the watch at set periods during the night for a set amount of time
Headphones with auto-stop alarms
Earbuds with auto stop alarms
Iphones attached to my leg
RemDreamer
Remee
Aurora Headband
Samsung Gear attached to my ankle with a vibration (ditto) device crafted into a ring on my finger
Wired headphones / unwired headphones
Every lucid dreaming app on the market

I really have tried everything on earth every night and I now have a lot of data to work with and have had many dozens of lucid dreams this way

I have reached many conclusions and just some main points are the following...

it doesnt matter what device you use as long as it can rouse you from your dream and then switch off after a few seconds

I now use the Aurora headband and the REM detection is great, and its quite comfortable. It is the ONLY non-mask device on the planet that will detect REM and then flash light cues with sound.

Im happy to answer any questions as DEILD is my passion that I practise every night

---

Neat! I'll probably have a number of things I'd like to ask, although not right at this moment since I'm heading to bed. (and I'm focusing on a programming project the last week or so, so haven't been working on the lucid dreaming stuff much lately -- though am still very interested in the approach and will continue)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by cooleymd

Here are what naps look like when well rested in the long Hypno I swear I dreamed before the other awakening too based on recall

Here we see my 7th Nap where the single REM at End was 30+ min :)
Attachment 9788

followed by my 8th Nap of nearly 25 min Rem at the end but unreported (by S+ device) dreaming before the first interuption
Attachment 9789

I just took my 5 HTP for tonight but as you can see in these two late naps There was a lot of Deep Sleep already (BLUE)
so who knows what will happen in 2 hrs when I go to bed, I suspect it will be hard to get to sleep and to stay asleep

---

Interesting results cooley! It sounds like it's missed a number of rem-segments in your case; that's too bad, and suggests I may not be sensitive enough to rem-recording misses. But it's still good to have other people's data here to give a broader picture of the device's abilities. (so thanks!)

As for my own testing, I've only used it ~twice the last week or so, because I've been focusing on some daytime programming projects. The two times I did it were yesterday and the day before that, and both times it woke me (well one time woke me, the other time caused false awakening, at time when out of ear but still faintly audible), but I ended up either taking them out or having them fall out. (probably the former)

Anyway, I will continue testing, with various volumes and types of promptings -- I've just been off lately because my mind's been elsewhere. I'll probably use it as I head to bed in a few minutes. (I think I'm going to try taping the earbud to my ear this time, so if I take it out myself, at least I'll have to be explicit/memorable about it)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by FryingMan

DUDE! FIVE MONTHS OF CRUEL SILENCE AFTER YOUR TEASE ABOUT GETTING THE AURORA! Out with it! Details, data! Spit it oot, lad! You've got to have tons of graphs and success rates by now! How accurate is the Aurora REM detection now?

How did you craft the vibration device onto a ring? How was it controlled? How did the smart-phone-strapped-to-the-leg work? I tried it a few times on the arm held in by a sock I cut in half but I found it still bothered my sleep.

I have my own EILD setup in progress based on bedside night vision camera. I have face detection and eye movement detection pretty well working, but it's just bits and pieces of little building blocks that I still need to weave into a working whole and smooth flow. I call it "The Night's Watch" :).

The camera captures movement location and magnitude perfectly (with nothing to wear!) I would like to gather heart rate & temperature info a well probably from an under-the-sheet pad (there's a commercial product that does that, I may try to reverse engineer its communication protocol to see if I can get live data into my own system). I'd also like to create my own (or repurpose where possible, so far all systems I see are closed, nobody wants to give out an API to live, streaming data from their device) notification devices. LED displays are easy as are sound. Vibration devices that are comfortable enough to sleep with are more of a challenge.

---

Aaaannd..... more silence?! Did I offend you or something?

Venryx, what's your current opinion of the S+ device? Is it worth purchasing? Are you finding its REM detection accurate or not for signaling from within dreams?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by FryingMan

Venryx, what's your current opinion of the S+ device? Is it worth purchasing? Are you finding its REM detection accurate or not for signaling from within dreams?

---

I think it's worth purchasing, yes. My estimation of its accuracy is a little lower than my last post on it, but it's still good enough imo to be useful.

I've not been posting because I've been focusing heavily on another programming project, and have not been doing the nightly attempts. I know it's really easy to just put an earbud in and turn on an app, objectively speaking, but when I have my mind set on something, it can make even a minute or two before bed too much -- also, because it changes my thought patterns, ie, I like to not think about other major projects (of which this lucid setup is one) when I'm focusing on another. [Oh yeah, and also the fact that then I'm kinda obligated to record all my results, else it would seem like I'm cherry-picking -- however, that takes a fair amount of time each morning]

I will come back and resume my tests and configuration, but not until I've at least launched my new project; it's a debate-mapping website which I've planned on building for a few years now. I'll probably even post a link here when it's up just so people know what I've been working on.

Oh I understand. I'm a month behind on my The Night's Watch project, I've just been fiddling around with components & MCUs and serial programming and watching Netflix instead of going to the next step of integration and serious data acquisition.

I've purchased a Polar H7 BLE chest strap heart rate monitor to add to TNW and figured out how to get at the data via BLE protocol on the command line (gatttool). That's good enough to produce a setup that checks heart rate once a minute or so (could up the frequency if the bedtime clock indicates being close to a REM period, up to the next major movement/waking). I assume I could actually do the same (gatttool that is, may need to be running continuously though) with the S+, all I have to know is the right characteristic address. Are you doing anything with the heartrate/respiration rates, or just the "REM start" notification?

The H7 is not super comfortable and is most certainly not meant to be worn all night. But I'll try it for a while, long enough to see if heart rate changes correlate well with REM eye movements. The potential plus is that I can have a chance of catching REM when facing away from the camera (but I hope to solve that problem with the 2nd RasPiZero W which is on its way to me now).

If figure I could add in the notification from the S+ to the TNW system as another event input to the REM detection heuristic. Once I have enough data I can tune the heuristic to my sleep/dream patterns and will be off to the races!

Oops, sorry for the late/non-existent response!

As for using the heartrate/respiration rates, I did use the raw respiration rate for one function: I had the app monitor it for "wake up" movements, to cause the alarm sounds to turn off right away. This was because the REM/sleep-stage detection would not adjust instantly. (it instead took a couple minutes unless I moved a ton) Other than that though, no.

But yeah, I think the S+ is a meaningful input to add to your mix if you're going for a full-fledged approach (ie. are unsatisfied with just one or two means of detecting). Do note that it's worth experimenting to find the ideal position, if you do end up using it. It took me a while to find a position where it would work regardless of sleeping position/angle. (for me, it was straight to the side, at around my waist -- despite them suggesting the chest is better)

By the way, I stopped updating here because I stopped using this technique/setup (well, I used it for a while more, and then stopped).

It works well -- at one point I was getting lucid or semi-lucid dreams the majority of nights I used it (ie. >50% success rate) -- however, I stopped because of a combination of two main reasons:
1) I was getting annoyed some by having to wear the sleep headband/headphones. If I were living on my own, I could just use speakers, but as it stands speakers might disturb my family members.
2) It was disturbing my sleep some, at the frequency/aggressiveness I was using.

If it were just one of those reasons, I probably would have continued, but as it went, it was enough to cause me to kinda just fade off (again) in my usage, getting focused instead on daytime programming projects. And when I resumed enthusiasm for lucid dreaming (a few weeks ago), I wanted to focus on another technique now. (for fun, and for the two main reasons above)

I'll probably come back to this approach if the other approaches I'm trying fail, but for now it's on the storage shelf.
==============================
BY THE WAY: I know some people hate this sort of thing, but... I'm trying out a super secret new technique which I'm pretty curious about seeing the results from. It's an extension of the Random Voice Prompt (RVP) technique I posted about earlier.

It's not really secret actually, so I'll just give a summary: basically, it's the RVP system, except simplified to just the random numbers, and you have it run throughout the day instead of just when going to bed. It's kind of like turning it into an ADA technique, EXCEPT that it's a much easier version of ADA because the action you perform is very fast (<2 seconds), and then you can return back to whatever you were doing. It's fast enough that I have it run a voice prompt EVERY 60 SECONDS, and even then it does not overly disrupt my activities. (even programming, watching movies, etc.)

I've been doing it a few days, and have only had one success so far (a dream character saying 1 2 2 1, which I immediately recognized did not match the "all even or odd" pattern, so became lucid), however, I am optimistic that it will eventually yield good results, just on account of how frequently I now perform the pattern check throughout the day. (Every 60 seconds is pretty often! I've performed the checks many times just while writing this post.)

Anyway, one thing I like about this new technique is that it's very distinct and therefore easy for everyone to understand and perform consistently. This is a quality that most techniques do not have -- most need substantial explanation for people to be on the same page. For this technique, it's this simple:
1) Enable the voice-prompt engine.
2) Whenever you hear a four-digit number spoken, check the pattern of digits: if they're all even, mentally-speak "even"; if they're all odd, mentally-speak "odd"; if it's neither, say "Wrong! Lucid!", and you're in a lucid! -- because the real voice-prompt engine only ever does "all even" or "all odd" patterns. (One further possibility: if it's too muffled to hear. In that case, just do a quick reality-check, as sometimes you can hear the real prompts from within dreams, but it's too muffled so you can't hear it clearly.)

Anyway, I'm heading to bed in a few minutes, to test my luck. I'm in this experiment for the long haul though -- even if I don't get any results, I plan to stick with it for at least a month (probably two or more), because to me, the idea seems very promising. (and it's easy to perform, so I should be able to keep it up that long without straining)

When I'm further along I will make a thread specifically for the technique, and give live updates there. Just thought I'd give a quick peek into what I'm working on.

welcome back Venryx.
I'm back too since few weeks, after about a year of not giving a shit about lucid dreaming.

wow your very new technique is INVASIVE !!
Are you gonna check 600 times a day if the numbers you hear are odd or even???
I mean.. don't you think you will turn completely nut after a month of that thing?

I remember having created such a crazy technique to make tons of RC during the day.
I used a chronometer (watch) and each time I thought about doing a RC I looked at how much time passed since my previous RC and started the chronometer from zero again.
This technique quickly made me do 150-200 RC a day, It was driving me crazy and finally the result was not proportional at all to the amount of RC.

your previous routines sounded more clever and at least way less invasive during the day, (even though it sounded very invasive during the night, less when you added REM detection to the equation) and sounded more likely to work.

let us know how your new technique works for you.

@Kaan I will definitely post an update after I've tested it longer.

Yes, it is more invasive. However, it's not nearly as bad as it seems! Because each check takes less than 2 seconds, and you get better at learning to perform it quickly then return your thoughts to where they were. So far I've been doing it for about 5 days, throughout each day, and it's been fine. It does have some load, but less than it sounds like it would. Certainly far less than I think ADA would be, as that is not distinct -- it's not easy to say "okay, I did the check, now I can get back" like you can with this.

So I don't think I will be turned completely nut after a month. : P We'll see though.

As for the chronometer technique, that is indeed interesting and similar. However, what's nice about this one is that you can do it entirely mentally. You hear the prompt, check even/odd, then continue, without having to move, press, or even look at anything. This makes it the easiest/fastest "passive reality check" I'm aware of. (other than maybe gravity-rc or the like)

Also, I doubt you need to do it every 60 seconds for it to work -- I'm just starting it at this extreme because I have a surplus of motivation right now, so want to notch it up as much as I can to get results faster. I will probably reduce the frequency to every 3 minutes or so later on. (after my initial 1+ month testing)

I'm not actively updating my success rate atm (will probably start that in a week or so), but for the record, I got a second success during my last sleep.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by FryingMan

Aaaannd..... more silence?! Did I offend you or something?

---

Hi again. sorry but there have been certain things ive been unable to discuss due to gagging orders. Because the iWinks team gave me an Aurora (early tester) for no real reason other than my persistance I feel loyal to their wishes, however....

The Aurora, after much testing does have its problems. I would say it detects REM about 60% of the time, many times I will be laying in bed and the lights will cue when im clearly awake. Also the lights dont always wake me (and have only once actually penetrated into a dream) On the times it has woken me i have successfully DEILD'ed and ive done this only a handful of times, each night there seems to be a problem (lights not waking me, not flashing in REM, device giving me headache etc)

The actual device in theory is fantastic but the lights just dont wake me often enough to perform DEILD. Ive even handsown a sleepmask on top for darkness but it made no difference. It does have an audio alarm but ive not really tested this due to the wife would wake up. I only tested the audio alarm once and it did infact wake me and lead to a successful DEILD.

Throughout all of the devices ive constructed / used over the years Id say the Aurora is the most promising but only due to its REM detection. Id also say that its much more reliable to be woken up via audio signal than lights

I used to have an autostop alarm on my phone connected to a tiny earbud (bluetooth) but this was also impractical, it would be very sweaty and give me an earache.

Another device which has also worked was using my apple watch but the setup was very complex. You see, ideally there would be an apple watch app alarm that would vibrate and then stop automatically after a few seconds but no app on earth exists, trust me ive really tried to find an autostop alarm for apple watch. So what I did was I got an android phone, then downloaded a 'call scheduler' app to ring my normal phone each 30 mind after 4 hours of sleep. The Android app would stop ringing my phone after a few seconds. As my iphone is linked to my apple watch this means that my watch vibrates on my wrist when my phone is being called (by the app) and this setup worked. Because the watch vibrations arnt that strong I bought a little device on Amazon called a 'Ditto'. Its a bluetooth tiny vibrating object that will vibrate when my phone is ringing and so the following happens .... Android app 'call scheduler' calls my phone, my phone rings (on silent) which makes my watch vibrate and also the ditto vibrates ( the ditto is small so i 'stuck' it to my finger with velcro like a ring) and hense I have my vibrating autostop alarm!!!! Wouldnt it be easier if there as just a simple apple watch app to do this.

To be honest im still not sure what DEILD alarm works best. I would edge towards an audio alarm then vibrating alarm then lights.

Aurora will be fantastic once it is able to transmit high quality audio via bluetooth (to an earbud) once REM is detected

For now im going to stick to my vibrating watch alarm / ditto and post the results soon. Although this method has no rem detection it still seems to be more efficient than Aurora.

Hope this helps, sorry for the long delays, I will be very active from now on at DreaamViews :-)
Ezzo

Thanks, Ezzo, for the update :). Aurora is supposed to be all about practice, not theory. Lights/audio/vibrate effectiveness may vary per person, over time. At some point, I hope people will post reviews, there are supposedly hundreds of devices shipped to early supporters now.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by FryingMan

Thanks, Ezzo, for the update :). Aurora is supposed to be all about practice, not theory. Lights/audio/vibrate effectiveness may vary per person, over time. At some point, I hope people will post reviews, there are supposedly hundreds of devices shipped to early supporters now.

---

Quote:

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Originally Posted by FryingMan

Thanks, Ezzo, for the update :). Aurora is supposed to be all about practice, not theory. Lights/audio/vibrate effectiveness may vary per person, over time. At some point, I hope people will post reviews, there are supposedly hundreds of devices shipped to early supporters now.

---

The thing with Aurora is that, for me personally, its is simply a DEILD alarm. The ideal situation would be for me to put it on, it then detects REM and flashes lights to wake me up to perform a DEILD but in reality thats only happened a few times. There is a 'secret' forum for Aurora users (On Slack) and only a few people are trying to master DEILD with the device - the majority are expecting to just put the thing on and become lucid, but we know thats just not going to happen for them.

Im going to spend the next 4 weeks really putting Aurora through its paces. I must say that the accompanying app / website that shows the sleep data is extremely good and its really easy to adjust the light settings (colour, intervals, length of flashes etc).

I am beginning to think that a WBTB is needed to see the lights when returning to sleep as the WBTB makes sleep lighter.

The Aurora has about 30 built in 'tunes' but they come from the motherboard and are very very 'tinny' much like the old digital watch alarms of the 1990's. However the 1 time I did try the Aurora with a 'tune' it did wake me and I did have a DEILD - I must need to retry.

So for the next month im going to attempt a DEILD using the built in audio tunes. I will post my results and hopefully the audio route will work better for me.

Fryingman - How do you DEILD? For me I use the Michael Raduga Techniques from his book 'The Phase'.

If I was to post a review of Aurora, Id say the following ...

The packaging / presentation and 'look' of the device is fantastic / stylish and much like the feel of unboxing a new phone
The manual - was written by me!!!! :-) so I will say its a great manual :-)
The app / website to analyze sleep data is amazing
The ability to alter the light settings and timings is also 10/10
The rem detection I would give 7/10 - it does give a lot of false readings and false light cues
Comfortability - really comfy, easy to sleep in but has given me a headache a few times (maybe the straps were too tight)

I think for the future they need to implement much better audio with the ability to record your own voice and then be able to transmit via bluetooth to earbuds

Overall the Aurora is pretty good, there are a lot of bugs but iWinks are always trying to improve it. They are always releasing software / firmware updates to improve the algorithmn. I get the impression that the iWinks team are really in this for the long haul and im sure there will be Aurora 2.0 in the future.

Ezzo

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ezzolucid

The thing with Aurora is that, for me personally, its is simply a DEILD alarm.

---

What I want from an EILD device is a toolkit that allows me to tailor a particular approach on a particular night using highly flexible combinations of timers, REM detection, current time, signaling, and success/fail feedback (feedback is critical!). With this basis, you can create notifications that focus on DEILD or DILD, as many times a night as you'd like. Aurora seems flexible from what you say.

Are there any ways in the tools to indicate either in the moment (ideally) or afterwards in a post-mortem analysis of the night that a particular signaling was wrong? I.e., that you were awake? I would think that feedback like that would be critical to the success of the evolving REM detection and signaling. In particular, I would hope that what would come out of "training" the device on your own sleep patterns would be a personal REM detection and notification regime that is effective for the particular user.

Ideally there could be "phase of night" differences: in the early (mostly deep sleep) night, it could use more aggressive signaling, while later in the night (lighter sleep) the notifications would be adjusted so as not to prevent falling back asleep again.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by FryingMan

What I want from an EILD device is a toolkit that allows me to tailor a particular approach on a particular night using highly flexible combinations of timers, REM detection, current time, signaling, and success/fail feedback (feedback is critical!). With this basis, you can create notifications that focus on DEILD or DILD, as many times a night as you'd like. Aurora seems flexible from what you say.

Are there any ways in the tools to indicate either in the moment (ideally) or afterwards in a post-mortem analysis of the night that a particular signaling was wrong? I.e., that you were awake? I would think that feedback like that would be critical to the success of the evolving REM detection and signaling. In particular, I would hope that what would come out of "training" the device on your own sleep patterns would be a personal REM detection and notification regime that is effective for the particular user.

Ideally there could be "phase of night" differences: in the early (mostly deep sleep) night, it could use more aggressive signaling, while later in the night (lighter sleep) the notifications would be adjusted so as not to prevent falling back asleep again.

---

Hi Fryingman, after a night with the Aurora on, I can upload the data to the app / website and it gives a graph of all the sleep stage including exactly when the lights cued, the graph shows deep sleep light sleep and rem. Also at any time during the night if I press the button on the device it will show that on the graph also.

So if im lying there awake and the lights cue then I can click the button and analyize what the graph shows the next day. Sometimes it shows on the graph that I was in REM when I know I was actually awake. This I believe is to do with REM and light sleep / awake having similar characteristics and so the algorithm thinks its in rem.

Quote:

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Ideally there could be "phase of night" differences: in the early (mostly deep sleep) night, it could use more aggressive signaling, while later in the night (lighter sleep) the notifications would be adjusted so as not to prevent falling back asleep again.

---

Also, why would you want the device to trigger in deep sleep? We cant lucid or OBE in deep sleep ..... or can we? :-/

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ezzolucid

Hi Fryingman, after a night with the Aurora on, I can upload the data to the app / website and it gives a graph of all the sleep stage including exactly when the lights cued, the graph shows deep sleep light sleep and rem. Also at any time during the night if I press the button on the device it will show that on the graph also.

So if im lying there awake and the lights cue then I can click the button and analyize what the graph shows the next day. Sometimes it shows on the graph that I was in REM when I know I was actually awake. This I believe is to do with REM and light sleep / awake having similar characteristics and so the algorithm thinks its in rem.

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That's a good feature. Better would be if you could click "I was actually awake here" and the device would adjust its algorithms accordingly.

Quote:

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Also, why would you want the device to trigger in deep sleep? We cant lucid or OBE in deep sleep ..... or can we? :-/

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I probably should have written "when sleep is deeper." It's much easier to fall back asleep (at least for me) earlier in the night. The closer to morning it gets, the more overall awake I find myself, and more sensitive to external stimuli. So early REM could use stronger signaling perhaps, and later REM "quieter" signaling.

Quote:

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That's a good feature. Better would be if you could click "I was actually awake here" and the device would adjust its algorithms accordingly.

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This 'learning' feature has been suggested to the iwinks team a few times by beta testers so maybe in the future it will be intergrated

So last night, I put the device on after a 5 hour wbtb with a 30 min delay. Once 30 mins was up the device cued but then kept cueing each 4 minutes whilst I was awake. Not sure why it shows im in rem when i was clearly awake ... so epic fail last night.

Getting fed up really. All I want is a reliable device that can wake me during rem without me having to move as switching off alarms can ruing the deild attempt. I find it highly important to remain in sleep paralysis.

So tonight im going back to trying my apple watch device. Ill set it for every 45 mins after 4 hours sleep and will attempt deild each time. I wont have to move when it goes off so if I hit a rem spot then this should work - its worked in the past, in fact every device has worked in the past including remee mask.

Hey fryingman - whats your go-to device method for deild'ing? How many deilds do you induce each week / month?

.. and a happy lucid xmas to you all

Ezzo

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ezzolucid

This 'learning' feature has been suggested to the iwinks team a few times by beta testers so maybe in the future it will be intergrated

So last night, I put the device on after a 5 hour wbtb with a 30 min delay. Once 30 mins was up the device cued but then kept cueing each 4 minutes whilst I was awake. Not sure why it shows im in rem when i was clearly awake ... so epic fail last night.

Getting fed up really. All I want is a reliable device that can wake me during rem without me having to move as switching off alarms can ruing the deild attempt. I find it highly important to remain in sleep paralysis.

So tonight im going back to trying my apple watch device. Ill set it for every 45 mins after 4 hours sleep and will attempt deild each time. I wont have to move when it goes off so if I hit a rem spot then this should work - its worked in the past, in fact every device has worked in the past including remee mask.

Hey fryingman - whats your go-to device method for deild'ing? How many deilds do you induce each week / month?

.. and a happy lucid xmas to you all

Ezzo

---

Disheartening about Aurora. I'm not much of a deild-er. I've had only a couple deilds of note, and they came about spontaneously when the conditions were absolutely perfect. I've tried alarm deild a few times but always wake up too much.

That's a pity that, for now, the Aurora seems less good at detecting rem than the REM dreamer, and don't do so much more things thant the RD does.
But the good point is if you implement the software you can make it more efficient.

I'm still with my two RemDreamers. Comfort is not an issue to me, I only wear it in the late morning.
I'm trying different settings in term of threshold of sensitivity and use short clues with flash and beep to explore the DEILD approach.

Ezzo, in what does your routine consist exactly when you just have been awoken by the aurora (or anything else) ?
I know you use SOBT (Raduga) and I had been using it with succes when I used supplements , but what are your 3 cycled visualisations?
(just by curiosity).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Kaan

That's a pity that, for now, the Aurora seems less good at detecting rem than the REM dreamer, and don't do so much more things thant the RD does.
But the good point is if you implement the software you can make it more efficient.

I'm still with my two RemDreamers. Comfort is not an issue to me, I only wear it in the late morning.
I'm trying different settings in term of threshold of sensitivity and use short clues with flash and beep to explore the DEILD approach.

Ezzo, in what does your routine consist exactly when you just have been awoken by the aurora (or anything else) ?
I know you use SOBT (Raduga) and I had been using it with succes when I used supplements , but what are your 3 cycled visualisations?
(just by curiosity).

---

Hi Kaan, what I do is this... The alarm wakes me and i do my best to remain still. I then spend about 5 seconds doing nothing, thinking nothing as this pulls be back towards sleep (its called forced falling asleep) after about 5 seconds if nothing strange has happened I will then turn my attention to the natural hissing in my ears. Sometimes at this point the hissing will roar into an almighty noise. At this point I will simply get out of bed and find im in an 'obe'. What also might happen is that I experience vibrations over my upper body. If I feel vibrations them I will wait till they calm down and then once again get up into an obe.

If nothing happens with the hissing or theres no vibrations them i wil switch my awareness between 'looking at the back of my eyelids and listening to the hissing for about 5-10 seconds each until a minute has passed.

There no magic here! Its simply a way to keep my awareness alive as my body falls back to sleep.

I also believe that vibrations are a unique (and very common) sensation. Although no one knows what causes these I have a damn good theory which I believe is correct. As we go from awakefulness to rem sleep our body will become paralysed. I believe the vibrations felt is the release of a chemical from the brain into the body to creat the sleep paralysis (much like the release of adrenaline). Once the body has released enough chemicals to paralize the body then the body is asleep and a separation can happen

Many times I have tried to separate whilst the vibrations are actually happening (and this is the advice given in many forums) however if my theory is right then the body is not fully asleep and I can wake myself up whilst attempting to separate.

It makes much more sense to me to wait until the vibrations have stopped as at this point I would have descended past the 'chemical release' and into sleep paralysis and can now separate.

A lot of 'astral projectors' believe that the vibrations are something to do with the soul separating from the body but I dont believe any of that

What do you guys think?

Kaan - id suggest simply 'play dead' for a few seconds and then focus on something like your hearing. The reason I swap my awareness to another sensation is to stop myself falling asleep for real.

Also Kaan - I have great success with RemDreamer but then I started to worry that the sensor that is constantly reading your eye movement could be dangerous to the eye. I contacted some electricians on forums and they said they would never wear the device even though the makers of RemDreamer say its 100% safe - what do you think? For me the rem detection is much much much more reliable than Aurora at present

Ezzo

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ezzolucid

Hi Kaan, what I do is this... The alarm wakes me and i do my best to remain still. I then spend about 5 seconds doing nothing, thinking nothing as this pulls be back towards sleep (its called forced falling asleep) after about 5 seconds if nothing strange has happened I will then turn my attention to the natural hissing in my ears. Sometimes at this point the hissing will roar into an almighty noise. At this point I will simply get out of bed and find im in an 'obe'. What also might happen is that I experience vibrations over my upper body. If I feel vibrations them I will wait till they calm down and then once again get up into an obe.

If nothing happens with the hissing or theres no vibrations them i wil switch my awareness between 'looking at the back of my eyelids and listening to the hissing for about 5-10 seconds each until a minute has passed.

There no magic here! Its simply a way to keep my awareness alive as my body falls back to sleep.

I also believe that vibrations are a unique (and very common) sensation. Although no one knows what causes these I have a damn good theory which I believe is correct. As we go from awakefulness to rem sleep our body will become paralysed. I believe the vibrations felt is the release of a chemical from the brain into the body to creat the sleep paralysis (much like the release of adrenaline). Once the body has released enough chemicals to paralize the body then the body is asleep and a separation can happen

Many times I have tried to separate whilst the vibrations are actually happening (and this is the advice given in many forums) however if my theory is right then the body is not fully asleep and I can wake myself up whilst attempting to separate.

It makes much more sense to me to wait until the vibrations have stopped as at this point I would have descended past the 'chemical release' and into sleep paralysis and can now separate.

A lot of 'astral projectors' believe that the vibrations are something to do with the soul separating from the body but I dont believe any of that

What do you guys think?

Kaan - id suggest simply 'play dead' for a few seconds and then focus on something like your hearing. The reason I swap my awareness to another sensation is to stop myself falling asleep for real.

Also Kaan - I have great success with RemDreamer but then I started to worry that the sensor that is constantly reading your eye movement could be dangerous to the eye. I contacted some electricians on forums and they said they would never wear the device even though the makers of RemDreamer say its 100% safe - what do you think? For me the rem detection is much much much more reliable than Aurora at present

Ezzo

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Interesting points.
About the vibrations, I only had one real strong experience of OBE (which I believe is just another kind of WILD) and felt strong vibrations, but most of my WILD/DEILD experiences didn't contain any kind of vibrations.
I don't know where the vibrations come from, I guess it's rather the lack of external stimulus, but here is an interesting quote about REM atonia I found in a wikipedia page about REM sleep

REM atonia, an almost complete paralysis of the body, is accomplished through the inhibition of motor neurons.

When the body shifts into REM sleep, motor neurons throughout the body undergo a process called hyperpolarization: their already-negative membrane potential decreases by another 2–10 millivolts, thereby raising the threshold which a stimulus must overcome to excite them. Muscle inhibition may result from unavailability of monoamine neurotransmitters (restraining the abundance of acetylcholine in the brainstem) and perhaps from mechanisms used in waking muscle inhibition.[44] The medulla oblongata, located between pons and spine, seems to have the capacity for organism-wide muscle inhibition.[45] Some localized twitching and reflexes can still occur.[46] Pupils contract.[14]]

Galantamine + choline make transitions from awake to REM easier but I'd like to be able to achieve the same thing without any supplement, only an alarm that wakes me up from a REM stage..
I have been successful several times without any supplements though (and without alarm, I was lucky) , and It happens when I am focusing on what I'm seeing or on the feeling of touching an object, or when I'm jumping or doing some imaginary body movements.
just before I enter the LD, I don't really see, feel or hear something, it's rather foggy, like a daydream, but few seconds later it becomes very real and I enter in the LD.
I think, like Sageous often says, that focusing on the real body feelings, or vibrations, everything that Sageous calls "noise" can prevent you from entering the LD/OBE.
It sounds better to focus on the feelings that comes from the incoming dream.

I have never thought of just doing nothing during 5 seconds before attempting a visualisation, that's a good idea, I'll test it.

About the infrared LED I don't think it can cause any damage to the eye which is only sensitive to visible light.
Infrared light has at lower frequency than the lowest visible light in the visible spectre, so it's less dangerous than sleeping under the day light , all the more so as your eyelids are closed most of the time while you wear the RemDreamer, aren't they?
I never had any side effect since I have been using RD or even the NovaDreamer 20 years ago.

How long and how strong is the alarm that wakes you up?

On the RD I'm testing 4 flash/beeps with one second between each.
When I notice the beep/flashes, I count them. if there only 3, or 2, or 1 I know that at least one beep/flash is missing which means I was asleep just before.
That's a good indication that the RemDreamer didn't go off when I was awake. So it means that I have chances to achieve a DEILD.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ezzolucid

I have a damn good theory which I believe is correct. As we go from awakefulness to rem sleep our body will become paralysed. I believe the vibrations felt is the release of a chemical from the brain into the body to creat the sleep paralysis (much like the release of adrenaline). Once the body has released enough chemicals to paralize the body then the body is asleep and a separation can happen.

---

That is brilliant. I had never heard it before, but it sounds right.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ezzolucid

A lot of 'astral projectors' believe that the vibrations are something to do with the soul separating from the body but I dont believe any of that.

---

Depends on what they mean by soul. If it's another way to say the awareness, separating from the physical body as it drops into paralysis, then I would agree - but yeah, many of them mean something much more metaphysical.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Kaan

REM atonia, an almost complete paralysis of the body, is accomplished through the inhibition of motor neurons.

When the body shifts into REM sleep, motor neurons throughout the body undergo a process called hyperpolarization: their already-negative membrane potential decreases by another 2–10 millivolts, thereby raising the threshold which a stimulus must overcome to excite them. Muscle inhibition may result from unavailability of monoamine neurotransmitters (restraining the abundance of acetylcholine in the brainstem) and perhaps from mechanisms used in waking muscle inhibition.[44] The medulla oblongata, located between pons and spine, seems to have the capacity for organism-wide muscle inhibition.[45] Some localized twitching and reflexes can still occur.[46] Pupils contract.[14]]

---

Hmmm - sounds like a fancy way to say it causes sleep paralysis. :chuckle:

Quote:

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Hmmm - sounds like a fancy way to say it causes sleep paralysis.

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yeah but it explains how : REM atonia, an almost complete paralysis of the body, is accomplished through the inhibition of motor neurons.

.. I know - sorry, I was just being a smart@$$ dumb@$$. :cheers:

@Venryx
Before generating random all odd or all even random number, did you tried with increasing odd, or even numbers (or decreasing), like "2" "4" "6" "8" or "9" "7" "5" "3" "1" ?
I just received the last updated version of RemDreamer pro, which can play a recorded message.
I made an audio file from a text to speech website, a synthetic female voice says "9" "7" "5" "3" "1". I added some reverb and a Fade IN volume ramp so that the sound comes progressively.
I then recorded this audio file through the RemDreamer mike and it will play through a flat little speaker that will be pressed against my skin behind my right hear.
Since I sleep with earplugs the sound is kind of amplified by bone conduction.

My goal is to be briefly awoken while on REM sleep to practice DEILD, or to have a FA where I can verify that all the numbers are odd, as a RC.
I was just wondering if the fact that the numbers are not random will make it too easy for the brain to trick me.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Kaan

@Venryx
Before generating random all odd or all even random number, did you tried with increasing odd, or even numbers (or decreasing), like "2" "4" "6" "8" or "9" "7" "5" "3" "1" ?
I just received the last updated version of RemDreamer pro, which can play a recorded message.
I made an audio file from a text to speech website, a synthetic female voice says "9" "7" "5" "3" "1". I added some reverb and a Fade IN volume ramp so that the sound comes progressively.
I then recorded this audio file through the RemDreamer mike and it will play through a flat little speaker that will be pressed against my skin behind my right hear.
Since I sleep with earplugs the sound is kind of amplified by bone conduction.

My goal is to be briefly awoken while on REM sleep to practice DEILD, or to have a FA where I can verify that all the numbers are odd, as a RC.
I was just wondering if the fact that the numbers are not random will make it too easy for the brain to trick me.

---

No, I haven't tried any other number patterns so far. The even-odd approach sounded nicest to me, so I've been sticking with that until I've evaluated it fully.

As for your suggested approach, my guess is that it would still work a good portion of the time, but not quite as reliably as pure random. This is because I've noticed in dreams that if you anticipate things, or even think about anticipating it, your brain can figure out what you're referencing and then add it to the dream before your memory is even consciously retrieved. Thus, if you start hearing numbers, you might start retrieving the pattern memory, letting your subconscious catch on and start following it as well before you can catch its interference. But, I've also noticed that my subconscious is not that consistent/professional, so even if it starts doing a pattern, I'd guess that most of the time, it would still add random stumbles and insertions if you listened long enough. It's just, it won't "mess up" quite as reliably as if it were forced to do both the pattern plus randomization for each entry, I would guess.

By the way, I am still going strong at my "RVP v2" experiment -- the prompts continue to play every 60 seconds (when I'm in my room).

The results so far have been somewhat promising, though it has not reached a breakthrough point yet like I have (and still am) hoping. I've had a good number of times where the prompts have triggered awareness either in a dream, or just as I'm waking up (still having dream imagery, but so light that my gaining lucidity causes it to vanish). I am recording the date/time as well as the "current prompt count" whenever I gain a lucid from the technique. (I will provide the results later once I have completed the initial evaluation -- which is either when I give up, or hit a breakthrough point.)

I said I'd give an update when I either hit a breakthrough point or give up.

Well, I'm giving up. :muffin::dancingcow::boogie:

:uhm::huh:

The thing is, I was getting okay induction rates. Except... it changed a lot depending on the week, despite doing exactly the same thing technique wise each week, and for about the same amount of time. It's not that unexpected since it's known that a lot of things go into your "suitability for lucid dreaming" state, but I guess... I expected it to still be more predictable than it's been.

I will share some screenshots now of my results. I was originally intending to go into more detail about the experiment, and still might, but am distracted with various things atm and figured I would just share a basic overview for now for anyone who had been waiting.

This first screenshot is of the ~3 months over which I did the experiment. Each gap between gray vertical bars represents 3 days, each day represented separately with (potentially) an orange peak indicating how many lucid dreams were had that day. (Except the first few gaps -- they are thinner for some reason so only have space for 1/2 days each.)
Attachment 9887

That's kind of hard to see long-term rate-changes, though, so I'll also include screenshots of that data, except smoothed out. By "smoothed out", I mean that for each row/slot/x-position, it's changed to not just show how many lucid dreams occurred that day, but how many lucid dreams occurred in the last Z days.

Here are the screenshots for varying values of Z:
==========
Smoothing value of 3:
Attachment 9888

Smoothing value of 5:
Attachment 9889

Smoothing value of 7:
Attachment 9890

Smoothing value of 10:
Attachment 9891
==========

At some points, I was getting ~4 lucid-dreams per week, which is quite good for me. But you'll see that each time, it would fluctuate back down shortly after.

Here's one more screenshot, with a smoothing value of 20: (hit limit of 5 for main post)
Attachment 9892

Anyway, I'll have to think some more on what I can learn from the results. One thing is that toward the end, as I got distracted by some things, my induction rate fell substantially, despite, again, doing almost exactly the same things as before technique-wise. (the only thing I changed might have been a bit less strict adherence to the "keep it on whenever you're in your room" rule -- I started skipping occasionally, but I still did it most of the time)

I also made sure in the earlier times to not be doing anything explicit other than the technique, so as not to disrupt the results. But I guess, merely having more things on your mind puts a burden on the process, even when you had kept the technique constant, and as your only support for lucid-dreaming.

I'll continue to mess around with various approaches (including this one and FBA), but I'm ending the semi-formal recording phase and just falling back to "whenever I feel like it" mode. It was fun, and I think it did have an impact, just not as reliable a one as I was hoping for.

The highest induction rates I've had seem to have been with the FBA technique in my other thread. I will probably revisit that one next. [edit: Oh nvm, it's this thread. I've kind of been posting in the wrong thread, due to this being where I first mentioned my starting testing of RVPv2.]

The main reason: My family is moving to another house in a month or two, one where I have a larger and more separated room. So, it should be far enough away that I can use alarms without waking other people up. Which means I don't need to use sleep-headphones anymore, which was my main annoyance. (I didn't like turning it on and waiting for it to connect, and its sometimes making my tinnitus act up more due to the outside-sound obstruction -- it wasn't terrible, but it will be nicer to no longer need it)

So anyway, I'm ending testing on this for now, but I'll be back in a few weeks most likely to give the FBA technique another try. (this time without the need for headphones)