REMDreamer review - Ongoing

[bluremi]

I just purchased a REMDreamer and thought I'd post my experiences with it so far. I will continue to update this thread as I play around with it. Initial Thoughts I got it off their official website, which is the cheapest option on the web. I think a single person runs the company, because I got an email from Pawel a few days later telling me my package was on the way. He also sent me a tracking number when I asked for one. A few days later I got a soft envelope in the mail with my address handwritten on the front: packaging.jpg Within the envelope was this box: box.jpg The mask itself was folded neatly inside along with a user guide. mask_01.jpg The mask was not quite what I expected. From pictures posted online, it looks like it has a soft foam interior so that it will contour to your eyes and face. In fact, the foam is actually stiff, flat, and inflexible. It's there to protect you from the circuit board inserted into the front of the mask! There are two little holes in the eye holes, through which you can see peeking the two light-emitting-diodes, as well as a small black infrared sensor in the right eye hole: mask_02.jpg To get familiar with and operate the device, you have to carefully pull out the circuit board so that you can see the LED display and the buttons used to program and operate it. Operation When removing or re-inserting the circuit board, you have to be careful because all the components are unprotected and will try to snag on the cloth of the mask. This sounds a little ridiculous, but it's actually not difficult at all once you get over the surprise of having to actually deal with the raw components of this device, instead of the more streamlined plastic-covered interfaces we are used to with modern devices. I think it's clear that this product was created with limited funds, and part of why it's so cheap is that it emphasizes function over form. Using a flexible, ergonomically shaped circuit would have cost a lot more in R&D. circuit_board.jpg Here's a breakdown of what you are looking at in the picture above: - The two round metal discs are the batteries. - Between the batteries, at the top of the board, is an LED display (currently off). - To the right of the LED display is a button used to turn it on and cycle through the menu buttons. - The next button is the "SELECT" button, used to toggle settings or cycle through values. - In the middle of the board is the last button. You can use it to "test" the device by holding it down, at which point it will flash or beep according to the settings you've specified so you can preview what it will look like. If you just click it once it will add 10 minutes to the delay time (more on that below). To use this device, you can choose from one of three presets, which represent light, medium or deep sleepers. The presets control how bright the lights are, how many times they flash, how frequently they flash, and how long each flash lasts. As you might expect, the deep sleeper preset flashes the lights brightly, quickly, and for a long time. I started with the medium preset and then adjusted the individual settings afterwards. Once you've got the settings dialed in you no longer need to remove the circuit board from the mask, since you can turn it on and off by hitting the buttons through the cloth of the mask. When it's turned on, the REM detector won't turn on for a 10 minute delay time. You can increase the delay time in 10 minute increments each time you hit the previously mentioned "test" button. So, if I wake up in the middle of the night and want to use the mask: - Put it on my head and lie down comfortably. - Hit the "on" button. The lights flash briefly and it beeps once. - Hit the "test" button 3-5 times so give myself 30-50 minutes to fall asleep. Turning it off is a bit of a pain. You have to cycle through the menu options to the 13th option, which turns it off. So if you don't want to look at the LED display, you have to hit the menu button 12 times and then the SELECT button to turn it off. It doesn't beep when you turn it off, which would be helpful! Does it work? This is the million dollar question, and it's not something I can answer yet since I've only owned it for about a week. I will update this thread as I continue to experiment with this device and post my thoughts, discoveries, successes and failures. So far I have been trying to figure out the best way to use this device. The REM detector is quite sensitive and works great, as confirmed by the REM Sensor Test mode, where you activate the mode and the device beeps every time it detects eye movement. You can lower and raise the sensitivity from 0-9. I have tried using it in WBTB in the morning, but results so far are inconclusive. I have not noticed flashing lights in my dreams, or at least I don't remember any lights: instead I wake up groggily with a vague memory of bright flashing lights near my face. I think either the lights are too powerful or the sensitivity is too high. More experimentation is needed. I also have an idea to try to use this thing for DEILD. In the past I have been unable to find a way to wake myself up from a dream without moving, in order to try DEILD. It's difficult to calibrate the alarm just right, since it tends to either shock me awake or not wake me up at all, and by the time I turn it off I am too awake to fall back asleep. If I turn the brightness and duration way up, this device should wake me up in a very unusual way, and the hope is that I will therefore remember to not move and attempt and immediate DEILD. This is my next experiment phase, I will post results later.

[gab]

This is the best description of functionality and review I have ever read on these devices. Good job. Please keep us posted. I'm sure you know this, but I'm gonna mention it anyway. You could use those led lights as your RC. Do RCs and tell yourself you are dreaming, while looking at those flashing led lights. But since those leds will bleed into your dream probably in a different form, such as flashing police lights, bright sun, car headlights, bright day, etc, you could also RC on images or videos of those events. So when you see any lights in your dream, it may trigger lucidity. Because just seeing lights in a dream is not enough. You have to teach your brain to recognize lights as a sign that you are dreaming. Good luck and happy dreams

[bluremi]

When the device is on, you can cycle through the menu to an option that displays how many notifications it has generated since it was turned on. Last night I raised the brightness a little and increased the length of the notification from 4 seconds to 6. It did not wake me up, though, and when I woke in the morning I was too groggy to remember to check the number of notifications. Tonight I will max out the brightness and raise the length of notification to 10 seconds, that should definitely wake me up. I will also spend some time before falling asleep with a mantra and intent-setting exercise to make sure I react correctly to the red lights. I don't know yet if I will wake up or if I will see them in my dream, so I will just repeat to myself that ANY red lights mean that the mask is working. Logically, I should know what to do from there.

[VagalTone]

I also have an idea to try to use this thing for DEILD. In the past I have been unable to find a way to wake myself up from a dream without moving, in order to try DEILD. It's difficult to calibrate the alarm just right, since it tends to either shock me awake or not wake me up at all, and by the time I turn it off I am too awake to fall back asleep. If I turn the brightness and duration way up, this device should wake me up in a very unusual way, and the hope is that I will therefore remember to not move and attempt and immediate DEILD. This is my next experiment phase, I will post results later. Just a little off topic: have you tried an auto-snooze alarm ? It works fine for me, specially with WBTB. Feel free to ask me if you'd like me to give more details.

[bluremi]

Just a little off topic: have you tried an auto-snooze alarm ? It works fine for me, specially with WBTB. Feel free to ask me if you'd like me to give more details. I couldn't find the right balance for an auto-snooze alarm. It would either not wake me up at all or it would be so loud or prolonged that it would completely shatter my chances of falling back asleep. The noise would also wake up my SO, and wearing headphones kept me awake... I experimented for about a month before giving up on that one. I think one of the main reasons why I could never get a consistent result was that the alarm would go off at different stages of my sleep cycle. It was impossible to consistently get it to go off during a REM stage. The main reason why I am optimistic about this visual cue device is that it has a built in mechanism to wake you at the correct stage of sleep for immediately dropping back into a dream. Flashing lights are also not as jarring as a loud auditory alarm, at least for me. When you say "it works fine for me" how many lucid dreams have you had with an auto-snooze alarm method?

[VagalTone]

Well, it has worked 66% (2/3) of times. Maybe 10 lucid dreams, i recorded them on my dj. Now i don´t use it very often because it´s somewhat uncomfortable and because it usually works better with a long 3/4 hour WBTB after 4,5 hours of sleep, which makes it not very good to do on a daily basis. i use a 2 second auto-snooze alarm that rings every 15 min, moderately high volume, same ringtone every time. It usually rings twice while i'm in REM, and i can get DEILD/ OBE usually once. I think my success rate would be better if i had stick with it, and tried different settings. But now i am working on natural DEILD, which i think is better than alarm, and more sustainable in the long term. But i am interested to check how your new experiment goes. I think it is very likely to work if it can detect REM and wake you up a little. Good luck !

[bluremi]

I tried the DEILD experiment last night and it certainly woke me up. However, the lights were like bright laser beams searing my retinas, causing me to wake up, grimace, and try to squirm into my pillow away from my face. So, highest brightness level is quite bright. I'm gonna knock it down from 9/9 to 7/9 and try again.

[VagalTone]

Again i am confident that it will work great for DEILD / OBE but, from my own experience with the alarm, the intensity of the signal depends on how deep your sleep is, which of course might be difficult to adjust. Sometimes you notice it quietly and can DEILD, sometimes you don´t, and sometimes you wake up too much. So, i think it´s important to keep a good sleep schedule and routine.

[Goldenspark]

Interesting! So REMDreamer uses IR to detect eye movement. That should work quite well. If it is effective it steals a march on LUCI. The only problem I can see is that you might want to delay for 4-5 hours before getting a cue. Being cued too early is less likely to get you lucid.

[bluremi]

I'm having a lot of fun playing around with this device: each night I learn a little more about how to best use it. Today I remembered a long dream I had while wearing it. I was also woken up by the device in the middle of the night, but was subsequently too awake to do DEILD successfully. This tells me a couple of things: 1) I am having long dreams and the device is not going off 2) The device IS going off during other dreams, so that means the sensitivity level must be tweaked I am going to try to jack up the sensitivity to the max setting (9) and see if it works better. If it wakes me up constantly throughout the night, I'll dial it down one level at a time until I find a nice balance. Last night it was on the default setting (6).

[bluremi]

I have found what might be a software bug, but it's hard to say for sure. I set the REM sensitivity to level 8 (out of 9) and noticed that it does not seem to trigger alerts at that level. That is to say, the detector registers movement but the lights don't activate. I confirmed this by moving my hand by the sensor and waiting for the lights to blink. After a few minutes I checked the menu item that shows you the number of generated alerts since you last turned the device on, and it showed 1 alert. Setting the sensitivity level to 7 makes it behave as expected! I have also noticed that the alert is only generated ~1 minute after the sensor detects movement. I had a bit of a scare and thought my device was broken before I figured this out. I'm not sure why it's programmed this way, but my best guess is that instantaneous alerts would cause the lights to blink too frequently and make it impossible to enjoy your lucid dream after the initial alert is generated. Any success yet? Haven't had any lucid dreams so far. I am completely undiscouraged, though, since every night that I use the device I am learning additional tricks to make it work better. For example, last night I decided that going to sleep with it on wasn't working, and doing WBTB in the morning wasn't working either since I couldn't fall asleep with it on (I sleep lightly in the morning, deeply in the evening). I decided to compromise by setting an alarm to wake me up halfway through the night, and immediately putting on the mask and falling back asleep. The result was that for the first time I saw the lights in my dreams. They manifested as a blinking control panel in my dreams, consisting of blue and white lights rather than red ones. The lights were so bright that they eventually woke me up, but I remembered my dream! The little booklet that came with the device even states that the lights will often manifest in colors other than red, particularly white and blue. This means making the mental connection becomes more difficult, but I am still quite excited to be experimenting with the REMDreamer every night! Before bed I say a mantra to associate flashing lights with lucid dreaming, and if I am woken up my backup plan is to attempt DEILD. So far the lights have been waking me up too late in the morning to fall back into a dream, but with my new middle-of-the-night approach I look forward to more interesting results!

[VagalTone]

Nice to see your persistence. In my opinion your backup plan is the one i like most, because it´s more predictable and less dependent on the user. It should work every night, i guess, providing one finds a good routine. Off topic: I will return to my (D)EILD experiment ( described above ) and see how my lucidity rate and quality goes with this method alone. This time i won´t do WBTB.

[bluremi]

Some very interesting results to report. I may have finally stumbled upon the perfect combination of timing and settings to make this device work as intended. Here's a summary of my latest dream, see if you can spot the REMDreamer at work: I'm back in college, and a few friends and I have entered the classroom of a math/economics professor. I've brought some pot paraphernalia so we can smoke inside. We are examining an interesting device at the front of the class that seems to record ambient sounds onto the blackboard as wavy lines, drawn with a piece of chalk on the end of a robot arm. Then someone enters the classroom and stands by the door, flicking the lights on and off quickly. The contrast between the lights going on and off is so painfully bright that I have to squeeze my eyes shut and can't look around me. After a while they stop and enter the room, it's just a friend of mine. A few minutes later we finish up and leave for another class. I start collecting my things from a desk when a teacher enters the room, and stands by the door, flicking the lights on and off. Again, it's so painfully bright that I have to squeeze my eyes shut and can't even fumble around on the desk in front of me until they stop. When they mercifully finish, I yell at them not to do that because it's painful to anyone inside. Did you spot the REMDreamer signals? Crazy! By waking up at 5AM and going back to sleep, I have hit upon the perfect time to put this device on, since I fall asleep easily (I recorded several dreams today) and dream for a long time. I have also set the REMDreamer to flash brightly and for a long time in order to wake me up, but apparently it can fail to do so even at this painfully bright setting. What this means is that I now have a really obvious dream sign. Not just flashing lights, but painfully bright flashing lights, which are a very rare occurrence no matter who you are. I am excited to continue experiments with this device. I'm keeping the settings locked down for now, will just repeat the same thing tomorrow night and see if anything else needs to be tweaked. Here are the settings i'm using right now, just for posterity... Delay: 30 minutes Flash Brightness: 6/9 Flash Length: .20 sec Flash Frequency: 2x per second Alert Length: 8 seconds REM Detector Sensitivity: 7/9

[Nazrax]

Do you sleep on your side or your back? Does it stay where it should all night, or does it shift side-to-side or up onto your forehead?

[bluremi]

I sleep on my back. I am comfortable sleeping that way and will usually wake up in the same position I feel asleep in. Occasionally it has shifted up to my forehead or to the side. This is a pretty rare occurence, though, maybe it has happened about 5% of the nights I've used it. I have never woken up to find myself crushing it with my head against the pillow.

[bluremi]

Detection/Alert Intervals Explained I emailed the guy at REMDreamer with some questions and he explained the timing of the REM detection and alerts: When deciding whether or not to generate an alert, REMDreamer looks at the previous 3 minutes of detection history to make a decision. It makes this decision once a minute (that accounts for what I thought was a one-minute delay between movement and alert). After generating an alert, history is cleared and REMDreamer waits 3 minutes before starting the detector up again. That means if you continue to make eye movements, the next alert will happen within 6 minutes of the previous one.

[OmkAR]

Angry Chocobos (REM-Dreamer Induced LD) TIME TO BED: 06:28 AM (I can't remember if i wore my REM-Dreamer all night, or If i woke up later in my sleep cycle and put it on. . .) REM-Dreamer settings: Brightness: 6/9 REM Sensitivity: 7/9 Triggers that night: 27 times ( I only recall it going off 2 or 3 times ) WOKE @ 15:07 PM I was in this normal dream, in this church-type place. There was used items people brought in for sale by the church to help fund it. I was looking around in the book section for something to buy, then I left that area into another room where these strange creatures were. They looked like a cross between an owl and a guinea pig but in the dream I thought of them as chocobos like from the game Final Fantasy. Anyways I was petting one and all of a sudden it got this weird look in its eyes, then it started raining inside the building/church there. There were lightning flashes from outside, through a window, and all of a sudden the chocobo I was petting attacked my right hand . . it bit down hard .. It was pseudo-dream-pain .. .. CHOMP CHOMP CHOMP . . and it was sync'd perfectly with the lightning flashes outside, then I started to get pulled awake at this point . .. and then I lost vision of that dream . . lost feeling of the chocobo biting my hand. . and I saw the lights flashing from my REM-dreamer from my sleeping bodies eyelids. .. Neat! . . So then I just laid still . .. waited for REM-Dreamer to stop flashing . . .started counting . .. not speed counting .. just normal speed . .. and I did a DEILD re-entry. After about 15 seconds I was back in the same room but all the chocobos were gone. All the dream characters were also gone from that building, the entire place was empty now. I went exploring for a bit and I could still partially feel the REM-dreamer on my face on my sleeping body at the same time while I was in the dream world. The tactile feeling of it on my face was leaking through into the dreamworld. It wasn't too annoying so I think I went off exploring. I don't recall what I did after that. REM-Dreamer recommended for advanced lucid dreamers for triggering DEILD re-entries or dreamsign causing/triggered DILD's. . aka lightning flashes, or biting sensations . . . etc. it's random everytime.

[PaulyD]

I just dove into actively trying to Lucid Dream again (I had kept a journal and had one lucid dream 6+ years ago) after it seemingly took too much time and effort. All that being said, I decided I really wanted to take another pass at it. After keeping a journal for at least a month (where I was recalling 1-2 a night and writing them down) I ordered two devices. First, the Kickstarter device (Remee) and the REM Dreamer. The Remee didn't work at all. I think most people know why - it just wasn't smart enough to send signals when dreams occurred. It was awfully comfortable and allowed me to sleep however I wanted, but that was about it. The REM Dreamer (thus my posting on this thread) came about 5 days ago, and I have used it on two separate nights. First of all, I'm pretty impressed with the technology inside that little circuit board. From the infra-red REM detector (which is pretty amazing when you test it ahead of time how it can see the minute movements of your eyes), to the two way communication available through the device (i.e. move your eyes up and down while conscious in a dream to turn off the red light signals), to the earphone and audio message recording technology included in the PRO version, which I got. On the first night, I was so focused on if it would work or not, that I had a pretty painful night of not being able to sleep - or sleeping so on and off I had to keep resetting the delay on the device so it wouldn't start tracking my eye movement. On the second night, I was a bit more comfortable (as much as you can be -- it's not the most comfortable device) but had a pretty cool first experience. While I didn't go lucid, I was having a dream speaking to a friend in a room, when all of a sudden about three or four minutes into the dream we saw these huge flashes of blinding lightning come from outside the windows -- in the dream we were pretty concerned what was going on out there. I even turned on a light on the desk to gauge that light brightness and it was WAY dim compared to the lights we had just seen. As we debated where those lights may have come from and were somewhat nervous about it, I woke up. The immediate realization was that the REM Dreamer lights had gone off and that was how it was manifested in the dream. To me, that was a win on Night #2 of the device. My learnings? At least I can go ahead and turn down the brightness of the lights, so they don't overwhelm the dream scape, and then start training myself to look out for these lights. I suppose that will get me closer to where I want to get to. Although, wearing the mask all night is tiresome. A suggestion on this post seems spot on -- set an alarm for 5 hours in the night, and THEN put on the REM Dreamer. Whether or not a Wake Induced Lucid Dream occurs from it, at least I know I am close to the time of night where the mask is ready to get to work. Painfully dealing with uncomfortable sleep for the first 4-5 hours when the device won't even start looking for REM until then anyway (via the timer), seems like it's not worth dealing with. I'm open to thoughts. Wearing the device also makes the night pretty fatiguing since you are waking and going back to sleep many times. I had recall of over 5 detailed dreams but I am soooo tired. Seems like wearing the device is a good weekend exercise, while using the nights in-between to try and make it happen without the device's help (and that means better sleep). I'll keep reporting in. But I'm feeling like the purchase was a good choice. First post! Good to meet y'all.

[bluremi]

Thanks for your input. Please post some updates on how useful the device is to you. I had taken a break from the REMDreamer to practice WILD for a while, and am now starting to use it again. I find that taking a hiatus from any long endeavor increases motivation once you resume. I've tweaked the settings now to focus on DEILD, since I find my in-dream awareness to be quite low even though my recall is high. Last night it woke me up correctly but I was unable to enter the dream again since I was too awake and ended up lying there for 20 minutes before falling asleep. I am focusing on a combination of FILD + mantra to go back into a dream upon waking.

[VagalTone]

Thanks for your input. Please post some updates on how useful the device is to you. I had taken a break from the REMDreamer to practice WILD for a while, and am now starting to use it again. I find that taking a hiatus from any long endeavor increases motivation once you resume. I've tweaked the settings now to focus on DEILD, since I find my in-dream awareness to be quite low even though my recall is high. Last night it woke me up correctly but I was unable to enter the dream again since I was too awake and ended up lying there for 20 minutes before falling asleep. I am focusing on a combination of FILD + mantra to go back into a dream upon waking. That´s how i would use it ! That´s the potential i see in EILD, to disturb the rem sleep and allow some awareness to creep in. Good luck !

[bluremi]

To date I have not had any lucid dreams caused by the device so I cannot recommend it as a lucid dream induction aid. As a caveat, I should say that I have very low awareness in my dreams, so this was not a good fit for me. I am working on improving awareness and general lucid dreaming through other avenues, and I will return to it once I have some solid success under my belt to see if it becomes more effective at that point.

[RBee]

Detection/Alert Intervals Explained I emailed the guy at REMDreamer with some questions and he explained the timing of the REM detection and alerts: When deciding whether or not to generate an alert, REMDreamer looks at the previous 3 minutes of detection history to make a decision. It makes this decision once a minute (that accounts for what I thought was a one-minute delay between movement and alert). I've found that a 'sliding window' approach works a little more elegantly. A hard-coded window of x minutes can overlap and you can miss some valuable REM time... I also found that adding variable flashing patterns can be more effective than just flashing on and off at a set duration. What would be cool is if you could signal the device that you're in an LD with a controlled eye movement. It would keep signalling you until it receives your message (eg. move eyes left to right 3 times pausing 1 second between moves.) I'm working on something similar based on LaBerge's work. Might be worth putting in some experimental settings like that under a hidden setting. Unfortunately I have had little opportunity to experiment with my homemade mask since most of the time I pull it off shortly after I go to sleep!

[bluremi]

What would be cool is if you could signal the device that you're in an LD with a controlled eye movement. It would keep signalling you until it receives your message (eg. move eyes left to right 3 times pausing 1 second between moves.) I'm working on something similar based on LaBerge's work. Might be worth putting in some experimental settings like that under a hidden setting. Unfortunately I have had little opportunity to experiment with my homemade mask since most of the time I pull it off shortly after I go to sleep! This mask actually does support what you described. You can activate a mode where it just continues flashing until you move your eyes up and down about once per second.

[ElectricSheep]

Interesting! So REMDreamer uses IR to detect eye movement. That should work quite well. If it is effective it steals a march on LUCI. The only problem I can see is that you might want to delay for 4-5 hours before getting a cue. Being cued too early is less likely to get you lucid. I usually put it on when I WBTB and set the delay for about an hour

[xintenseities]

HI i'd like to revitalize this thread if I can. I just bought the remdreamer pro. It's due to arrive any day now, so I will post my results here. Thank you to all who posted before me, now I know how to operate the device, any feedback would be greatly appreciated!!!