It was very simple and easy to take apart (no clamshells!). Aside from the sensor and the “hub” there was not very much paper. The instructions pretty much consisted of “go to this url” which I found annoying. I didn’t understand why I needed to go online to get setup instructions - tbh I felt like the company was cheaping out on including instructions by saving paper. There was no overview of how many steps or how much time it was going to take. It was nice that the URL re-directed to the appstore rather than searching.
Even knowing what I know now, it would have been nice if there was indication that to set the device up you needed to get an app to pair the sensors.
The setup was easy (only paired one sensor). I hadn’t plugged my glowing orb in so the app told me to do that step when it needed me to.
Since thinking about it, I’ve realized I have no idea what my password is. I hate it when I’m required to create an account and I’m away from my computer because I always make up a password and it never gets saved.
Device
On the glowing orb, there is no snooze button so once you wave your hand over the glowing orb it’s game over. Combined with a lack of clock and it can be a little disorienting if you’re one to doze after the alarm goes off.
I found the clip to be WAY more difficult to clip onto the pillow than they show in the video. I’m waiting for the time when we forget to remove it before throwing the sheets in the wash. It would be cool if it could send an alert when the sensor is removed from the glowing orb or even better if the sensor were waterproof. You know someone’s going to wash it.
The glowing orb has some environment sensors in it to detect light, noise, humidity, air quality(?) and temperature. Perhaps aside from light, I have to have blind faith that the orb is correct. I always thought my house was a little loud (live on a busy street) but the orb is telling me the sound level is totally fine for sleep. Other than light, it seems like I’m always in the green. It would be nice to know the thresholds (I just realized you can tap on the bit to get a more info - e.g. “ideally it should be below x”.) so I could take action to maintain more of a middle ground. I find it to be a tad annoying that I’m chastised for light levels - of course it’s going to be bright - it’s day! I do like being able to see the humidity and the temp of the room. We live in an older house and the temperature seems to be erratic throughout the house. I can envision though being annoying during the summer when it’s too hot. If you don’t have control over it (e.g. AC) you don’t want to be reminded of how hot you are.
The graph is pretty bad - it’s just a wavey line showing history with no context of time. Is it the past 24 hours? The past week? There also isn’t any “level” indication, I look at the humidilty chart and I see a downward line but is that ok? Clearly the humidity level is dropping but by how much? At what point should I intervene?
Air quality? I have no idea how to measure that and if it were red, no idea how to fix it. Getting more info just says it should be “clean”. Thank god mine is clean b/c otherwise I would be screwed!
Usage
At first I was wow’d by it. It knows when I’m in bed - how does it know that?! It seemed accurate - the app told me I was sleeping alright and that felt right.
A few weeks of use and the cracks are showing.
One night when Carl was sick and went to bed early. Typically I go to bed before him so I am the one who gets in bed and turns off the light and Carl is the one who stays awake using his phone in the dark. IDK if light is part of the magic of knowing when you “went to sleep” but on this night the sleep detection was SUPER off. It seemed to nail when I got into bed (which I still don’t know how it knows), but it claimed I went to sleep “right away” like within an hour. I know for a fact that isn’t true because I had the worst night of sleep I’ve had in a long time. I was fully 100% awake and browsing my phone for hours. But I wasn’t moving a whole lot b/c I was reading and trying to not be annoying to Carl. Alexander also had a bad night so I was in and out of bed for hours. In the AM I was interested to see what the sensor had to say about things and was shocked to see a number in the 80’s. It was telling me I had slept no worse than an average night. It’s kind of insulting to be invalidated by a machine. I want the sensor to confirm “yes you feel like shit because you slept like shit. here is the proof.”
I noticed twice (two days in a row) that the alarm didn’t go off. The alarm works so that when you start moving around (exiting sleep) the alarm goes off. So you set it for say 630am and it can go off anywhere between 6 - 630am. One would assume that even if I were dead asleep at 631am it would still go off to wake me because I still need to get up. I’m not one to sleep through an alarm nor am I one to shut it off in my sleep. I would say 99% of the time, when I hit snooze or shut off the alarm I am fully aware I am doing so and cognizantly choose to stay in bed. So it’s possible that I could have shut it off first day (though highly unlikely), but the second day in a row seems really, really unlikely. So is it a bug? NO! It’s a feature - if you’re dead asleep during the window we’ll just let you keep on sleeping; you’re clearly tired. You’re welcome!
In addition to knowing when you get into bed, it knows when you exit. But I’ve started noticing that this isn’t super accurate. For example, this AM the sensor claims I got out of bed at 730 AM which I know for a fact is not true. I was downstairs, dressed, and feeding Alexander (who was also changed and dressed) at 730. So unless I can freeze time, which would be amazing, IDK how that would even be possible.
I’m still breastfeeding (in bed in the AM) and this is throwing the sensor off too. It thinks I’m still dozing when in fact I’m awake, reading my phone, and feeding the babe. Perhaps their test base was comprised of those who leap out of bed in the morning?
All these things are leading the sensor to think I’m getting more sleep than I am and that I’m incredibly slow to get out of bed (I read as lazy) which leads to their advice…
Advice
The app told me that the time I wake up is inconsistent and that I would be a better person (my words) if I would only just fix that - someone should relay this info to my son. It even told me that 52% of other people do better than me.
The app also told me that I move 16% less than the average Sense using person (agitated sleep). I may not be a consistent waker but I’ve nailed being still while sleeping.
Other than those helpful little tidbits I haven’t really gotten anything of use from the advice.
There was a bit about how other stuff can affect your quality of sleep and that does interest me. If only my fitbit could talk to it! How does exercise make me sleep better (being tired) or worse (too close to bedtime). How does computer use affect the time I go to bed? What about the sunset? If I drink less water in the day am I more restless at night? If I decreased my Nest by two degrees at night would I not only save money but sleep better?
Info
The charts are a little lacking and I can’t seem to find historical sleep information. The only thing saved is your sleep number (which I’m not fully sure how it’s calculated). It seems like only 2 weeks of that number are shown so you couldn’t do any seasonal or monthly type comparisons. It would be nice if you could tie notes to particularly good or bad nights. For example, Wed appears to be bad, but I don’t remember why. Was it because I went to bed too late? Didn’t sleep well? Alexander was up several times?
It seems like you would need a bit more information to be able to make a change and see its impact on your sleep over a longer period of time.
Unboxing https://search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?p=hello+sense+unboxing&ei=UTF-8&hspart=mozilla&hsimp=yhs-002
It was very simple and easy to take apart (no clamshells!). Aside from the sensor and the “hub” there was not very much paper. The instructions pretty much consisted of “go to this url” which I found annoying. I didn’t understand why I needed to go online to get setup instructions - tbh I felt like the company was cheaping out on including instructions by saving paper. There was no overview of how many steps or how much time it was going to take. It was nice that the URL re-directed to the appstore rather than searching.
Even knowing what I know now, it would have been nice if there was indication that to set the device up you needed to get an app to pair the sensors.
Setup https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ1dxdkKAYs
The setup was easy (only paired one sensor). I hadn’t plugged my glowing orb in so the app told me to do that step when it needed me to.
Since thinking about it, I’ve realized I have no idea what my password is. I hate it when I’m required to create an account and I’m away from my computer because I always make up a password and it never gets saved.
Device
On the glowing orb, there is no snooze button so once you wave your hand over the glowing orb it’s game over. Combined with a lack of clock and it can be a little disorienting if you’re one to doze after the alarm goes off.
I found the clip to be WAY more difficult to clip onto the pillow than they show in the video. I’m waiting for the time when we forget to remove it before throwing the sheets in the wash. It would be cool if it could send an alert when the sensor is removed from the glowing orb or even better if the sensor were waterproof. You know someone’s going to wash it.
The glowing orb has some environment sensors in it to detect light, noise, humidity, air quality(?) and temperature. Perhaps aside from light, I have to have blind faith that the orb is correct. I always thought my house was a little loud (live on a busy street) but the orb is telling me the sound level is totally fine for sleep. Other than light, it seems like I’m always in the green. It would be nice to know the thresholds (I just realized you can tap on the bit to get a more info - e.g. “ideally it should be below x”.) so I could take action to maintain more of a middle ground. I find it to be a tad annoying that I’m chastised for light levels - of course it’s going to be bright - it’s day! I do like being able to see the humidity and the temp of the room. We live in an older house and the temperature seems to be erratic throughout the house. I can envision though being annoying during the summer when it’s too hot. If you don’t have control over it (e.g. AC) you don’t want to be reminded of how hot you are.
The graph is pretty bad - it’s just a wavey line showing history with no context of time. Is it the past 24 hours? The past week? There also isn’t any “level” indication, I look at the humidilty chart and I see a downward line but is that ok? Clearly the humidity level is dropping but by how much? At what point should I intervene?
Air quality? I have no idea how to measure that and if it were red, no idea how to fix it. Getting more info just says it should be “clean”. Thank god mine is clean b/c otherwise I would be screwed!
Usage
At first I was wow’d by it. It knows when I’m in bed - how does it know that?! It seemed accurate - the app told me I was sleeping alright and that felt right.
A few weeks of use and the cracks are showing.
One night when Carl was sick and went to bed early. Typically I go to bed before him so I am the one who gets in bed and turns off the light and Carl is the one who stays awake using his phone in the dark. IDK if light is part of the magic of knowing when you “went to sleep” but on this night the sleep detection was SUPER off. It seemed to nail when I got into bed (which I still don’t know how it knows), but it claimed I went to sleep “right away” like within an hour. I know for a fact that isn’t true because I had the worst night of sleep I’ve had in a long time. I was fully 100% awake and browsing my phone for hours. But I wasn’t moving a whole lot b/c I was reading and trying to not be annoying to Carl. Alexander also had a bad night so I was in and out of bed for hours. In the AM I was interested to see what the sensor had to say about things and was shocked to see a number in the 80’s. It was telling me I had slept no worse than an average night. It’s kind of insulting to be invalidated by a machine. I want the sensor to confirm “yes you feel like shit because you slept like shit. here is the proof.”
I noticed twice (two days in a row) that the alarm didn’t go off. The alarm works so that when you start moving around (exiting sleep) the alarm goes off. So you set it for say 630am and it can go off anywhere between 6 - 630am. One would assume that even if I were dead asleep at 631am it would still go off to wake me because I still need to get up. I’m not one to sleep through an alarm nor am I one to shut it off in my sleep. I would say 99% of the time, when I hit snooze or shut off the alarm I am fully aware I am doing so and cognizantly choose to stay in bed. So it’s possible that I could have shut it off first day (though highly unlikely), but the second day in a row seems really, really unlikely. So is it a bug? NO! It’s a feature - if you’re dead asleep during the window we’ll just let you keep on sleeping; you’re clearly tired. You’re welcome!
In addition to knowing when you get into bed, it knows when you exit. But I’ve started noticing that this isn’t super accurate. For example, this AM the sensor claims I got out of bed at 730 AM which I know for a fact is not true. I was downstairs, dressed, and feeding Alexander (who was also changed and dressed) at 730. So unless I can freeze time, which would be amazing, IDK how that would even be possible.
I’m still breastfeeding (in bed in the AM) and this is throwing the sensor off too. It thinks I’m still dozing when in fact I’m awake, reading my phone, and feeding the babe. Perhaps their test base was comprised of those who leap out of bed in the morning?
All these things are leading the sensor to think I’m getting more sleep than I am and that I’m incredibly slow to get out of bed (I read as lazy) which leads to their advice…
Advice
The app told me that the time I wake up is inconsistent and that I would be a better person (my words) if I would only just fix that - someone should relay this info to my son. It even told me that 52% of other people do better than me.
The app also told me that I move 16% less than the average Sense using person (agitated sleep). I may not be a consistent waker but I’ve nailed being still while sleeping.
Other than those helpful little tidbits I haven’t really gotten anything of use from the advice.
There was a bit about how other stuff can affect your quality of sleep and that does interest me. If only my fitbit could talk to it! How does exercise make me sleep better (being tired) or worse (too close to bedtime). How does computer use affect the time I go to bed? What about the sunset? If I drink less water in the day am I more restless at night? If I decreased my Nest by two degrees at night would I not only save money but sleep better?
Info The charts are a little lacking and I can’t seem to find historical sleep information. The only thing saved is your sleep number (which I’m not fully sure how it’s calculated). It seems like only 2 weeks of that number are shown so you couldn’t do any seasonal or monthly type comparisons. It would be nice if you could tie notes to particularly good or bad nights. For example, Wed appears to be bad, but I don’t remember why. Was it because I went to bed too late? Didn’t sleep well? Alexander was up several times?
It seems like you would need a bit more information to be able to make a change and see its impact on your sleep over a longer period of time.