My family has issues with sleep. My husband is a light sleeper, and often has bad nights of sleep. Add to that the fact that he works different shifts, including two 11pm-7am shifts per month, and you’ve got a recipe for poor sleep. I, on the other hand, am a pretty good sleeper. I would prefer to stay up late over waking early (if I wake early, I will stay in bed and read my Kindle until my alarm goes off, not drag myself out from under the covers to exercise, write, or accomplish anything other than driving my kids to school or making it to the airport for an early flight). And then there are the kids. Insufficient sleep is known to lead to sluggish performance in early morning soccer games, and, more importantly, makes it more likely that they’ll get into argument after argument with their brothers and drive us crazy in the process.
Enter the SevenHugs HugOne Sleep Monitor. This product, I hoped, would cure all that ails our sleep. When used to its fullest capacity, it should be able to figure out what is wrong, offer tips on how to improve, and hopefully lead to a better-rested, happier family. Right? Well, as GI Joe would say, “…knowing is half the battle.”
The box includes a cube (the main unit), two miniHugs, adapters, and instructions.
Set up is simple. You install an app on your phone and follow directions. The whole process takes maybe ten minutes to complete. The recommendation is to set up the cube in the family room, so that the light doesn’t bother you by staying on when you’d like to sleep. It probably would have done us well to listen to that. But it didn’t stay on super-long anyhow.
In the app, you set up each user (one for each family member whose sleep you wish to track). Track age, weight, and a target bed time.
The base unit gets set up, then each miniHug gets linked to a user. This too is a quick process. The steps even instruct you on where to place the miniHug (unobtrusively by the head, under the fitted sheet, in the corner). And then you’re off.
There’s really nothing for you to do. Just sleep as you normally do. The miniHug collects data while you sleep. Then, after you’re awake, it transmits the data to the base unit, and you can check the app for the results.
The product comes with two miniHugs. You can purchase additional miniHugs if you want to monitor the sleep of more individuals. However, switching users is also rather simple. I was able to swap back and forth a few times between myself and my 10yo.
There’s plenty of data. First off, clicking the House icon shows you data about the Indoor Air Quality, MiniHug temperature, and MiniHug humidity. Rotate the screen to landscape, and you can see historic data in a nifty graph.
Click on one of the people icons to view the sleep data. I’m not sure how it collects its data to determine all this, but it can tell you how you sleep. Dark blue is for deep sleep, light blue for light sleep, and pink for awake.
Also, I tested this over summer vacation, when my kids love sleepovers (if no friend is available, then with their brothers). So in order to tell whether they sleep as well in a sleeping bag on the attic or basement floor as in their bedroom, I would set the monitor on the ground next to the 10yo’s pillow. As you can tell, while it did lead to a lower sleep number, and a later bedtime, the amount of deep sleep wasn’t much affected. Or maybe it did. I didn’t remember to note down which days he had sleepovers and which he didn’t (but I’m fairly certain I can tell the difference).
This doesn’t even really count as bad, more of things to be aware of:
I love data. I love collecting data, and processing data, and querying data. So this was fun. However…
You know that GI Joe quote I mentioned earlier? Well, my husband likes to point out that knowing is only half the battle. And despite his affinity for the quote, we are a family rather set in our ways, and all the knowledge in the world means nothing if you’re not willing to follow through on implementation. This is true in medicine (you can’t blame the doctor for your failure to get better if you don’t follow your discharge instructions), and it’s sadly true here. My family was willing to gather sleep data, but I can’t speak for outcomes, since that’s as far as the evaluation went.
Perhaps one day, armed with this data and some screen shots of the expert advice and numerous sleep tips offered by the SevenHugs HugOne app, my family will sleep better.
But the product, it works. And if you’re willing, I have no doubt that it can help you sleep well at night.
This post was last modified on December 8, 2017 11:31 pm
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