Hi! How did you sleep last night? Did you
use the lateral position?
Today we will talk about one of our new
product’s unique designs: automatic magnetic switch.
As we discussed in recent posts, the product is composed of the PU sphere and electronic component, which will vibrate to notify users when they are on supine positions.
So how to turn this device on and off?
Our solution is the automatic magnetic switch. When the two parts of the sphere attach through magnetic force, the imbedded chip will be activated.
Meanwhile, the gyroscope starts to work to detect position movements.
The algorithm learns whether you are heading to sleep or remove the device as you wake up. The device will accordingly start to work or remain the sleep status.
Just like Go2sleep, this device does not
have a physical switch either and that’s because SLEEPON aims at bringing the
best user experience to our customers. You don’t even need to bother switching
it on and off.
We want to share with you that the hardware part of our new product Go2silence is almost done!
Go2silence is composed of electronic components and the PU sphere, which are connected through a strong magnetic force.
Before you sleep, put the part with sensor on your back inside pajama and place the other half outside. The two parts will match and “stick-on” your clothes.
The unique material and craft will not cause the cold feelings that other metal surfaces may bring. The elastic sphere will provide you a comfortable user experience without waking you up abruptly.
Here are some of the product details:
Weight: 57 grams /0.13 pounds
Diameter: 6 cm/2.4 inches
Charge method: Type-C charger (130mah). Charge one time to use for one week.
We will start to prepare some prototypes for clinical trials. And if you have any idea or feedback, feel free to leave a message at diane@sleepon.us. We appreciate the feedback received recently regarding product size, design, and other new R&D directions.
Our R&D process of the anti-snoring product is well on track and we have made some significant progress.
As shown in the design manuscripts below, the hardware is composed of two parts. One is a soft sphere made of polyurethane foam aims to prevent supine positions. The other part is made of the battery and a circuit board wrapped by aluminum to monitor sleep positions and vibrate when the user is on supine position. The sphere will be placed outside of the clothes and the electronic part placed inside when used. The two components will be attached through magnets.
The current sample is the 7th generation after adjusting the look, hardness, weight, surface, magnetic force, and many other factors.
We picked 6 testers who are healthy and have no snoring symptoms to let them test the sample at night:
1. Detachment test
Five out of the six testers reported that the sample did not detach from the t-shirt and one tester tried to move vigorously just to see under what cases will it fall. Based on this result, the sample would not detach from the clothes easily and we will further verify that in the future.
2. Comfortability test
Three testers said that the weight of the ball created an uncomfortable feeling. Two reported that if feels cold when the body touches the aluminum surface. And one said that since he normally lies flat, he feels uncomfortable if forced to use lateral position. Our engineers have started to make some adjustments based on the above feedback.
We also found that as most of the testers sleep on a soft mattress, when lying flat, the feeling of having a ball underneath would not be that uncomfortable, but it would be different if the bed is harder. We also detected some issues regarding details such as the gap was a little large or the logo effect was not perfect. We will tackle these later and the current sample has given us much confidence for future improvements.
Next, we will focus on all the details of the hardware, firmware, software, and app animation to create an optimal user experience.
Thank you for following us and more development stories on the way!
Hi everyone, how did you sleep last night? We have finished the app design of the new anti-snoring device. Let’s take a look!
1. Add New Device
Users can add SLEEPON devices in the app.
Go2sleep users can now add the second device as shown.
Since the two products have data overlap (e.g. anti-snoring ball can also measure sleep duration, … etc. using iOS Health function), you can adjust the data source priority by sorting devices as shown in the graph.
2. Device Setting
Here are more settings for the anti-snoring ball.
As this product is designed to prevent supine positions, you can turn on the vibration alert that will notify you to change sleep positions.
You can also set the sensitivity of the device. Higher sensitivity will make the device notify you at positions close to the supine position.
3. Real-time Views
Go2sleep users can see the sleep position label after the real-time label.
You can see detailed info after clicking the position label. After click on the sleep position label, you can check your real-time sleep positions
4. Sleep Report
We offer three report views, which are playback, label, and detailed chart views.
Hi everyone! How did you sleep last night? In the past ten days, we were trying to solve another main problem——how to incorporate data of this new SLEEPON product into the sleep report?
Our current sleep report shows detailed stats collected by the Go2sleep ring. As shown in the pictures below, there are different sleep labels in the app categorizing various sleep information.
But for our users who only buy the anti-snoring device, what kind of report will they get? Only see whether they snored or not? Definitely no. We want our users to learn more about their sleep condition even though they have not purchased the Go2sleep ring.
Our solution is to first establish another data source and then rank data accordingly.
For example, the health function of the iPhone and Android systems can also collect data about sleep duration and sleep cycle. It is not as accurate as the ones detected by Go2sleep rings but can provide users some reference. The SLEEPON app will thus import and add the data into the sleep report. If users use both the anti-snoring device and Go2sleep, the system will prioritize and only show data from Go2sleep in the report.
Our engineers are working on the new app version which will be available soon!
Hi everyone! If you read our last post, did
you use a lateral sleeping position? We hope so!
Our development of the anti-snoring device
has achieved quite solid progress. But in the beginning, we had two different
opinions about the development direction. The first idea is to create a digital
device with the ability to present sleep position data but also high costs. The
second view is to produce a low-cost non-digital product purely based on
Positional Therapy. We finally chose the first plan as we believe sleep
position data can help users better understand their sleep conditions.
Just the next day, our product engineer had a stunning idea! He planned to use 3D animation to create sleep position simulation. Users can watch their position changes in the app the next day after wake up. The whole team thought the idea was brilliant and if realized, this device will probably be the only product (except using cameras) with the function of sleep position playback.
We have three product teams.
Team 1 takes charge of industrial design,
CMF (color, material & finish), and mechanical design.
Team 2 is responsible for the development of PCBA (Printed Circuit Board Assembly) and embedded software & algorithm.
Team 3 works on the app page and backend.
Thus, the task of building sleep position playback function was given to team 2 and 3. Team 2’s goal is to accurately collect every position data using gyroscope sensors. We welded a three-axis gyroscope to the PCBA and input battery to make it a simple motion tracker.
Placing the simple device on the tester’s back, our engineers then read collected data the next day and examined ways to improve. After weeks of testing, we were able to separate sleep position data accurately.
Team 3 works on animation modeling and this position simulation is quite challenging for our front-end engineers. Issues include how to create the animation and how to match animation with sensor data of every minute. Thanks to their learning abilities, they finally found solutions and kept refining the animation as shown in the graph.
There is still a long way to go for the
final version of this anti-snoring device with the function of sleep position
simulation. Follow us for future news and development stories!
Last time we discussed how sleep experts proved the effectiveness of Positional Therapy. We can see many people DIY their PT items and most of them sew a tennis ball on the back of a T-shirt.
If lying on the back, people will get uncomfortable due to the tennis ball and thus change to a lateral sleeping position. We made some of those as well and called them “anti-snoring pajamas”.
But this is still far from a real product and we recognized two key points to be worked on:
1. Weight.
New users of the “anti-snoring pajama” may not be used to the feeling of having something pulling the clothes during sleep. They may get used to the weight of the tennis ball later, but we want to find out what is the best weight of the PT product.
2. Hardness.
If the ball attached on the back is too hard, users will get uncomfortable. Whereas if it is too soft, there will be no anti-snoring effect. Thus, we need to figure out what is the best hardness.
We first tried the cork material to test the anti-snoring effectiveness. Even though the cork ball is 15g lighter than the tennis ball and reduces discomfort, it has relatively higher hardness and we had to look for other choices.
We then tried other materials with different hardness and weight. We also visited an engineering library with hundreds of different materials.
After months of trials, we finally chose the polymer composite foam (polyurethane foam), which is a lightweight foam material with adjustable hardness (shown in figure). It is also suitable for the molding process of production.
As we find one answer, we still need to address many other questions during the R&D process. Should we keep using the shape of a sphere? What else can we do to improve sleep and snoring? How to quantify and visualize the improvement of snoring? These questions will be answered one by one in future posts. Follow us to join the journey!
Hi, how did you sleep? Did you sleep on your side? If you face snoring or OSA (Obstructive Sleep Apnea) issues, regardless of the severity, we recommend you using a lateral sleeping position based on our research.
In 2008, Professor Jennifer Walsh, Ph.D. and her team conducted an experiment with 11 OSA patients and 11 healthy volunteers (with similar age and BMI). Everyone’s AHI (Apnea-Hypopnea Index) in supine or lateral positions are shown in table 1. It turned out that all test subjects’ AHI lowered significantly after changing positions from supine to lateral.
To discover the reason, they analyzed the OCT (Optical Coherence Tomography) images of the velopharynx and oropharynx in the supine and lateral postures. When awake subjects changed to the lateral position, their airway OCTs had a more circular shape, which can resist airway obstruction more effectively (shown in Figure 1).
In 2002, the team of Shiroh Isono, M.D. also did similar tests. The subjects were initially premedicated with 0.5 mg atropine to mimic sleep status. As shown in Figures 2 and 3, the data supported that lateral position decreases the collapsibility of the passive pharynx in patients with obstructive sleep apnea.
Based on the above findings, we will keep working on new products to improve our users’ snoring concerns. Sleep Medicine is still a relatively new area waiting to be explored. Since relevant researches began in the 1950s, there are still distances between research papers and consumer awareness. And we hope to bring those expert findings to a lovely digital product at your home.
I am Ken, the product manager. My team and I have been involved in the R&D process of SLEEPON products, such as Go2Sleep intelligent ring and SLEEPON App.
It has been 2 years since Go2Sleep entered the market. Based on a 2020 SLEEPON user survey, 76.7% of our users surveyed have snoring concerns, among which 31.4% of them use CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) machines. We find that there is an urgent need for an anti-snoring product or method.
Starting from 2017, we began to research on potential anti-snoring products such as pillows, mouthpieces, nasal dilators, etc. From a 2008 paper Effect of Body Posture on Pharyngeal Shape and Size in Adults With and Without Obstructive Sleep Apnea by Professor Jen Walsh, we learned about Positional Therapy that improves snoring by changing sleeping positions. Professor Walsh tested the effectiveness of this therapy through clinical trials and this method was also backed by many other research papers. That’s why some people DIY a pajama with a tennis ball on the back to manage their sleeping positions.
But only one tennis ball cannot meet our pursuit of creating intelligent SLEEPON products. We hope to create an anti-snoring tool with the ability to record sleeping positions and analyze sleep quality based on Positional Therapy. Everyone can use it at home daily, track sleep quality in the long run, and view treatment results through data. It will be a unique digital anti-snoring product with the function to track, analyze, and provide feedback regarding our users’ sleep quality.
The product development process will be filled with surprise and disappointment. We are not afraid of failure and would like to share our design journey with every one of you.
Throughout the anti-snoring device campaign/project, we will post our R&D findings on social media which allows you to learn more about us. Follow us for more information and also provide us any suggestions at service@sleepon.us!
All we hope is to bring a better dream for you tonight.
