I have been reading about the PineTime and it seems like a neat product. However, one feature that would really make me want to grab one is some kind of sleep tracking. From what I’ve seen, this feature is not implemented on the PineTime.
What is the likelihood that this feature might be implemented down the road? What other features would need to be in place before this could be possible?
We've only got movement (accelerometer) and heart rate, neither of which are particularly good indicators of sleep state from what I've read. The heart rate is rather inaccurate at the moment too, by more than enough to throw off sleep state estimates. Some argue that wrist mounted optical sensors are never accurate enough for this use, so on its own a PineTime on its own may never be capable of accurate sleep tracking, and getting misled by inaccurate tracking is worse than no tracking at all.
You could potentially use it in combination with bluetooth sensors such as a chest strap for heart rate and/or breathing rate and depth measurement. I don't think we have any code yet for connecting to such devices, recording or analysis of their results. However it's done, someone will need to be able to record data with both the sensors and a separate known reliable system in order to verify accuracy. I wouldn't like to guess if or when this might happen - we could be lucky and have a sleep researcher wanting an inexpensive and portable device they can customise.
I too am interested in buying a pinetime for this very purpose. I don't mind a low accuracy as I'm mostly interested in how much I move during my sleep.
Also the ability to wake up with a wrist vibration is a plus for me as it would avoid waking up my wife...
I would be willing to support financially any coder interested in helping out as I know only python and shell currently. Btw which language is actually required to code an app on the pinetime?
Is anyone else interested?
Thanks, that's really helpful
That does look more promising - perhaps what I read was outdated, or looking at the measures individually. Good luck - it would be good if you can get it to work well.
Hi there, a new user of PineTime here.
As a many years user of Sleep As Android app, I can say that an accelerometer and a good algorithm is more than enough to have a sleep tracking.
As for optical pulse sensing, the same applies too, for example, my wife got some Garmin watch that do great in matter.
Problem with Sleep As Android is that there are hundreds of phone models, each with different hardware/software combination. So, I have poor performance with a Redmi phone.
That way, single platform with a certain hardware (i.e. PineTime) is ideal for finetuning.
Sleep As Android is capable to integrate various smart watches to get data, so I'm intended to do a little research here. It is always nice to have smartphone power to do math, while some wearable is providing data.