WakeMate to begin shipping in march
blog.tdm911.comI recently bought the sleep cycle alarm app for my iPhone for $2 bucks. Works like a charm for what it advertises.
THus I wonder what differentiates WakeMate from Sleep Cycle?
I've also been using Sleep Cycle since the first WakeMate delay and I've been thinking about this in some detail. Here are the conclusions I've come to:
* WakeMate seems to be primarily competing on price (!) against FitBit and Zeo. The problem is, Sleep Cycle way undercuts them.
* I would be willing to pay for dedicated hardware that would free up my iPhone for music listening before bed(like Zeo or FitBit). Unfortunately, WakeMate doesn't help in this regard.
* There are times that I think Sleep Cycle is inaccurate, but I think it's "good enough" in a lot of sleep circumstances. Dedicated hardware should improve over a bed accelerometer a bit, but I don't think the additional accuracy alone is worth $48
* I'm hoping WakeMate's statistics and analysis meet or exceed the Zeo, but to be honest Sleep Cycle's stats are "good enough" for a variety of circumstances.
I really do think they're in trouble, quite independent of the shipping delays. Unless they can come up with some novel feature that nobody else can emulate, I can't really see how they can improve enough on Sleep Cycle to capture enough of the market. I think their best bet is almost to avoid the iPhone now.
I'm not sure how much the wakemate improves on the iphone's accelerometer, but even if it's only a little bit, surely it's worth $48? I make $48 in 3 hours. I have to wake up every day for the rest of my life.
I don't know. Sleep Cycle works well about 94% of the time for me. With an improved wake algorithm, I think you could pull it up to at least 98% of the time in pure software, or at least that's what I got for my sleeping patterns playing around with the data in Mathematica.
Is improving 2% of your wakeups worth $48? Your wakeups would have a "valuation" of $2400 by that logic. Which, I dunno, maybe it should, but it seems a little high.
If drowsiness affects your productivity, then all of your wakeups over the lifetime of the device are probably worth $2400. Of course, it's best to leave judgement until we know whether WakeMate is better, and if so then by how much.
for me, the biggest hurdle to sleep cycle is that it needs to be physically on my bed whilst i sleep, whereas WakeMate is a wrist band.
i used sleep cycle for a while, however the phone would fall off my bed or i had to place it under my pillow (which is not recommended because of heat). plus, i don't really like having the phone that close to me whilst sleeping.
i look forward to WakeMate, i think it will be a more complete solution.
Sleepcycle: I just placed the Phone under the topsheet, where it doesn't move.
Wakemate: Doesn't the phone have to be close to you to hear the alarm? Or does the wristband have a speaker in it?
i tried under the sheet, it annoyed me and was inconvenient. personal preference though.
my phone sits on my bedside table, next to my bed. easily close enough for the wakemate connection.
I wouldn't have thought to look for something like this! I found out there's an Android app that tries to do the same thing called 'Gentle Alarm'.
I'm disappointed they haven't corrected "works on all phones" on the front page. Still not true.
Maybe off topic, but I just did the pre-order and Google Checkout is one of the worst checkout experiences I had in the last few years. The translations look like they came from babelfish, no integration with WakeMate itself, ugly - you would think that a company with as many smart people as Google would figure out that this is not a good way to end your sales funnel.
Damn. I literally had an idea to build such a device last night, looks like somebody beat me to the punch :p