Awesome Netflix/Fitbit Hack Detects When You’ve Fallen Asleep, Auto-Pauses Movie

http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/27/netflix-fitbit-hack/

by prateekj • 12 years ago

71 26 12 years ago

pradn• 12 years ago

While cool, technically, I've never seen a more first-world-problem hack. :)

Crito• 12 years ago

Netflix itself? What does it solve, the pressing "having to drive to blockbuster" problem? And Netflix streaming solves the "having to wait a few days for a Netflix movie" problem. And Wikipedia solves the "having to go to a library" problem...

The "first world problem" meme is excruciatingly irritating. If it's not starvation, or malaria, chances are it's a "first world problem".

ssully• 12 years ago

While I agree that it can be annoying, pradn was using it in a very lighthearted manner. I think it is grating when people use it to shutdown a discussion don't find worthwhile.

EpicEng2• 12 years ago

Seems trivial because the user has to be wearing a device which monitors your vitals. Well, yeah, probably not too difficult to guess if someone is asleep or not. Do it without forcing me to buy a device to wear and I will be thoroughly impressed.

glimcat• 12 years ago

Well, I could do it with a Kinect if you'd prefer. Or probably with a phone accelerometer - if you actually keep that in your pocket while you're sitting on the couch for an hour! But at some point the data has to come from somewhere.

If you're using a Fitbit anyway, an on-body sensor is going to be more accurate than not, and it's there.

cwe• 12 years ago

My wife and I often watch in bed (bad for the circadian, we know) with an iPad, so the accelerometer would work great.

EpicEng2• 12 years ago

I understand the problem, I'm just saying, when you have a stream of data like this coming in then it's not a difficult thing to do. Nor would I see it ever having any practical application since, well, I doubt people will be hooking up to a fitbit so that netflix can pause their movie when they fall asleep.

Jack000• 12 years ago

I wish there was a way to hack the fitbit at the phone level. They do have a public api, but only for getting exercise/sleep data at 15 min intervals. I think the real exciting applications are sending custom alerts/text/vibrations, but this doesn't seem possible.

Personally I hardly use the fitness features on my fitbit. All I really wanted was a minimalist smart watch - a clock function and call/sms alerts, and something that's low profile on my wrist.

adambom• 12 years ago

Wouldn't want to miss any of that movie that put me to sleep.

akbar501• 12 years ago

This would actually wake me up. I sometimes start a 2 start movie so I can zone out and drift off.

TrainedMonkey• 12 years ago

Falling asleep while watching a movie does not sound like a particularly healthy habit.

navs2• 12 years ago

Yea I guess not. I fall asleep watching videos. To this day it's very difficult for me to fall asleep unless there's some tv show playing in the background be it on an actual tv or a computer monitor.

patrikj• 12 years ago

Falling asleep in an office chair in front of a computer sounds even less healthy

waterlesscloud• 12 years ago

I never let episodes in a series autoplay on netflix, but the other night I did and it paused a few minutes in to make me click to continue.

I assumed this was to protect their bandwidth. They don't want users streaming a whole series while they sleep (or aren't in the room for that matter).

I did wonder if the interruption was based on time of day, since it was late at night.

bcrescimanno• 12 years ago

No, it's contractual. Netflix cannot act as a "broadcast" service due to the way they license content. It means that there is a limit to how many pieces of content they can play without any user interaction (a user-interaction will classify the play as "on-demand" as opposed to "broadcast").

(Yes, I'm a former employee who worked on the auto-play feature).

weaksauce2• 12 years ago

Please tell me there is a way to stop it... I fall asleep and wake up with no idea where I fell asleep watching....

coderdude• 12 years ago

It'd be nice to see a solution to this problem for Hulu. It seems like they accomplish this already by failing to load ads. On my Wii there's a good chance that ads won't load and it forces me to go back to the menu or hit 'retry'. At first it was annoying but now I've come to rely on ads failing so that I don't skip too many episodes after falling asleep. Though you probably can't get me to wear something that monitors my vitals.

hnriot2• 12 years ago

wow - 1st world problems :) It doesn't say much for the things people are watching if they are falling asleep watching them. Maybe a night or two without tv would be a good idea.

alphakappa• 12 years ago

Why is this a first world problem? Netflix (or streaming Internet television) may not be available in every country, but you'd be hard pressed to find a place where people don't have easy access to some form of Television. Is it not interesting that there's a hack that someone might adapt to regular television (and probably save power) some day?

In any case, just because people are doing interesting things that may be relevant only in the first world doesn't make them any less interesting. This is after all, Hacker News, not Solve-Only-Global-Problems News.

hnriot2• 12 years ago

that's not the point - the difficulty of closing the laptop after a hard night of watching netflix is the first world problem. Do you really think anyone but a handful of geeks who watch too much tv care about this "problem"

Awesome Netflix/Fitbit Hack Detects When You’ve Fallen Asleep, Auto-Pauses Movie

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