Max here, CTO and Co-Founder of Eight Sleep. We used 2.5M nights of sleep data to build this automated Sleep Coach feature. I'll be here all day to answer any questions from the community.
HN user
maghis
I'm the CTO of Eight
[ my public key: https://keybase.io/maghis; my proof: https://keybase.io/maghis/sigs/s_f-2HAMwWNgVmPc7F-jf9q1yFYDRsGl-FyE2kkGumo ]
Thanks for the kind words Simone, when you put so much effort on something, this type of support is everything you need to keep going :)
So unsurprising... https://medium.com/@maghis/the-hub-of-the-smart-home-bfa504d...
This product is awesome, one of the biggest issues I have with docker is the low visibility inside containers.
Totally, but I don't think it's going to be a physical device.
I don't believe NEST or any other device will ever be the "hub", that is my opinion, open to discuss about it.
Just started a technical AMA: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2u3q93/iama_cto_of_a_s...
No plans to make it non wi-fi. The antenna is inside the main enclosure, together with ambient sensors and power supply, outside of the bed.
We never record the audio from the mic, we are only capable of detecting loud sounds or a sustained vibration (snoring).
Audio is never recorded by Luna.
We have a microphone in the main enclosure but we don't have an audio codec which means we cannot record the audio. The only thing we can tell is whether there's been a loud noise or some sustained vibration at a specific frequency (snoring).
With the bed sensors we definitely pick up the movements of an intercourse but that is something you can only see by looking at raw data. Before sending them to the cloud, all the information about your movements get aggregated in sleep phases, this means that "sex" becomes "you are awake in bed".
A 3rd party app connected via wi-fi to the device can ask the user permission to access raw data from the device (much like facebook apps can ask for different permissions).
Yes, there a checkbox that enables the vibration when the alarm goes off. I am not aware of a wi-fi enabled vibration alarm, that would be an awesome product.
There are a few videos around showing demos we gave with pre-production prototypes (http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/27/luna-smart-mattress-cover/) unfortunately, given the type of product, it's a little hard to show on video but if you are based in SF you could swing by our office for a private demo (bring your pajamas:)).
The alarm is part of the mobile app and it works in a similar way to the stock alarm clock app only informed by your current sleep phase.
Here's the difference.
Say you set your alarm for 7 am. The app starts looking at the sleep phase you are in from 6:30 am (this is configurable), if you enter a light sleep phase (N1) at 6:45, the alarm goes off and wake up without feeling groggy. If you don't enter a light sleep phase, the alarm goes off regardless at 7 am so you don't miss meetings and such.
Nope, it's all filtered and processed locally.
That's why we are NOT a mattress company.
Look at my background, I happen to have been working in big data for the past 10 years. My last job was to run the data platform team of Upsight (former kontagent) the largest analytics and marketing platform for mobile.
Talking about the rest of the team: their background is much better than mine.
We are also being helped by our scientific board:
- Jessa Gamble https://www.ted.com/speakers/jessa_gamble
- Clete Kushida https://med.stanford.edu/profiles/clete-kushida
- David Rapoport http://www.med.nyu.edu/biosketch/rapopd01/
That is something you can see by looking at raw data, before having them aggregated in sleep stages.
Raw data never get uploaded to the server but a 3rd party app using the device API can get access to them asking permissions to the user.
(you thought you were the only one to have that idea right? :))
Body temperature is really hard to tell in an accurate way, even if we have some temperature sensor very close to your body: the sensor would be influenced a lot by the type of mattress.
The interesting one for circadian cycles is the "Core Temperature" but it's rather uncomfortable to measure (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_body_temperature#Core_tem...), what we can do instead is measuring your heart rate at rest that is something typically constant for a healthy person: if that varies from the usual value more than about 5bpm it usually means you have been exercising A LOT or that you are sick.
Haha, hopefully by you! We are giving security a very high priority and we hope the community will try as much as possible to break it to send us feedback and suggestions.
There are many reasons why we picked Polyester, the number one being that our product needs to be washable.
If you look at the tech specs section on http://lunasleep.com you'll notice from the drawings that a mattress pad is composed of multiple layers, if we use natural fibers for all the layers, say for the filling (batting), the product would never dry and could grow mold (that's why ALL the heating pads on the market and most mattress pads are made of polyester).
One thing we could do is think about a premium version with the top layer (and maybe the bottom layer?) made of 100% cotton. Such a product would cost a little more (about $30) and take a little longer to dry completely after washing.
Would you guys be interested in such a premium product?
EDIT: formatting
One of our first design goals was to build a product that would disappear in the bedroom and that did not require any active input from the user (you never HAVE to pull out your phone to use it). The mattress cover form factor served our goal so well that we realized it was hard to show a product designed to be invisible. That definitely poses some challenges, we have to show it on top of a mattress and make sure people understand that we are not selling a mattress for example...
Yes, we have another source of funding, from a group of awesome people that supported us believing in the project since the beginning. (you can find some of them in the comments)
Any 3rd party app can do everything our app can do, the APIs we use internally are the ones that will be publicly available.
That perk means a really early access to the API and the opportunity to contribute to the design (we should probably explain it better).
Yes, I'm the CTO of the company.
The product will have an open (and well documented) REST API from the day we ship. Our app and website will use the same exact API that 3rd party developers will use. Apps will have to levels of data access permission: sleep patterns only and raw data (they will have to ask access to the user).
We are taking a lot from OSS and we want to give back and contribute to the community, we will start soon opensourcing part of our stack.
As far as the hardware goes, we are doing our best to make it a pleasure to hack, it's in our interest:)
4 engineers actually:)
Improving the sleep of people by making their kids sleep, next product maybe?
Thermostats:
- lower the house temp when everyone is in bed (save energy + better sleep environment)
- detect whether you are likely to come home tonight or not to avoid warming up your bed if you are traveling
- letting the thermostat know what's the temp/humidity in your bedroom when you are in bed
Smart locks: you get in bed and, if you left the door unlocked, you get a push notification that says: "Your door is unlocked, do you want to lock it?"
These are core use cases now, we will definitely expand the list, there are a lot of things that need to happen in a smart home when you get in bed or fall asleep or when you wake up.
EDIT: fixed formatting
Of course! We are already integrated with some smart lights (Philips Hue and emberlight), we plan to integrate with more. We are also integrated with IFTTT for the devices we are missing.
It should be fine, we managed to fit it to a lot of mattresses. If you post the full height I can check.