The YC 09 startup WakeMate (http://wakemate.com/) took this much further: (Edit - Took down my run-on sentence describing them, here's their pitch)
The WakeMate is a comfortable wristband that you wear when you sleep. It measures subtle body movements—a scientifically proven method (Actigraphy) to map dips and peaks in your sleep cycle. The wristband communicates directly with your mobile phone to calculate the ideal wake time closest to your alarm setting. When you wake up, your night's sleep data is automatically uploaded to Wakelytics™, our online analytics platform.
Their blog (http://blog.wakemate.com/) and live support seem to be down at the moment. Anyone know how they're doing?
I do not know if wakemate made any improvements lately but after giving it a try several times after I got it, I gave up. It sits in a box alongside old power adapters and other cables.
The main problem for me was when I toss and turn at night, it loses contact with the phone (sitting on the end table) and starts screaming 'Lost contact, lost contact'.
If I continued to use it, my wife would have thrown me out onto the patio to sleep.
There were several other occasions where wakemate never woke me up.
I would have loved to see wakemate work, I wanted to root for a startup, see them succeed. You only get so many chances with a single customer. In my books, they failed badly on their promise. continuously. starting with their delivery of the product and then later with the product itself.
The WakeMate is a comfortable wristband that you wear when you sleep. It measures subtle body movements—a scientifically proven method (Actigraphy) to map dips and peaks in your sleep cycle. The wristband communicates directly with your mobile phone to calculate the ideal wake time closest to your alarm setting. When you wake up, your night's sleep data is automatically uploaded to Wakelytics™, our online analytics platform.
Their blog (http://blog.wakemate.com/) and live support seem to be down at the moment. Anyone know how they're doing?