The Christmas gift for a sleepy friend you’re after, you might want to check out the Zeo Personal Sleep Coach, an alarm clock that records electrical signals from your brain with a headband. In the morning it returns a chart of how much time you spent in light, deep and REM sleep, as well as a personal sleep score (which they call your ZQ). It can also make waking up easier to wake you if you ask it to, by choosing a lighter sleep moment to rouse you.

Techology investor Esther Dyson gave the Zeo a mixed review at the meetup. For example, the headband has little pads that wear out quickly, and must be replaced. But the biggest problems are on the software side: Zeo does not allow more than one user to share the device, and makes it hard to extract the raw data. Despite those flaws, Dyson said she plans on experimenting with it some more.

If you want an even better picture of your sleep, you can follow the example of San Francisco resident, Matt Bell. After years of feeling drowsy all day and not knowing whay, he set up a bedside camcorder with an infrared illuminator in search of an answer. The footage was revealing.

“The biggest thing that surprised me was seeing how much I moved around while sleeping,” Bell said at the meetup. “It was fascinating to glimpse at the workings of this hidden unconscious world that occupies close to a third of our lives.”
You can wear the light-weight headband and it will wirelessly transmit your sleep patterns real-time to the bedside display – in the comfort of your own bed. Bedside Display The bedside display with alarm feature allows you to view up to 7 nights of your sleep data at your bedside, tracking the quality and quantity of each night’s sleep. Plus  use the SmartWakeTM alarm feature to wake up at what could be an optimal time in your sleep. Accessories Along with the headband and bedside display, you’ll receive an SD card & SD card reader

Zeo Sleep Monitor Review

I am 57 year old man with severe, complex sleep apnea. I sleep with a Cpap machine. I have found the ZEO to be an excellent tool to help me monitor and understand my sleep. A small head strap monitoring device reads my sleep patterns through the night. The ZEO base station documents the information. When I wake up I place the headband device in a cradle in the ZEO base and in a few seconds the data is transferred. I then remove the data thumb drive from the base station and plug it into my computer to upload the data and review my sleep profile from the night before. I can see how long it took me to get to sleep and a breakdown of time spent in light sleep, deep sleep, REM sleep and any awakenings throughout the night. I can also view my prior sleep profiles. After accumulating a week or two of sleep profiles I get personal feedback and coaching from a ZEO staff member.