Have they shipped replacement power adapters yet? They emailed me to tell me not to use mine because it might catch on fire, but I haven't gotten a replacement or heard any news about that. Anyone know the status on those?
We are still working on a solution for the replacement chargers, but unfortunately it is a lengthy process. Don't worry we didn't forget about it and will be in touch once we have a solution!
I just got my Wakemate a few days ago, and it came with a standard USB cable. It's a bit annoying that it's a USB Mini instead of USB micro (which is what all the recent smartphones I know of use), but at least it's not some weird connector.
What I really appreciate is they've gone and found a reshipping service, obtained a special deal and are using them to allow them to really ship internationally, not just to three continents.
That's an excellent example of trying to help people buy your product.
Glad to hear you're on board, Dylan. We (OPAS) are excited to be working with WakeMate and are looking forward to getting this product to a wider audience.
Hi, this is Reid at OPAS, the forwarding service WakeMate is working with. Just to clarify, we offer two membership plans: the "Package & Mail" plan requires the $15 monthly fee you're referring to, but our "Package Only" plan does not require any monthly fee. So if you don't need to receive mail documents, you can sign up for the Package Only membership and save an additional $15. Hope this helps!
Thanks for the clarification, I mis-understood the pricing table. The total would then be ~$50USD, still a unpleasant price (NB. I don't think the price is unreasonable for the service, just something "hidden" in the blog post: If it was closer to $20USD, it would be less of a shock.)
What?? That's absolutely ridiculous.The order form made no mention of this. I'm going to cancel my order now. I've looked past the hardware faults and other issues but not being upfront on the overall price is just disrespectful.
I tested the WakeMate for a few days and I have the following comments:
* The software (iPhone) was not really very well thought out/polished. I don't want to scroll and select the time to the minute which I'm about to wake up if the wake up interval is 20 minutes.
* Signup for account via app redirects to web page which is not optimized for iPhone browser/smalls screen.
* Battery life is awful - max couple of nights, but its kinda cool, that it charges from the same USB charger than iPhone.
Overall the feeling is that they rushed to complete the software while trying to look cool and colorful, but forgot about the usability or didn't pay enough attention to it.
I have no opinion (yet) about the product concept/usefulness since I have only been using it for couple of days, one of which I wasn't able to get much sleep due to external factors.
I'm still intrigued by the WakeMade concept. The last HN thread I remember had all sorts of good unanswered questions.. one I remember being: do these bands help you feel more refreshed all day or is it just an initial thing?
Has anyone found more information about how well these work?
I'm fairly disappointed. When it works, the data is really interesting. I'm on my second unit, and they've both been really really flaky, mostly battery issues as far as I can tell. Annoying to use (constantly have to find a little tiny switch and turn it of and back on again).
I guess for a $49 sleep monitor what do I expect? My sense, having had a taste for what it could do, is that I'd rather pay a bit more if it meant more reliability. It's frustrating when your data collection is thrown off by a lost night, or when the alarm doesn't go off at the right time because it lost its connection.
Just having the data alone for me is worth $60. How you make it actionable is still largely up to you. If you're having negative sleep patterns, Wakemate will likely help you identify when they are happening or possibly the cause (ie tracking workouts). But Wakemate won't make you go to bed earlier, thats up to the user.
So it might be difficult to find empirical data on whether it improves your daily energy.
I've had a similar issue with my own product that tracks health data.
I've had a sleep cycle alarm clock for a couple of years now (they've been available long before this WakeMate thing, and mine also collects sleep data, altough I guess the WakeMate interface is much nicer) and although it kinda works, don't expect to wake up refreshed if you're shortchanging yourself on sleep. If you're only getting 5 hours of sleep a night you're going to wake up tired no matter what.
Since most of the time I don't really have to get up at a specific time, I usually let myself be woken up by the sunlight, which is the most consistently effective way of waking up refreshed that I've found.
WakeMate sounds really cool but I don't sleep alone. It's all about waking you at the perfect time isn't it. That means I get woken up all refreshed and my partner is going to be cranky? Not designed for couples?
Well, if you use any alarm clocks isn't that the case already?
I've been using my wakemate for a few weeks now in a shared bed, but my girlfriend wakes up several hours earlier than me. Since I'm able to ignore her alarm I've never had an issue.
I imagine that since the wakemate wakes up fairly gently (most of the alarm sounds it comes with are pretty calm) and since it tries to wake you up during your lightest sleep, your partner is likely not in their lightest. At worst they could rise to near-awake until you shut off your alarm.
Even if you could have two wakemates syncing together finding a shared near-awake state to wake you both up might be statistically difficult :)
It's actually a little weird. When you wake up with a normal alarm clock there's usually a sharp delineation between asleep and awake. With the WakeMate since it gets you during near-awakeness you feel as though you've already been waking up for several minutes when your phone suddenly stated chiming.
It's not like in sleeping pill commercials where the woman wakes up and gives a happy stretch, instead it's just that your brain is already booted up, there's isn't a wait time for it to start functioning.
If you didn't have enough hours of sleep it won't magically make you fully refreshed. However, we can often survive on less hours of sleep than we think if only we wake up at the right time. And I know that for me if I wake up at the wrong moment it can ruin my day (I remain tired all day even if I've had adequate hours)--this is something WakeMate definitely seems to help with.
Edit: I've found it to be a tad overly tight but I'm a pretty big guy. After a couple of uncomfortable nights I inverted the band which helped a lot and now it's just fine. The device is attached to a pocket on the "inside" of the band, when you invert it the pocket is now on the outside of the band, and the device itself no longer constricts the circumference. It's still just as tightly couples to my arm movements though so I don't believe accuracy has been affected.
Another thing to keep in mind is Wakemate works by measuring movement during your sleep.
I've noticed that if I'm asleep with my Wakemate running and my girlfriend is working on her laptop in bed or gets up to fix a drink the movement created can show up on the Wakemate and affect my score.
It's ok for couples but definitely the ideal situation is people sleeping on their own, I think.
I don't know how many of the countries this reshipping service actually covers, but they don't ship to Russia, possibly to the whole ex-USSR. ("We currently do not ship to the country you chose" for Russian Federation, "No rate was found. Please contact our customer service." for Belarus and Ukraine)
I think one could use a better reshipping service: if you outsource reshipping anyway (and make your customers sign up for a separate, paid service at that), why not cover all countries as well?
Hi. We used to ship to Russia, but we've recently had to cancel service there because the country's customs authorities no longer accept personal import shipments. We apologize for the interruption and we're currently trying to find a solution to help you and other members access products like WakeMate.
Since I ordered I have moved to a country that they don't ship to. It's nice that they have a forwarding service but I wish they had told me about it before I sent mine to a friend instead.
