Wearable Tech Show: Beddit sleep monitor will watch you sleep

Despite our sneering at smart duvet covers that monitor your sleep, it appears that they are actually a thing… and dare we say they’re pretty cool too?

Today at the Wearable Tech Show in London I got a chance to talk to the creators of Beddit – another similar sleep monitoring system.

Unlike Luna, Beddit doesn’t require a full bedsheet – it is just a thin strip of plastic that you put across your bed. The box on the end of it communicates with your phone via bluetooth and from simply monitoring what happens when you lie on top of it, it can figure out whether you’re asleep, what point in sleep cycle you’re in, your heart rate and even how you’re breathing.

From this, you get access to a set of rich analytics data on your naps – with the app offering tips on how to get better rest. Basically you should probably prepare to be nagged about going to bed earlier and not sitting up all night playing videogames.

Brilliantly too, it makes your data relatively portable: for the nerds there’s a full public API offering raw data, and for everyone else it hooks up into Apple’s iOS Health app. (Though not Google Fit yet.)

At the stand, one of the creators told me about the next version of Beddit – which adds support for Apple’s iBeacon technology. What this means is that in future you’ll not have to manually start Beddit monitoring when you get into bed: The beacon in your bedroom will simply detect you getting into bed and trigger it on your phone. Brilliant.

The current version of Beddit apparently costs around $150 – so just over £100 – but will only work on one person, so if both you and your partner want to monitor your sleep, you’ll have to buy two.

The next version will apparently be available in May.