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.
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.
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.
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?