yes, but we will have to source new bricks first. We went with these black bricks because a) they looked cool, b) we could afford them, and c) samples of the bricks passed electrical surge and signal quality tests we had performed here in Mountain View. Maybe there's a reason Apple charges $29 for theirs...
This is a real positive. My cell phone, my GPS and my in-car DAB radio all power from USB - I can charge and use them all with just one lead, instead of having a glovebox full of a Spaghetti Junction of different cables and connectors.
It also means that when one charger goes wrong, it's insanely cheap and easy to swap it out for a new one rather than having to look around for often expensive manufacturer-specific accessories.
We sent this email tonight within an hour of hearing about the first issue. One of our goals as a company is to increase people's quality of life -- starting with sleep. It was immediately apparent to us we had to tell our customers, especially if their safety was at all at risk.
Isn't this a bit drastic, though? I absolutely commend you for the fast reaction and concern about customer's safety, but do you know the extent of the problem?
I mean, if the problem is limited to a certain batch of power supplies (or just that single faulty one), you've just deprived a large number of customers of the use of product. Certainly if you have no way to segment the people who may be affected, then the safest thing is a total product recall, but that's generally the last resort any business will take in this situation.
In any case, I hope this is just a speedbump for you guys and you continue on successfully.
yes the batteries are safe. we believe that the chargers are spitting out a noisy electrical signal, which is causing the battery charger IC on the WakeMate to overheat, thus causing the problem. We have only seen any incidence when the unit is plugged into the black USB charger bricks we shipped with. To date we have logged over 20000 hours of sleep on our system, so we're certain that sleeping with the Wakemate is safe, and that the batteries on the WakeMates are safe as well. This is in addition to the testing and certification we had done on the unit as well before we began shipping units.
I am curious how you were able to assess this situation so quickly.
Thomas posted the original email 11 hours ago and prefaced it with "From my email just now."
Very shortly thereafter (also 11 hours ago as I write this), you commented that
1. WakeMate sent the email within an hour of hearing about the first issue.
2. WakeMate believes they know the cause of the problem (noisy electrical signal from defective chargers)
3. "[WakeMate] have only seen any incidence when the unit is plugged into the black USB charger bricks we shipped with."
So over the course of a couple hours, you (WakeMate) became aware of the _first_ report of overheating (and were previously unaware of this problem), you were able to determine that the cause of the issue is a noisy electrical signal being produced by the charger, and you also indicate that you have now observed additional incidence of overheating.
I am curious, does your certification and testing involve anything with the FDA?
I worked at one of the big sleep companies before and we always had to adhere to FDA regulations even though we were careful to be 'monitoring' and not 'diagnosis/treatment'. The FDA also occasionally randomly popped in as a part of their standard monitoring process.
I think they are careful to say "this is not a medical device", which exempts them from regulation. They can market it as a fun toy or fashion accessory or whatever, and then it has nothing to do with medicine.
Nice thanks. Might I suggest you make the compare chart more accessible. Even now knowing it exists I took another pass through the site to see how I overlooked it and I still can't figure out how to navigate to it.
edit: Finally found it as the LAST item on the FAQ. I still think you should make it more accesible! Cool
WakeMate uses a science called actigraphy to monitor your sleep patterns by measuring the movement of your body (via your wrist). Actigraphy has been used in sleep labs for decades and is a widely standardized metric of sleep in humans (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actigraphy). The Sleep Cycle app, because it is not attached to your body, does not use actigraphy, and therefore cannot provide the same granular level of data measurement as a device using actigraphy, such as the WakeMate. Furthermore, Sleep Cycle is susceptible to false data collection since it can be easily influenced by the presence of others in the bed, such as a partner or pet.
If you're willing to attach an iOS device to your body while you sleep (between two socks works great, or with an armband) you can try an actigraphy-accurate smart alarm with my app:
not exactly similar. Our product uses Actigraphy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actigraphy), which is a different method (and in our opinion much less obtrusive) for measuring sleep phases than the Zeo which uses a headband. Also, our unit is wireless and automatically uploads your data to our web server with very little user input (besides setting the alarm before going to bed).
when iphone users make up the majority of your preorders (and supposedly market), then yes it does matter. if we had just launched for Blackberry and Android, we would not be having these delays...
Hey thank for the encouragement! IMO the authentication chip has some details that are very poorly documented (and as a result gave me months of headaches). if you want to talk shop anytime please feel free to drop me a line at: craig <at> wakemate <dot> com. would love to have another hardware developer working on apple auth to chat with...
