Hi, new user here. Bummed I seem to have missed the halcyon days of Zeo discussion here. I imagine that with the headbands being unavailable (except for at exorbitant prices on ebay) that most have moved on from the platform altogether.
I’ve had a Zeo Mobile since 2012 when Groupon was clearing them out for $39–a steal. I used it for a while until my headband started getting old and wouldn’t track consistently anymore. At one point though around when Zeo went kaput I found on amazon the adapter that allowed the use of snap-on electrodes along with bags of the custom three-part electrodes made for use with Zeo. I bought a couple of boxes but never did anything with them.
Fast forward to now, I’ve been having some sleeping issues lately and decided to dig out my old Zeo stuff. I still have an iPod Touch with the Zeo app on it, and it still works, but through this forum I found out about the Android App, and even cooler the ZeoCompanion app written by azmikemm. I also have an ancient 3rd generation Kindle Fire HD sitting around that I never use for anything else. I was able to sideload both apps on the device (neither are on the app store anymore) and everything worked great for a week or two.
But ever since I’ve been having this issue where the Zeo’s bluetooth connection gets disconnected from the tablet whenever the app is closed, and the app is closing itself every day now for some reason. I keep the tablet plugged in 24/7 and have disabled all power management on it, so the Zeo app, which I leave in the foreground, should be keeping the screen on with its screensaver all the time. During the first week or two I was using it that’s exactly what happened (and the headband status indication always properly updated with “Headband is Charging”, “Headband is Ready” when taken off the charger, and “Now Tracking” (when I put the headband on).
But now, because the app seems to be crashing at some point during the day, when I re-launch it at night it says “Headband Disconnected”. If I take the headband off the charger the status doesn’t change. If I briefly press the button on the headband the status will say “Headband is ready” for a split second before returning to “Headband Disconnected”. Returning the headband to the charger and taking it off again doesn’t change anything. The only way I can fix it is by holding the button down to put the headband in pairing mode and going through the “Pair headband” option in the app. After I do that it re-pairs and the status updates correctly when I put the headband on the charger, take it off, or put it on my head.
The good thing is that Zeo never seems to crash/force close during the night while tracking. The electrodes are working well and I’m getting a complete hypnogram every morning. But it is getting annoying to have to re-pair the headband every night–especially since it was working without doing that, if even for a short time.
So basically I would either like to figure out why the app is force-closing every day (or maybe the tablet is rebooting? Is there any way I can tell?) OR I’d like to know if there’s any way to keep the bluetooth connection between the headband and tablet alive even if the app is closed.
I don’t have the Kindle Fire rooted but I am willing to do that if it would give access to logs or other info that might help in troubleshooting this. It’s running the latest software, which I believe is FireOS 4 based on Android 4.4 KitKat. If a newer Android device would solve this problem I’d probably be willing to spend a bit, but I figured that since the Zeo app is so old anyway it’s probably best to run it on hardware of similar vintage (this Kindle Fire was released in late 2013).
I wish azmikemm was still around. From his postings here it seems he has a lot of knowledge about these. Alas he has ceased development on ZeoCompanion and stated he won’t be answering any support questions. Hope he is OK.
It’s really a shame that five+ years after Zeo’s demise there is nothing else on the market that picked up where it left off. I know there is a Philips product, but I haven’t found any in-depth review of it, and it seems like more of a coaching device–probably doesn’t provide access to raw data. I bought a Beautyrest Sleeptracker, which I think is probably the best of the ballistocardiography sensors (also tried Beddit and Withings). It does a pretty good job of recording my sleep and wake times, RHR and respirations. But its measurement of sleep phases seems to have zero correlation with Zeo, which I trust far more in that respect.
Anyway, if anyone has seen/solved this issue with the Zeo Android app (or can recommend an android device that they’ve had good success using Zeo with) I’d much appreciate any advice.