Does it say somewhere they have? What they are selling on that page is just a motion sensor, like the fitbit or something, but with a display a bit like a zeo, but hardly the same technology.
I was at a meeting 2 nights ago and saw ResMed’s new CPAP machine. I made a comment that it looked like the bedside version of a Zeo (black unit with a pretty blue display which faces the user), just a bit bigger. Someone, not a ResMed representative, mentioned that they just heard from a ResMed employee that ResMed purchased what was left of Zeo.
I asked the Reps who were there and none of them appeared to know what I was talking about. I then heard that the Division of Resmed that supposedly purchased Zeo’s remains is a “consumer” division leading me to believe that this was a different division than the CPAP division.
So this is all hearsay at the moment. What they show on the website, looks like a Dyson product and smells like a bad infomercial. You can make 3 easy payments…
When I clicked on the commercial, it didn’t run but that is possibly because the product isn’t supposed to launch until next week.
When I searched for Resmed and Zeo, I found nothing. I finally found out the unit was called an S+, so I searched for “ResMed AND S+” and that’s when I was able to find the links above.
I did not find the word ZEO anywhere.
I wonder if we should start a new topic for this, so if it isn’t true we can delete the entire topic since this is a Zeo topic.
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A Zeo employee told me a while back that it was ResMed which bought Zeo’s assets, including the database which I was hoping to get access to. I emailed the guy in charge at ResMed, Colin Lawlor, but never heard back. This is the first I’ve heard of them making any use of the Zeo IP, though. About time.
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That is the name of the person I was given.
He apparently lives in Ireland but was here in California for the past few days.
Here’s the infomercial. It looks like it radiates the user.
This is incredibly disappointing.
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I looked at all of this information and it looks like simply another motion detecting device. I have an activity tracker by a company named Withings and it produces a “sleep analysis” that looks very similar based only on the amount that you move during the night.
This is definitely not using the EEG information that Zeo provides.
I use a CPAP and would like to see the CPAP companies add spO2 (oxygen levels), pulse and EEG to their machines. Philips respironics has added a bluetooth module that sends sleep data to my phone and then to a computer website that allows me to track my sleep apnea. I would be nice if I could get these other parameters as well. I wish whoever owns the technology would bring it back though.
Hi everyone,
I am a newcomer to this forum. I note that a few posts ago, a member very helpfully listed the major issues discussed in this thread as follows:
- General information about the workings of Zeo - theory, methodology, etc.
- Retrieving Data from Beside Models
- Retrieving Data from Mobile Models
- Sensor replacement, rehab, or substitution.
I am faced with yet another issue. I just bought an allegedly brand new Zeo Mobile device, and it is faulty in that the battery does not (fully) charge (i.e. the green light never stops flashing). When the transmitter is in the dock and charging, I can get just enough flashing blue light time by pressing the button for it to been seen and paired with the mobile phone (and even that took me about 100 attempts), but after that there is no connection.
Am I doing something wrong? If not, can the transmitter be opened and the battery replaced? If I can’t fix this problem I will have to buy another unit. I assume that most units that are for sale will have transmitters that have been lying around unused for a long time, and that may be a cause of the battery going dead and not taking charge.
I don’t know the mobile unit, but it does suggest a bad battery. Hopefully someone who knows the unit will clarify.
Sooner or later somebody will do this and, hopefully, post details; there are details on replacing all sorts of non-replaceable batteries on the Web, but not Zeo yet. You have to work out how to open the transmitter casing, then probably unsolder the battery, work out what it is, and replace it.
There’s a myth that Lithium-ion batteries expire as quickly if not used as if they are; it’s simply not true, battery life is given in number of charge/discharge cycles, though of course they can and do fail prematurely. There’s a great deal of information on this in the Wikipedia Talk page (not the article) on Lithium-ion battery. See the sections:
4 Battery lifetime
7 Battery Life
8 “Battery University”
11 Dubious information originating from discredited source
13 Archiving and unreliable sources
17 batteryuniversity.com
HTH
pol098, thanks for replying.
Considering that nobody has posted about this problem yet (other than here: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mKGArcswwOM), and some people must have Zeo units dating back to 2011, it is not a common problem. I might have to take it to an electronics repair shop.
Yes, Lori and gwern are correct, Resmed bought the Zeo assets and is now launching their own sleep tracker, the S+. The official site appears to be at this URL now: http://www.resmed.com/us/en/consumer/s-plus.html.
I wrote to Ben Rubin a while back to see what I could find out about Zeo assets. He didn’t know but connected me to Dave Dickinson, the ex-CEO, who put me in touch with Colin Lawlor at ResMed. Colin confirmed this news, on the condition I wait a few weeks before making it public.
Colin also showed me the sleep sensor they have been working on. Yes, it is a motion sensor. However, the trick they are using is not to directly infer sleep from movement, but to infer respiratory patterns (this is their area of expertise), and then infer sleep from respiration. They are also doing some distance sensing, to reduce noise. The requirement is that the sensor sit on a nightstand, pointing toward the sleeper’s chest. We’ll post some data samples here when we can.
Colin offered to answer Zeo specific questions, or at least try to answer them. Here are the questions I’ve asked so far:
What were the assets of Zeo’s that Resmed acquired?
What did you learn? Anything of value?
Can the “download your Zeo data” be turned back on?
If you aren’t doing anything with the console and headband operational code, could these be released in some way?
He said he or a colleague would answer here directly when he had a chance. Feel free to ask your own questions.
Gary
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My own question remains the same: can access to the Zeo corpus of sleep data be provided? Ideally as a public dataset in anonymized form, but anything is better than hundreds of thousands of days of naturalistic in-the-wild sleep data disappearing into the void.
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Following on from my earlier posts, if anyone by any chance has a spare working transmitter for the Zeo Mobile, I am willing to swap it for a brand new replacement headband with sensors (sealed in original packaging), because it looks like I’m going to end up with two brand new headbands but no transmitter.
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Gary Issac Wolf, thank you for your useful contribution. My question to the ResMed would be this: if they are not doing with Zeo’s IP assets, would they be prepared to sell them? Because the niche remains unfilled.
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gwern, in what way would aggregate sleep data be useful?
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To save me trawling through the entire thread, can somebody kindly answer this question: is there currently a way to export data from Zeo Mobile?
[quote=“Agaricus, post:365, topic:561”]Colin also showed me the sleep sensor they have been working on. Yes, it is a motion sensor. However, the trick they are using is not to directly infer sleep from movement, but to infer respiratory patterns (this is their area of expertise), and then infer sleep from respiration. They are also doing some distance sensing, to reduce noise. The requirement is that the sensor sit on a nightstand, pointing toward the sleeper’s chest. We’ll post some data samples here when we can.
[/quote]
I would be very interesting in seeing how it worked too, especially for those people who move around at night and sleep with a partner whos breathing is louder than theirs!
I don’t really understand how that could work but am obviously happy to be proved wrong.
I suspect there is no chance of them releasing the code, as they will never know whether they will use it, or run the risk of someone else using it.
I suspect they wouldn’t have the ‘download your Zeo’ part as there are big costs in that in that they would have to run some website, but maybe releasing something separately to let people access their data as a one off would be good.
Not much of an issue for me as I can access all the data as I have all the data files from the Zeo, but for those people on mobile or who didn’t keep a copy.
These sorts of databases answer questions as people think of them, so that’s not really the right question to ask: it’s not something you’d know in advance. That said, one can think of many questions if one ponders for a moment: one of my own interests is whether there is a lunar sleep cycle, which there does not seem to be in in the handful of Zeo datasets I’ve analyzed; how many Zeos report highly anomalous data suggestive of the Zeo incorrectly classifying sleep/wake (if you mention Zeo on Hacker News or Wired or Amazon, you’ll be sure to get someone popping up saying ‘the Zeo sucks, I had one and everytime I put on the headband it recorded me as asleep even when I was awake!’); how does sleep vary with seasonal patterns, suggesting the ideal temperature and humidity (I’ve come to acutely regret the lack of a temperature/humidity sensor in the Zeo); what do sleep patterns look like en masse, what is ‘normal’ for sleep?; are there secular trends in sleep indicating sleep deprivation, could we see the influence of smartphones and tablets on making people sleep less and go to bed later? how bad is oversleeping on weekends?
If there is a reasonably large user population (unfortunate that the company went down and the Zeo doesn’t work without periodic electrode replacement) it might be interesting to try to put together a database of extended Zeo information, mostly per-night rather than per-second. The above data, plus say melatonin (published research suggests that about 300 micrograms, 0.3mg, a few hours before bedtime help to synchronise the body clock), maybe the effect of various medications on duration of sleep phases, new mattress, evening avoidance of actinic (white) light (red lab goggles accurately designed to protect against blue laser light, use of warm (2700K) light sources, f.lux software?), etc. etc. There would need to be some sort of agreed standard so that the database could be analysed, e.g. evening temperature and humidity (or recording over the night if available), dose and time of melatonin, maybe geographical latitude, etc. etc. etc. I don;t see this happening. I did some experiments with moon phase, nothing noticeable, though I have read of research that did find an effect.
While Zeo was active, Amazon reviews like “it doesn’t distinguish REM sleep from wakefulness” were indeed common; the reported Zeo response was always “everyone is different, if it doesn’t work for you, return it for a refund”. There was one long comment from someone who seemed to know what he was talking about, to the effect that the Zeo sensitivity was fixed to match the population average; some people had stronger or weaker waves than average and Zeo didn’t work for them; they wanted some sort of internal sensitivity adjustment. If Zeo had continued, there would probably be hardware hacks for this sort of thing.
Well, I’ve opened one my unit up very clumsily with a kitchen knife because the battery doesn’t take charge, and the battery that is inside is a PP312122AB 3.7V Li-polymer Rechargeable Battery. Unfortunately, other than a picture, I can’t find one for sale or any more information on it (such as current, capacity) that would enable me to get a replacement. It’s very tiny, measuring 2 by 2 cm. Any ideas on what I could do?
The first thing to do after removing the battery is test it. The battery being bad is the least-worst news; if the battery is good you probably have a hardware failure that discharges it. The only hit I’ve found for PP312122AB gives a Chinese site that doesn’t actually mention this battery. It might be a custom-manufactured Chinese one (and the part number might include dimensions, 3.1 x 21 x 22mm, just a guess). The closest I’ve found is from Farnell, probably a bit too big to fit:
http://uk.farnell.com/bak/lp-402025-is-3/battery-lithium-pol-3-7v-165-mah/dp/2077885
A Chinese Web site lists a battery of about the same size (you don’t mention thickness, so check that):
http://ufo-battery.manufacturer.globalsources.com/si/6008839459107/pdtl/Lithium-polymer/1061204236/Lithium-Polymer-Battery.htm
Model:552020/150mAh-3.7v, listed as 5.7 x 21 x 21.5mm, 150mAh
Most of these sites seem to have a minimum order of around 10,000; this site says “MOQ: 1”, price US$0.90-1.50. I have absolutely no idea if you could actually get just one, or if it will fit and work.
Th other thing you can do is look for a battery that can be pressed into service. I’d start with a round coin battery as they’re standard. The CR2032 size (20mm dia, 3.2mm high) is popular for computer memory backup, it’s not rechargeable but it’ll give you an idea of size. Other prefixes are used for rechargeable versions; sometimes there are several slightly different ones, but there aren’t nearly as many as disposable type. So I’d check space and consider a rechargeable battery with a lithium technology (Li-ion, Li-polymer and others are more or less interchangeable) that’ll fit in the space, with solder tags. Capacity is a possible problem. I guesstimate the capacity of the original battery, given its size (and I don’t know the thickness) at 150mA. I vaguely remember testing a transmitter’s battery life, placed close to a bedside receiver: about 16 hours (I may be wrong). If this is about right, we would need a battery of at least half the capacity of the original (and remember that capacity decreases as the battery ages). In principle a button cell with solder tags could be used, but the actual sizes available, as far as I know, are a problem: Farnell has the ML 2032 T17, 20mm dia, 3.2mm high, which will fit, but provides 65mAh, not enough or barely enough; and the bigger LIR2450, 24m, 5.0m, 120mAh, that probably won’t fit.
The other alternative is to fit a larger battery and improvise some sort of case, forget the original. I hope somebody can come up with better news.
It would be useful to know, once you have managed to open the case, how it is clipped together, so that maybe it can be opened non-destructively. Is it glued?
Hi Pol098,
You raise a lot of good points here. Firstly, this is my first foray into anything to do with any kind of batteries or electronics, so you’re not speaking to an expert here.
To answer your last question, as I say, I did crack open the case with a kitchen knife, but it hasn’t given me much of a clue it it could have been opened more easily. I mean I’m sure it could have been done more carefully, without doing any damage to the case, but at the end of the day, while there are two tiny plastic pins that go into tiny holes there, and while it appears to “clip” to some extent when I tried to reassemble it I think that the case is ultimately held together by glue, as you suggest. The person who does it next (I hope it’s not me again trying to open another faulty unit) should try suction cups as a matter of first resort.
As for the batteries you suggest, none of the would fit. Sorry I forgot to mention the thickness, but it measures at only 2 mm. Maybe a slightly thicker battery would fit without pressing too hard on the electronics.
Also, can I ask, when you say that the first thing after removing the battery is to test it, how exactly would I go about testing it? What kind of equipment would I need to use and what would the readings reveal? I know you can measure the battery’s voltage with a voltometer, but can you measure full and remaining capacity?
Here’s a post I wrote on an Instructables page which should explain the situation with the battery to a greater extent. This post deals which restoring the original battery. I understand that this may cost more in equipment than buying a new unit, but I may give it a try just for the sake of it and seeing that it’s a problem that Zeo users may run into in the future.
Hi there!
Thank you for your instructable on restoring lipo batteries. I have a very tiny lipo battery from a medical device which doesn’t seem to take charge. Here’s a picture of it: https://www.google.com.au/search?q=pp312122AB&rlz=…
All I know it’s a 3.7V battery. It measures 2mm by 20mm by 20mm. Unfortunately, one is not available for sale and a replacement would also be hard to find. So I’m wondering whether it can be restored. Because it’s supposed to be charged for 3 hours and the writing on the charger says 5V-0.5A, I worked out that the capacity of the battery is 0.5A X 3 = 1.5Ah. However, I cannot imagine such a small battery having such a large capacity. Usually batteries of this size have a capacity not exceeding 0.1Ah. I know that my only chance of restoring this battery is using a micro charger which can produce currents as low as 10mAh.
Moreover, the wires from the battery seem to be soldered onto the electronics board, rather than connected. I would imagine that to connect the wires to a charger of any sort, I would have to break off the wires and fit them into a JST plug, which is another thing I don’t know how to do. Finally, when it comes to soldering the wires back on, the whole thing is on such a micro scale that even if I was familiar with soldering (which I’m not), there would be a great risk of damaging the electronics board. Do I have a chance of recharging this battery?
Thanks!
Kind regards,
tolerant
Although I don’t know anything about the batteries on these units having never looked, I just wanted to correct your misunderstanding about current. The fact the battery charger says 0.5A says nothing about what the battery can take, and you don’t need a small charger to charge it. As you say it is very unlikely a battery of that size can be 1.5Ah.
Unlike voltage, current is a limit, therefore if you are charging a 3.7V battery, it doesn’t matter if your charger can give 0.5A or 1000A, it will charge at exactly the same rate, and assuming the battery needs less than 0.5A, the same current will go into it.
As to the other matters, if it is soldered to the board, then your options are limited. You can measure what the voltage is when it is on charge and if it gets up to the 3.7v, and how quickly it discharges, but to do much else you would have to either unsolder or cut the leads off.
[I’d originally posted technical details on testing the Zeo battery, etc., but have deleted them, though correct. Lithium batteries are not as harmless as the batteries we were used to before; they can explode and catch fire. If you know what you’re doing, you don’t need me to say anything; if not, don’t do anything more than replace. Don’t try to rejuvenate batteries, or recharge them externally.]
Thanks @tolerant for your information, very useful. I won’t quote in full to keep things short. You report that you’ve opened your non-charging Zeo (mobile phone version) transmitter and are looking to get it working (details on the quantifiedself “Zeo shutting down: export your data!” thread a few posts up).
Batteries are usually soldered into such assemblies, and must be unsoldered for replacement. Be very careful not to heat the battery itself significantly. If you are not accustomed to solder work on miniature equipment you may cause damage to the circuit board.
It appears impossible to get a replacement battery that will fit in the transmitter and supply sufficient energy for a night. Maybe somebody will eventually find one? The external volume of the original battery (20x20x2) is about 80% of that of a rechargeable ML2032 (20mm dia, 3.2mm thick, 65mAh), which suggests ~50mAh for the Zeo battery.
You can replace the battery, either temporarily for testing or permanently, with a larger Li-ion or LiPo one of the same voltage (any single cell will be rated at 3.6-3.7V), being extremely careful not to short-circuit it in the process. If permanent, you’ll have to improvise a casing. Capacity needs to be at least 50mAh, maybe a bit more if I’ve underestimated, but a somewhat larger capacity doesn’t seem to be a problem (it might take longer to indicate full charge, but should last a night even if not full).
I’ll post a summary of information on the battery below, for reference.
HTH
(I wanted this to be a separate message, but it has been appended to my previous contribution.)
This is a summary of information on what is know of the battery used by the transmitter of the Zeo sleep monitor (mobile phone version). The transmitter for the clock version is likely to use the same battery. In case this is copied or posted elsewhere, this was originally posted at
https://forum.quantifiedself.com/showthread.php?tid=654&page=19
and quotes and uses information supplied by quantifiedself member “tolerant”.
There is discussion at quantifiedself of ideas on testing and replacing the battery.
[quote=“tolerant, post:373, topic:561”] (much edited quote): I’ve opened my unit with a knife because the battery doesn’t take charge; the battery is a PP312122AB 3.7V Li-polymer Rechargeable Battery. Square, size 2 x 20 x 20mm, non-standard, not available.
This hasn’t given me much of a clue how it could have been opened more easily. I’m sure it could have been done more carefully, without doing any damage to the case, but at the end of the day, while there are two tiny plastic pins that go into tiny holes there, and while it appears to “clip” to some extent when I tried to reassemble it I think that the case is ultimately held together by glue. The person who does it next (I hope it’s not me again trying to open another faulty unit) should try suction cups as a matter of first resort. The charger is rated 5v 500mA.
[/quote]
The external battery volume (20x20x2mm) is about 80% of that of a rechargeable ML2032 (20mm dia, 3.2mm thick, 65mAh), which suggests ~50mAh for the Zeo battery; this is an estimate only.
From memory, I think that the battery of the clock version runs for about 16 hours on a full charge, and takes about 1 hour’s charging (not 3) until the display indicates full charge (I tested these times). This may vary between units, and my recollection may be wrong!
A comment about lithium technology (Li-ion, LiPo) rechargeable batteries: I believe that lithium cells are very susceptible to damage by either over-charge or under-charge. This is avoided in equipment by circuitry that does not allow these circumstances. Lithium rechargeables self-discharge only very slowly, so that they may be left for long periods; however they may eventually self-discharge below the safe limit and become unusable if left for long enough. It is not safe to try to rejuvenate them in an external charger without protection circuitry. I don’t know if this form of damage actually occurs from personal experience; but I have a spare transmitter, and swap the two occasionally to avoid the possibility.
Here is a copy of the picture:
@woodinblack, how exactly would I measure the voltage of the battery, whether or not it’s on charge? Do you mean with the case of the transmitter open or closed? Can I use the gold-coloured “things” at the bottom of the transmitter to measure the voltage remaining on it? If not, can I use the points on the circuit board to where the battery wires are soldered to measure the voltage? As regards the 0.5A written on the charger, I don’t know what it could be referring to. A LiPo battery should not generally be charged at higher than capacity. Assuming the Zeo battery has a capacity of 50mAh, it could safely only take 50mA of current when charging.
@pol098, I know that when trying to restore LiPo batteries you need to watch them closely and have a LiPo fire/explosion-proof bag. You’re right that the battery is soldered onto the circuit board, and unsoldering and resoldering it could easily damage the circuit board. Maybe an easier way would be, if I was seriously thinking of restoring the battery, to cut the wires at about half-way point and after rejuvenation is complete, to reconnect them by soldering.