Fitbit Tracker

The Fitbit Tracker is designed in part to help people find out whether they are getting too much sleep, or not enough. The Fitbit will cost $99 when it is released in early summer, said James Park, the chief executive of Fitbit Inc. in San Francisco. This small device is also a pedometer that tracks calories burned during the day.

The Fitbit uses a motion sensor called an accelerometer, also employed in the iPhone and Wii controllers, to track movement and, in that way, sleep. “You slide the Tracker onto a wristband” provided with the device, Mr. Park said, and press a button to start recording sleep behavior.

“When you wake up and sync it to your computer, it will tell you how many minutes you were asleep as opposed to awake while you were in bed,” he said.

The device can collect up to seven days’ of data. A wireless base station collects the information and uploads it to the Fitbit Web site.

Pretty cool. I sometimes wake up without feeling refreshed and wonder if maybe I am not sleeping well. A device like this would help me to determine if that was the case.

Instead of a base station it would be cool if it could sync via Bluetooth with a PC or better yet take advantage of that new iPhone OS 3.0 functionality and sync with an iPhone.

via NY Times