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Any products out there to track body positions?
#1
Any products out there to track body positions?
I'm interested in finding out my body positions throughout the night like the take home sleep test with accelerometers. I want to know when my body is supine or on my side.  Is there anything on the market that tracks body position?

Also, anybody have experience recording video of their sleep?  Any advice? Is it easy to do with a smartphone and tripod?
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#2
RE: Any products out there to track body positions?
Before I was diagnosed, I was wondering how to determine how much flailing I was doing at night. According to the wife, it was way too much ,  I whacked her so many times (she even bit my arm once , she was getting so fed up of the regular 'attacks').
I was going to wall-mount a security type cam with the infrared night-vision and then stream it to my pc.
Before I got to it though, my doc keyed into my symptoms and thus followed a sleep test and then bliss.
(and no more bitemarks on my arm)
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#3
RE: Any products out there to track body positions?
I have used a recording video camera (Amcrest) that I got from Amazon. It has a wired and wireless connections, IR, and onboard micro SD storage capability. I would let it run all night. I then used my sleep data's timeline to dictate where to jump in the video file. Of course, that was 2 to 3 years ago. I'm now in "Whatever!" mode.
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#4
RE: Any products out there to track body positions?
Interesting, I didn't think about IR for night vision. I will have to look into that.
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#5
RE: Any products out there to track body positions?
I believe one of our members uses a device made by or labeled as WITMOTION, as linked below. I could PM him, if you wish, to see if he might PM you or post advice about the WitMotion device.

The link shows one they offer for under $50 which claims to run for 10 hours. It has BlueTooth. Android smartphones, as I understand, will display the information. I use one made by Gulf Data Concepts that cost more but worked very well. However, I had to process its time stamped x, y, z axis readings with an Excel spreadsheet for import by OSCAR using its Somnopose data import capability.

WitMotion

I have no experience or other knowledge of the WITMOTION device which has more features than my GDC device. With either device you can get raw data, as I understand, which can be processed--if not done for you--for example, to show rotation of, say, your head L-R and your chin up-down as well as to show times, durations and amplitudes of bursts of motion, as for sneezes, restless twitches, starts, agitated motions.

It has wrist band eyelets. Some wear it on arms, others legs, but it could be mounted anywhere with a little improvisation. I tried mine (no eyelets, just a flat side for velcro, whatever) centered on upper forehead (above the bill of cap against the headband) and against my back bone at about lumbar L-3 where I used it most. I wanted to know not only supine vs lateral position, but also what level of motions there were at my bodily core, near my center of gravity.

Good luck, finding what will work best for you. There are lots of watch like alternatives and cameras that would not demand as much fiddling to get what you want for sleep position monitoring.
I have no particular qualifications or expertise with respect to the apnea/cpap/sleep related content of my posts beyond my own user experiences and what I've learned from others on this site. Each of us bears the burden of evaluating the validity and applicability of what we read here before acting on it.  

Of my 3 once-needed, helpful, and adjunctive devices I have listed, only the accelerometer remains operative (but now idle). My second CMS50I died, too, of old age and the so-so Dreem 2 needs head-positioning band repair--if, indeed, Dreem even supports use of it now.



 
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#6
RE: Any products out there to track body positions?
I think the Torena app will do exactly what you want. Costs EUR 9.99 in the Google Playstore.
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#7
RE: Any products out there to track body positions?
How does it work? Do you have to strap your phone to your body somehow?

-Neelix
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#8
RE: Any products out there to track body positions?
(10-23-2021, 04:26 AM)Neelix Wrote: How does it work?  Do you have to strap your phone to your body somehow?

-Neelix

Yes, you have to bind your phone at your belly.
At the Dutch apnea board the developer intruduced himself. This is the google translated version of this introduction. (long read)


04 Aug 2021, 20:17

Hey,

I am the developer of the Torena app on Android :relaxed:
At the suggestion of Arie, I came here to respond and I want to offer some more context around the motivations for developing the app.

Received a diagnosis of mild apnea in December 2019, according to the hospital not positional. Requested research myself because in recent years I often had the feeling that I had barely slept 5 hours or so, while I had been in bed for 8-9 hours (and woke up little consciously, and also not a strikingly many toilet visits or anything, but sometimes dry throat).
Then started on a solid diet and lost 16 kilos in about 4 months, purely by focusing on healthy food. I was already exercising quite intensively before my diagnosis, and I have increased that since the diagnosis (cycling about 200 km per week in the summer months, and running about 50 km per week throughout the year).
Because I suspected several causes as a basis for my apnea diagnosis, I also started researching myself. My bedroom is on a busy main road where traffic also passes at night. So start sleeping with earplugs in. I noticed myself that the few times I woke up consciously, I almost always lay on my back (I fall asleep on the right side). Then experimented with a thick pillow to counteract supine, and noticed an improvement. So I suspect that sleeping position does play a role in my story, even though they state in the hospital that this was not the case during the examination (I had the equipment hanging on my back, because I was still in the habit of lying in bed at the time). sleeping on my stomach, I learned that after the diagnosis).

So I wanted to know if I actually often lie on my back during my sleep. The range of apps for Android is then virtually non-existent, except for a few very outdated apps, which also only work halfway (alarm did not work with the app I tried at the time, for example). The alternative was Philips' Night Balance, but at that time it had been taken over from TU Delft (I thought) and was temporarily withdrawn from the market. In addition, it is also very expensive if you do not know whether the apnea is position-related. Is also not reimbursed in Belgium by the health insurance (at least not at the time of my diagnosis at the time).

In terms of design, the Android apps I found were also completely outdated. So as a professional IT developer I felt I could definitely do better, and that way I could also build it completely to my liking, and get a first experience in development for Android. And so Torena was born. Tried it myself for a couple of months, and it yielded good results. I noticed that I did lie on my back for a considerable part of the night (about 3-4 hours on a night of 8 hours), and if I set the app with an alarm (sound works best for me , shaking doesn't wake me quickly) that I could limit my supine position during the night to about 15-20 minutes. I do wake up to the sound alarm, but then I turn on my side, and I fall asleep again in no time. Result: much improved night's sleep, and much less feeling during the day that I hardly slept (so even with being woken up regularly by the sound alarm).

Then decided to offer the app in the Google Play Store in August 2020, for a small fee for all the research and work I put into it myself. And because I would happily pay that amount myself knowing what results I get with the app. Also just to try how that works in Google Play Store with paid apps, so especially a big discovery for myself in the whole app thing that I had no experience with until then.

In January 2021, at the request of the doctors in the hospital who heard my story and experiences, had a new sleep study done, in order to compare the pure figures with my first sleep study and to determine whether the improvement was purely a feeling , or indeed is apparent from the figures.
I also used the Torena app that night, comparing the results to the hospital results the next morning. These turned out to be an almost exact match with the hospital equipment. Only when I was in between back and side position did they sometimes deviate, because both Torena and the camera in the hospital then make a guess as to which position it is then. Torena does this based on device orientation (which is also adjustable in the app), the camera does this based on the camera images. So that is not a certainty, and I am more convinced of the Torena app in which you can choose it purely with degrees on a circle of 360 degrees when a position is back and when left etc. The doctors in the hospital were very surprised that I could get such good results from the Torena app. However, with the message that they cannot actively recommend it to patients, because there is currently no scientific basis.

My result of the sleep study in January 2021 was also astonishing, hardly any apneas were detected, and virtually no supine (when I had the equipment attached to my stomach). So declared cured of my apnea. According to the doctors, because of a combination of things: weight loss, more sports, learned a different sleeping position for sleeping (from lying on your stomach to lying on your side), better sleep hygiene (going to bed more at a fixed time), the earplugs to sleep better without noise pollution from the street (I did stop at the end of 2020, and for the time being still without much trouble), and then the Torena app with which I manage to avoid lying on my back as much as possible.

So for me more than a successful trajectory, and also in the hospital they were very enthusiastic to see that a patient takes a different path than this towards the apnea devices, and actively works on that and does not just resign himself to the diagnosis and standard treatment. An apnea device was also introduced to me after the first diagnosis, and I absolutely did not like that. I therefore hope that the Torena app can find its way to other apnea patients who want to monitor their sleeping position and try out whether avoiding the supine position gives an improvement, if only in combination with other treatments.

Until I got the question from a Torena user from America, I hadn't gotten acquainted with OSCAR, because I'm not very active in the whole apnea thing either (since I've had little trouble with everything I'm on now please note). Fairly spartan for me, but I didn't really delve into it too much. Perhaps for users who have more experience with apnea devices that it is easier to use. The graphs that I saw appear in OSCAR were very similar to those of the hospital.

I hope the above has given you a better insight into the origin of the Torena app Wink

If anyone wants to provide an integration for Torena within OSCAR, or has suggestions for the Torena app, I am always willing to provide the necessary support or to see where I can improve the app. I myself do not start with the integration in Oscar itself, since my C++ knowledge leaves much to be desired. That is why we chose to build in an export functionality towards SomnoPose CSV format, so that you can still read the data into OSCAR.

If you have any questions or suggestions, I'd love to hear them.
I'm going on vacation in a few days, so a response may take a while Confusedlightly_smiling_face:

greetings,
Kurt
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#9
RE: Any products out there to track body positions?
Cool, I will look into the app! It would be cool if the data can be uploaded to OSCAR for time syn'c

Edit: will look into Witmotiom as well, just saw that post.
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#10
RE: Any products out there to track body positions?
Funnily enough the current "What's new" message in the Play Store for this app is about improving OSCAR compatibility in their Somnopose CSV export function. :-)

-Neelix
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