ResMed S-Plus Sleep Monitor (S+)

[srlevine1]

ResMed has been touting its S PLUS Sleep Monitor that works in conjunction with an iPhone. I was curious if it would work next to my Autosense S10 and queried ResMed tech support. I will pass along what they said as it made me re-think the purchase and pass on buying the unit.

"Thank you for contacting ResMed Sensor Technologies S+ Customer Service.

The S+ sensor should not be used by anyone using oxygen or in the presence of a flammable gas.

The unit is designed to pick up on possible loud noises and movements.

Vibrations and movements from the CPAP tubing can be read as body movements or breathing, which may skew the Sleep Score results you receive.

If you use a CPAP, you will want to keep the S+ directed in a way where it will not pick up the sounds of the device running, or any fan or vibration movements the machine creates.

If you can, keep the CPAP machine on the far side of your body, opposite the S+ sensor.

Lower levels of ambient noise may not always be defects, including softer running CPAP devices."

[FrankNichols]

I have one and an AirSense 10 Autoset. They share a end table by the bed. I have been using it for about 4 weeks now and I am fairly certain it gets falling a sleep right, waking mostly right, REM mostly right. I am still not convinced on light and deep sleep.

I have the CPAP machine "behind" the S+ and the hose does not cross in front of the S+, but below it.

I plan on finding a way to get the data from it into Sleepyhead, but so far I have not had time to work on that. (Busy getting used to therapy and working on a iPad version of Sleepyhead which will eventually connect to the S+ and the CMS50D+ Oxygen sensor.)

[Carbon]

I echo Frank's comments. It works fine beside my Autoset.
My impression is also that it is reasonably accurate. I have pushed my minimum IPAP pressures up, and feeling better for it. ResMed S+ is reporting my REM sleep durations as improved, with 4 sleep cycles/night. So it appears to be measuring something correctly there.
I think light and deep sleep are near enough too, judging by my degree of leg movement on IR video.

Occasionally it reports awakenings if I am still dead asleep after bending one leg up, even though I am dead still for many minutes on these occasions with nothing happening on sleepyhead at the time.

It can also give some false positives with a partner. It does register my wife's presence as disturbed sleep if she gets close (presumably picking up two sources of motion). It also records her sleep as mine if I leave the room and forget to turn it off, even though she should be well outside its range on the far side of our King bed.

I'm not sure it adds actionable data in a sense, except to give sleep hygiene advice with some level of feedback and encouragement. Sort of a personalised sleep coach. The sleep scores correlate reasonably with how good or crappy I feel the next day.

Overall, its a reasonable, non-intrusive toy to get if you like collecting data, and like the idea of something that reinforces sleep hygiene advice.

PS - they have a sneaky form of geo-blocking with this product if you are outside the US - it only works with the phone app from the US app store. I need to use an old iPhone registered under a US iTunes account to make it all work.

[Reznik]

In case anyone's interested, this device is now $32.00 at Amazon. At one time, it was over $150.

[Sleep2Snore]

The S+ sensor should not be used by anyone using oxygen or in the presence of a flammable gas.

Well that is me out of it then!