With every big Amazon hardware event there’s always a product that’s a bit strange and this year it’s the Halo Rise. The device sits next to your bed to both track your sleep and serves as an intelligent alarm clock with a built-in light.
Instead of relying on wearing something like a fitness band to track your sleep, the Halo Rise uses contactless technology. Amazon is quick to say it doesn’t have any microphones or cameras, but hasn’t really given any details about how the device tracks your sleep, other than saying it tracks movement and respiratory patterns. Presumably, it uses something similar to the ultrasound technology that Echo speakers use to detect when someone is in the room. Amazon says the device is smart enough to only track the person closest to it if you sleep with a partner next to you or even a pet.
The Halo Rise provides a sleep report, either in the Halo app or on an Echo Show device, to tell you when you entered each sleep cycle. It also tracks temperature, humidity, and light in the room to factor those readings into your report.
In addition to sleep tracking, the Halo Rise serves as a smart alarm. It’s capable of detecting when you are in a deep or light sleep cycle so that it can wake you at the optimal time. It does this through its speaker but can also optionally use its built-in light to gradually simulate a sunrise. The device can also communicate with Echo devices to tell them when to wake you up if you prefer to wake up to music.
Halo Rise will cost $139.99 but is not yet available to order and a release date has not been set.
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We’ve officially entered ‘creepy’ realm…
Creepy doesn’t begin to describe this. If this can differentiate between the closest body and another person in bed with them, it can also tell how close those bodies are, and how often. Ewwwwww!
Its even creepier than that.
Amazon lets you review things Alexa hears. They’re all recorded and available.
Give it a listen sometime. Besides your Alexa commands you’ll find all sorts of random sounds that Alexa heard and recorded but decided they weren’t commands and just disregarded. These are labeled “Audio could not be understood” and “Audio was not intended for Alexa”.
Mine has all sorts of things, me coughing, curtains being closed, fans, stuff causing noise as its moved…an occasional word or two said in the room. Just random stuff. Quite a bit of it.
Now… how do I put this? You notice that there are certain periods of time and noises that aren’t there. Ever. But coughing, curtains and random words are.
Now that’s fine, its understandable and downright preferable actually.
But it does mean that Alexa is actively listening to what is happening in the room and is “thinking” about it. Further, Amazon has some pretty interesting statistical data at its disposal.