SnoringU

General

"Snoring U" (SU) is an application for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad that monitors and records sleep and helps people who suffer from snoring.

Snoring U is an excellent sleep monitoring tool because it records and displays information about your sleep, sleep environment and your snoring. When monitoring your sleep and detecting a snoring pattern SU will play a message and nudge you.

SU records your whole sleep session and graphically displays the noise level on a noise chart enabling you to zoom in to view and listen to specific periods of your sleep.

Snoring U Version 5.2.2 is now selling at the Apple iTunes App Store.

You also find us on www.facebook.com/SnoringU

Here is a short video we have made about Snoring U:

NOW! Upload all your session data to your Mac/PC by downloading our new associated statistics software SU Master! Download at: www.snoringu.com/sumaster/download/

A new version with sophisticated statistics features is on its way to you soon!

SU does not claim to be, nor does it intend to be, a medical or clinical application. It endeavors to help people with sleeping disorders using a radically different approach compared to other methods.

The idea for "Snoring U" came to it's inventor from a real-life situation. While sleeping on his back and snoring his wife would tell him "Turn over and lie on your side!", he would do so and stop snoring, but would not remember the incident in the morning. One day his wife remarked that since his cell phone was so smart, surely it could identify snoring and be programmed to tell him to "turn over and lie on your side",hopefully, before she was woken up by the snores. This is how "Snoring U" came to be.

SU was developed under the guidance of Dr. Naveh Tov, MD, PhD. an Israeli physician specializing in internal pulmonary and sleep medicine.

Basically, SU attempts to help the user not snore by "nudging" him when snoring is detected. The "nudge" is triggered by a set of complex rules that are applied to the noise level, noise pattern and desired user behavior.
In addition, SU can be used for sleep monitoring purposes allowing you to view and listen to your sleep session.

FAQ

Some useful Q&A.

General Instructions for using Snoring U

Place the device as close as possible to your mouth, the noise source. The device can be placed on your bedside table or nightstand. If you are using an iPhone with a vibration feature you may consider placing it under your pillow or attached to an armband so that you will feel the vibration of the nudge. Should you be worried about cellular radiation, the device could be switched to "Airplane Mode" before you go to sleep.

If after using the application for a few nights you do not feel that it resolves the problem, or if it bothers your spouse, you can tweak some of the settings and/or change the sound level and/or move the iPhone/iPad to a different position near you.

SU works even after the screen locks and the device goes into "sleep" mode. It's actually designed to do that because this extends battery life. We recommend that you connect your device to a charger but if your device is fully charged, you don't normally need to.

Getting Started with Snoring U

It is recommended that you get to know SU a little before before starting to monitor your sleep.
Go to the "Settings" screen and set the "Sensitivity" for your sleep environment, and select a sound file to play when snoring is detected. Then you can go back to the "Monitor" screen to start monitoring your sleep. Tap "Start", place the device close to your mouth and go to sleep. When SU detects a snoring pattern it will play the selected message to "nudge" you out of snoring.

Later, you can go back to see and hear the recorded sleep session, and tweak the settings if you need to do so.

The Main Screen

Monitortab The main screen shows as the "Monitor" tab. While you are in this tab, "Snoring U" is constantly monitoring the noise. Before going to sleep, make sure that you press the green "Start" button and choose whether or not you want to whole sleep session to be recorded, and with what sound quality. You can also choose if you want the monitoring to start immediately, or with a preferred delay. Only then will SU actually start.

The main screen will state that it is working (or monitoring) and tell you "Good Night". You will see the needle moving in the noise gauge and if SU is also recroding, you will also see a small icon of a microphone

with a flashing red dot.

The "nudge" algorithm is visualized by a progress bar that appears at the bottom of the noise gauge whenever a noise is considered a possible snore and meets other criteria.
If "Snores to Wait" is set to 3 snores, then after detecting the first snore, a red progress bar will appear and a 1/3 of it will show:	If too much time passes (see the "Longest Silence"), the progress bar will disappear. However, if the algorithm detects a second snore with the necessary criteria, it will progress to 2/3 of the gauge:
Then again, if the algorithm detects a third snore with the necessary criteria, it will complete the bar and activate the "nudge":	After that, the gauge will display a receding green bar which will take "Wait After Nudge" seconds to complete (on subsequent "nudges" it may increase time):
At any time during the night, you can stop SU from monitoring your sleep by pressing the "Stop" button. To resume monitoring your sleep you need to re-enable SU by pressing the "Continue" button. Note that when you "Stop" monitoring a sleep session SU continues to record the session but is not running the algorithim to detect snoring. Monitoring is resumed when you return to the "Monitor" screen and "Continue". While SU is not monitoring, you can visit the "History" , "Settings", or "Help" screens by selecting the appropriate tab at the bottom of the screen. You can only monitor sleep while in the Monitor screen, so if you leave it, you will need to come back to the "Monitor" screen and "Continue" monitoring.

History The History screen displays a list of all the sleep sessions that you monitored and saved using Snoring U. By default each session is automatically saved and the sessions are listed so that the most recent one is at the top. Sessions that include a recording of the sound are marked with the small icon of a microphone. A yellow note icon means that the user added his/her own notes to the sleep session. To delete individual sessions from the list, tap the "Edit" button at the top right of the "History" screen and tap the button to Delete. You can delete all of the history by tapping the Erase All button at the top left of the screen. You may get a full summary and see a graph of the session by selecting the button which is to the right of the date of the session.
This will take you to the "Summary" screen that provides some statistics and allows you to continue into the graph. In the Summary screen you find a questionnaire, where you are encouraged to answer a few questions about your sleep. This can be edited later as well. The Summary Screen allows you to add your own personal note. This is a good place to write a note to yourself regarding the entire session (inside the graph you will also be able to add notes to individual events). In the Summary screen you can also upload the session data to your computer, where you can process it with the associated software "SU Master". Using "SU Master", you'll be able to save space from your mobile device, examine your session using a more detailed graph and analyze your sleep session data with additional statistics tools. Download SU Master at: www.snoringu.com/sumaster/download/ In the Summary screen you can also erase the sound file from the session if you don't want to save it anymore.
In this graph you can see that some parts of the night were quiet (lows) while some were noisy (peaks). The red horizontal line marks the set noise threshold. The pushpins in the graph show "events" that occurred. Red pushpins are for application events (nudges of vibration or playing a message), green pushpins are for user events (such as if the user changed setting or paused the application) and blue pushpins are for external events (like sms and phone calls).
A graph showing the whole sleep session can be crowded, so you can zoom into interesting places in the graph. Do this using the "+" and "-" icons or pinching and dragging your fingers until you zoom on the desired period. This app is capable of zooming in up to a level of about 1 minute. In the graph a red pushpin indicates a "nudge". If you tap a pushpin, you will receive pop-ups describing it. In the image to the right, you can see a rather rhythmic noise pattern just before the red pushpins and a significant drop in the noise after them, which is a characteristic pattern of snoring followed by a successful nudge. If the session was recorded, you can hear the recording by clicking the Play button. You can send the session data and the graph screenshot by e-mail by clicking the "Send Mail" button at the top right of this screen.

Settings

SettingsTab For best use, it is advised that you familiarize yourself with the different settings of this program. The app comes with factory set defaults for standard use but you may want to tweak the setting to your particular environment and preferences.

Note that all settings that you change are being remembered indefinitely by the iPhone/iPad.

Sensitivity: This determines how sensitive the device is to the ambient noise and to your snoring. To modify the sensitivity, tap the arrow button which is to the right of the current sensitivity level row. This will take you to another window where you will be able to modify the sensitvity and experiment with it.
To increase the sensitivity, and respond to the softest of noises, drag the bar all the way to the left. To make it respond only to the loudest snoring, drag it all the way to the right.
The Sensitivity level should be close to the ambient noise level measured by the gauge pin.
Themes: Here you can choose between a variety of graphic themes that will be displayed on the different screens.
Nudge Vibration: (iPhone only): You can choose between five vibration lengths.
Play Nudge Sound: The device plays a selected recording when snoring is detected.
- Select Sound: The name of the sound clip to play. Pressing the "Change" button will take you to the "Pick a Nudge" screen.
- Volume: This sets the volume of the played sound clip. You can select the best volume using "Play Nudge Sound" and experimenting with the volume to make sure that it is not too loud or too soft.
Max # of Nudges: This sets the maximum on the number of nudges that "Snoring U" can make through one session. This option is any number between 1 and 100. The factory default is 10.

Advanced Settings

The Advanced Settings includes some additional settings that affect the way SU determines when to nudge the user.

Snores to Wait: This determines how many snores SU identifies before activating the nudge. Any number between 1 and 20 can be selected. The factory default is set to 4.
Shortest Snore: This defines the length of the shortest sound (louder than the noise threshold) that is considered to be a possible snore. It prevents SU from thinking that a loud but short sound is a possible snore. The factory default is 0.4 second. Setting the value to a very low number will cause the application to respond to sharp, abrupt noises that are not necessarily snores.
Longest Snore: This defines the length of the longest sound (louder than the noise threshold) that is considered to be a possible snore. This is an optional option and prevents SU from thinking that a loud but long sound is a possible snore. The factory default is 2 seconds.
Longest Silence: This determines how many seconds of silence need to pass after a snore before SU stops counting the number of snores to activate a nudge. If another snore is detected, SU restarts counting until "Snores to Wait" is reached. The factory default is set to 5 seconds.
Longer silences may be used by people suffering from sleep apnea.
Wait After Nudge: This determines how many seconds must elapse after a nudge before SU listens for snores again. The factory default is set to 30 seconds. If the factory defaults are retained, after 4 snores, SU will activate the nudge (vibrate and/or play a sound clip). It will then wait 30 seconds without listening to snores, count 4 new snores and then reactivate the nudge.
Auto Increase: This enables the user to optionally select a factoring number that gradually increases the "Wait after Nudge" period. A number between 1 and 10 can be selected. For example: By setting this value to 2, the "Wait After Nudge" to 10 and the "Snores to Wait" to 4, the following actions take place:
1. After 4 snores, SU activates the action
2. It then waits 30 seconds without listening to snores.
3. It listens until it counts 4 more snores and then it reactivates the action.
4. It then waits 60 seconds before it listens and recounts snores.
5. Next time it will wait 120 seconds, and so on.
The factory default for this option is 1 (which means that the "Wait After Nudge" does not change).
Send anonymous data: Enables the developer to collect various application events to facilitate further optimization of the product. No personal information or sound recordings are included.
Factory Defaults: Choosing this option reverts all of the settings and the advanced settings to the factory default settings.

Pick a Nudge

This screen is accessed from the "Settings" screen "Select sound" option, by tapping "Change".

It enables you to manage the list of sound clips played during a nudge (if this option is turned on). To choose a sound clip, simply highlight a line in the scrollable list.

To record a sound clip of your own, tap the "Create New Nudge" button.

First, name the sound clip by taping the name field and using the keyboard. Then, press the "Record" button and record your message. When you are done press "Stop". Then you can listen to your message by pressing "Play" and "Record Again" if you need to. When you are satisfied with the results press "Save" at the top right of the screen. Your new recording will then be listed in the "Nudge" list. The clip will only be used after you select it in the "Select sound" list.

To delete a sound clip, select "Edit" at the top right of the screen, and then click the button next to the clip you wish to delete. You will then need to confirm the deletion by clicking the "Delete" button.

Support

For support, please write to snoring@snoringu.com

Updates will occur frequently in the iTunes App Store.

Read here about some of the features we plan for Future Versions.