Sleep Tracking Bug for Non-standard Sleep Schedules?

[scottbutler87]

My name is Scott and I work a graveyard shift and go to school. I have a FitBit Charge 2 and the latest FitBit app. I have been frustrated with the app's sleep tracking, because it can't reliably assign sleep periods to the right day and because of this I have to manually calculate my sleep averages for a week.

Additionally, it seems as though this bug should affect users with regular sleep schedules. If any portion of my sleep period bleeds over into the next day, the FitBit app records the entire sleep period as occurring the following day. For instance, if I sleep starting at 1200 hours on Saturday and wake up at 0200 hours on Sunday, the app assigns that sleep period to Sunday even though 12 out of 14 hours occurred on Saturday. Does sleep starting at 2200 Saturday and ending 0600 Sunday get assigned to Saturday or Sunday for other users?

To help developers understand my situation, this is my ideal weekly sleep schedule:

Saturday -- 1200 to 0200 hours (14 hours, occurs Saturday but currently gets assigned to Sunday)
Sunday -- 1400 to 2200 (8 hours, but with the bug, my total sleep is 22 hours for Sunday??)

Monday -- 1400 to 2200 (8 hours)

Tuesday -- 1800 to 2200 (4 hours)

Wednesday -- 1200 to 2200 (10 hours)

Thursday -- 1800 to 2200 (4 hours)

Friday -- 1200 to 2200 (8 hours)

Total: 56 hours, 8 hours per day on average

Because the sleep tracker groups weeks as Sunday to Saturday, if the sleep from Saturday is assigned to Sunday this ruins the sleep average for both the outgoing and the incoming week.

I am currently going to school for Software Engineering, and it seems to me that if the code for the FitBit App is well-formed and well maintained, this should be a pretty quick patch. I hope this can be fixed quickly!

[USAF-Larry]

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@scottbutler87 wrote:

If any portion of my sleep period bleeds over into the next day, the FitBit app records the entire sleep period as occurring the following day.

This is not a bug, but the design of the system.  Sleep is recorded for the day on which it ends.  so, if your sleep starts at 8:00pm on Thursday and ends a 12:10am on Friday, you sleep is recorded as Friday because that is the day it ended on.

[scottbutler87]

Then perhaps the design of the system needs to be changed. According to an estimate by the CDC in 2004, at least some 15 million Americans work shift work and would be affected by this issue. Obviously the number will have grown since then.

There are a couple options for fixing this.

1. Give users the option to track sleep on the day it ends, the day it starts, or the day that the majority of the sleep occurred.
2. Determine how best to track sleep based on the sleep times the user inputs in settings.

Sleep tracking is a major reason I purchased this device, and tracking sleep is particularly important for shift workers who are typically sleep-deprived. I would be interested in hearing from a developer or moderator on this if possible.