Merge multiple sleep fragments into one sleep log and score

[PeterMikl]

I am constantly being awakened in the middle of the night because I have 4-year old twins (one with autism which means his sleep cycle is all over the map). When I am awakened, I am usually moving around (taking kids to the toilet, changing night-time nappies, soothing kids with bad dreams, switching beds to better quieten a kid so the rest of the house can sleep, getting a glass of water, etc.). I also use the Surge automatic sleep recording feature to track my sleep. I don't want to have to sstart or stop recording anything manually.

On many nights, if I get up, the Surge will create multiple sleep logs. At 4am, it has done this when I have been awake for 9 minutes or more. At 7am, it has done this when I have been up for less than a minute - and yes, sometimes I go back to bed after 7am while my wife takes over after my nighttime "shift". These multiple sleep logs are inaccurate because that 9 minutes, or 1 minute, or whatever it is isn't counted as awake time.

All I need is a single command to merge the multiple logs into a single log with the gaps between logs calculated as awake time. This would solve all the display issues with multiple logs, and give me a much clearer view of my entire night. I would have a single sleep pattern graph and a single sleep log calculation.

Moderator Edit: Clarified subject and labels

[GraceGFitbit]

This is a nice suggestion @SunsetRunner, many thanks for sharing. I think most of us wake up at least once during the night so, this idea can do more practical to check this data. We look forward to hearing what other community members think.

[BradleyPJ]

This would be great, I have a medical condition that if it doesn't wake me up the medical alerts do so it would be amazing for us disabled folk to

[SunsetRunner]

I wake up multiple times and agree that the time split is very annoying

Signed the old person

[karoberto]

I wake up every night, but only sometimes Fitbit split my sleeping stats and this is very annoying.

I think it would be useful if there was a way to merge these sleeping stats.

Or let us know when and why they were split.

[ParkPark]

It's sometimes possible to merge the different sections of sleep manually, but the results aren't entirely predictable.

The data is still there for the entire period, even though it's split into sections in the traces. The way to unite the two sections is by deleting the second section, and then extending the first one so that it covers both periods of sleep. Unfortunately, it's unpredictable is on two fronts.

The first issue is that you might well end up with a much higher figure for the time asleep than you should. That's because unless you got up and did something, it's likely that you were fairly still during the period you were awake, and that stillness might now be interpreted as your having been in either light or REM sleep. There's a suggestion elsewhere that we should be able to redefine those periods manually, which would obviously help with this.

The second issue is that if your first period of sleep wasn't long or good enough to allow for the full analysis, but the second section was good enough, you'll lose the full analysis of the second section when you merge the sections. It might be that you can get around this by deleting the first section and extending the second section, but I haven't tried that yet.

Something else to note is that if you make a mistake in editing the data, you can end up losing the flag that the code uses to determine which sort of analysis to perform. (This flag is speculation on my part – I don't have access to the raw data, and am only making observations on how it seems to work.) To give one example, the flag can be lost if you accidentally brush the am/pm slider, and radically alter the time you were asleep for. Once it's gone, there's no way to get it back. The data is still the same, presumably, but the indicator has gone, and that's that.

If the flag could also be set manually, it should be possible to get back to the full analysis, but it's not possible at the moment. Being able to set the flag manually would also allow users to avoid the second issue mentioned above.

Another bizarre issue arises around the question of afternoon naps. I'm occasionally lucky enough to be able to take one when I haven't had a good night's sleep, but when that happens you can end up with the two separate traces being joined together, at least in the Sleep list (this behaviour might have changed recently, however, perhaps even retrospectively).

Anyway, there's certainly a lot that could be done to allow users to improve the accuracy and usefulness of their sleep traces.

[Kcinalaska]

I often wake up during the night and sometimes read for an hour or so.  Then I go back to sleep.  For some reason my Fitbit often only records the first period of sleep, so it often looks like I only get 3 or 4 hours of sleep.  Why doesn’t my device pick up the rest of my sleep.  This is really aggravating.

[Rich_Laue]

A couple of years ago Fitbit started merging periods of sleep when the awake time is 60 minutes or less. 

For me, if I'm awake longer I'm fine having a desperate report. 

[RunningAmy]

I frequently wake up for an hour or two as well around 3-5am. Like  Park Park above, I sometimes delete the 2nd section then edit the first to include both, but then it overcorrects and overestimates my sleep during that time. It does however sometimes add the analysis to the sections that were too short to get stats for.

It would be good if FB were smarter about this. We've already told the device what our basic sleep hours are, so it could estimate during this time that 2 separate sleep events might be combined.

[Rich_Laue]

Personally I like the way Fitbit treats it and seems natural to me.

Fitbit merges when the 2 sleep records are up to an hour apart. 

Longer than this Fitbit assumes the user was really awake and doesn't try to record it as sleep time. 

[eluvittar]

@Rich_Laue  the challenge with that is that, if its within the same night - while averaging it for the week, it does not really add the times. SO lets say i slept for 3 hrs, then woke up to tend a crying baby and slept after 2 hrs , for 3 more hrs - instead of counting 6 hrs of sleep, it will only count 3 hrs of sleep for averaging.

[SunsetRunner]

I'm quite often awake for extended periods during the night and it's frustrating that Fitbit doesn't have the intelligence to keep a continuous log. It's hardly rocket science to default to this (i.e. all time between sleep and wake targets is counted as a single episode). Manually editing the sleep logs is a third-rate solution to a problem that really shouldn't exist!

[Rich_Laue]

Actually @SunsetRunner fitbit does mergeultiple sleep periods, as long as the wake period is 60 minutes or less. An awake period of over an hour really can not be considered a continuous period of sleep. 

[SunsetRunner]

That's as may be, @Rich_Laue , but most people consider their main sleep period to be a single entity, even if they're awake for more than an hour. Fitbit is imposing an artificial constraint that doesn't fit in with user aspirations, and it could easily be fixed by, say, letting the user specify the maximum awake period. After all, sleep tracking is particularly useful for those of us with interrupted sleep! This would only apply to the main sleep period (as per target start/finish times) so as to correctly track daytime naps. Not that I ever fall asleep after dinner. No sir...

[SunsetRunner]

For me there are two things here. One is that when I experience sleeping continuously and unconsciously all night Fitbit is often cutting 3 hours off my reported sleep

The second is that sometimes there really is a wake of 10-60 minutes, but Fitbit displays separate sleeps and just adds one or the other to my sleep score. 

It also detects exercise when I'm driving or on the train and I wake up having completed 500 steps already. The only (and very hard to find) setting is "more sensitive". Since it's seeing things that aren't there I would prefer "less sensitive" or even more granular control. 

Clearly there's a lot of work to be done for people that are interested in health metrics but not social media.

[jazzbrag]

Many of us, particularly those over 65, have fragmented sleep.  Example: Sleep Period is set from 9:30pm to 7:30am.  But my tracker sees a sleep fragment from 9:30 to 11:45 pm and sometimes records that as the current day (pm), and sometimes records it as the next day (am day).  Then I get another sleep fragment from 1 am to 7 am that night which get scored in isolation.   Fitbit should collate all sleep fragments within the logged Sleep Period and score the aggregate, rather than trying to decided which day it belongs to, that way all sleep in one night gets counted and scored for that night.

Moderator edit: Subject for clarity and labels.

[YojanaFitbit]

Hi @jazzbrag, and thanks for taking the time to share your suggestion about having the option to auto collate all sleep fragments for one Sleep Score! We rely on feedback like yours to help us develop products and features that we know our community wants to see. If your suggestion receives votes from other customers and gains popularity, it will be shared internally with various teams at Fitbit. To learn more about how Fitbit decides which suggestions get developed, visit our FAQs.

Watch this space for status updates! In the meantime, try visiting our Lifestyle Discussion Forum to talk with other members about all things health and fitness.

[MegMarieV]

Yes!! It would be very useful to have the ability to combine sleep logs. I have to wake up early to drive my daughter to the bus stop but then often come back and go back to sleep. So I’m awake for about 40 minutes and Fitbit uses that break to create two separate sleep logs. 

I’ve read the suggestions to just delete one and manually add that time onto the other, but then I lose the HR data from the one that I delete. I’d love the ability to merge the two together. 

[Lurker1234567]

I agree about the fragments. And I hope that’s not an over 65 thing or there’s something really wrong with me in my 30s hahaha. I slept from 1-2 and 4-530 but it didn’t seem to think that’s just how I sleep in a night? Apparently that’s two separate sleep events? So rolling them together would be lovely. Except I don’t like the sleep score thing they do. Obscure and nonsensical. I would like that gone altogether.

[Rich_Laue]

Maybe it is because of all the activity since Fitbit's logic will combine sleep periods of under 60 minutes. 

[NeedSleep10]

4 to 5 nights a week I have broken sleep:  to bed between 10:45 and 12:30, sleep for 3 to 5 hours, wake up and stay awake for 30 to 90 minutes, then back to bed to sleep a couple hours more.  Depending when I go to sleep, I sometimes get up after 9:30 because of the break I take in the middle of the night.  The sleepbit almost never shows me anything but my first sleep!!!!  I NEED to have both my sleep periods combined (now I can't even see any but the first most of the time) for the fitbit to help me at all!!!!!   

I was told by one tech support person that you could only be up for less than 15 minutes, or the fitbit cuts you off.  Another told me I had to sleep three hours straight on my 2nd sleep before the sleep information would be included.  I almost never meet either of the two restrictions, because when I find myself completely awake in the middle of the night, it takes me more than a half hour (average about 45 minutes) to relax enough to go back to sleep.  Since my first sleep is almost always the longest, I don't need a full three hours in my second sleep.

Could the developers either (1) change the parameters to it's OK to take a break for up to an hour and forget about any max hours sleep to be included [or assume at least one hour] to allow a merge; (2)  combine ALL sleep from 9 pm one night to 10:30 am the next day, into the "sleep to prepare one for functionality" on that second day.  I can imagine other sets of rules (including some specifiable by the client), but the main thing is that I need all my sleep periods of the same night combined for my stats on deep, REM and light sleep!  Sleep done sitting on my couch in front of the TV set could count too.

[jazzbrag]

If the Fitbit simply collated all sleep fragments during the user's programmed sleep times, it would make writing the code so much easier for them and give the user ultimate flexibility, as each user would program in their own sleep period.  How many/how long one's wake/sleep periods are would be irrelevant. 

Linda Sparks

[jazzbrag]

Well, last night had one of my best sleeps in a long time  (9:30pm to 7am).  My Versa didn't agree--logging only 9:30 to 1:30am.  Something's not right

[jazzbrag]

Follow up on last night.  Versa thought about my last nights sleep for another hour or so, then credited me with the 8+ hours I slept and gave me a sleep score based on the total.   I'm thinking maybe Versa is sleep deprived.

[Retrofemme]

I also want the program to track sleep better. I have young children and my sleep is quite fragmented with 15, 30 or more minutes passing between my head on the pillow. I assumed when I entered my target sleep hours, Versa Fitbit would group all those times into one sleep "night". It does not. While it's funny to show husband I got 1.25 hours of sleep, I know it's not the truth. Especially when the next day shows I got 12 hours of sleep, which is impossible to squeeze into a 9pm-6am sleep schedule (without a time travel device). Am I missing something?

[NeedSleep10]

The suggestion of Linda Sparks, for the user to describe their sleep
pattern to the fitbit and have the fitbit software tie all the sleep/awake
during that period together, would help me a great deal. I have broken
sleep many times a week, sometimes VERY broken.

I would also propose that the user could both give their usual sleep
pattern hours (to tie together all awake and sleep periods between 10 pm
and 9am, say), and also have the possibility of over-riding that "customary
pattern" on any particular day (say, I didn't get any sleep last night, so
I'm going to bed gonight at 8 pm tonight OR I just got home at 2:30 pm and
will try to sleep until noon for a change). In the case of both "usual
pattern" and "over-ridden pattern" days, if the user appears to the fitbit
to be asleep at the end sleep pattern hour that have been specified by the
user, the tracking and recording should not be cut off until the user
appears to have awoken from that sleep.

Also allowing the user to re-over-ride or just over-ride the end of the
sleep period in the middle of a night if they wish.