Total Daily Sleep Time Inaccurate

[mechanesthesia]

If you have ever slept more than once in a day in your life, forget about using Fitbit to accurately track your sleep.  No, you are not confused and there is nothing wrong with your eyes.  Apparently the developers at Fitbit are unable to program any sort of function to add your total sleep for the entire day.  In the meantime they are stealing money from us users who purchased these products and even wasted $50 for the "premium" service so we could track our sleep and get accurate sleep reports.

Nope.  Fitbit only tracks the LONGEST sleep record.  

Took a 2 hour nap? Doesn't count!

Woke up in the middle of the night, and went back to sleep?  Doesn't count!

Studies have already suggested that a monophasic 8-hour sleep schedule is a myth.  This sleep pattern has only recently been adopted with the industrial age, but yet a 1/3rd of Americans are unable to adopt this type of pattern.  Historically, a biphasic sleep schedule was more common.  They would call it "1st sleep" and "2nd sleep," where people would normally be awake for a few hours in between... Now doesn't it make sense why sometimes you wake up mid-sleep only to fall asleep a little while later?

Check out these links for more info:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16964783

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/05/8-hour-sleep-myth_n_1322376.html

Also, let's not leave out the polyphasic sleep enthusiasts...

It's frustrating just how little Fitbit understands their target market.  For those of us who like to track everything, we are on top of stuff like the aforementioned links...  Why isn't the company who is SELLING this on top of these things?

I am very upset that the people at Fitbit would go this long without noticing such a simple thing and have the audacity to sell this product like this while misleading their customers.  

EXAMPLE:

Today I took two "power naps" as seen on my log.  One for 17 mins and one for 20 mins:

In the dashboard, it only shows the longest sleep record, which is 20 mins.  This is not accurate:

The sleep report you pay $50 to see also has this erroneous information, it only shows one sleep record per day.  

It gets better.  Guess what, this is how the $50 report portrays the information to you, as a graph showing how you rank with everyone else.  If you actually add it up and average it out, it DOES NOT take into account this "missing sleep time."  It only takes into account the longest sleep record.  So if one day you slept 5 hours, then you slept another 4 hours, those 4 hours don't count and are not added to your average or to the daily totals, and if you do this more than once in a week, you can already see how your total sleep will be under-reported.

This is EXTREMELY misleading.  In my case, I actually showed these graphs to my doctor and was prescribed medicine based on it.  Can you imagine the consequences?

Moderator Edit: Subject edited for issue clarification and word choice

[Colinm39]

@NEq1GuyThe biggest complaint for the PC Dashboard is that the Fitbit software only displays a single largest segment of sleep. It sorts through the individual timed sleep periods and if a nanny nap had the largest sleep time that is what appears on the Dashboard.

If you go into the sleep area it then shows the bar graph of the total sleep time of the sleep and nanny naps..

[NEq1Guy]

@Colinm39:ah you are right, I didn't see the second graph which lists "total time slept" rather than the top one.  Unfortunately both the "times awoken" graphs are not correct.  The both display "6" for this day when the two numbers should be "8" and "9".  I think they need better graph titles as well as to fix the awoken time graphs.

[ka9568]

There are several comments I agree with.  1 this is not a full sleep lab to give you 100% (by the way will a full sleep lab give you 100%... Maybe but not guranteed.  I do understand your numbers.

I turned on my sleep function at 9:50 and off at 7:30 that is 9.5 hours... it show 8h &40min... again I was awake for 30 min and restless for 24min.  A stop watch will not give you restless hours where you are asleep but moving a lot.  For a hondo it is pretty good for me.

[Tanyak12]

Why are the restless bits in 11 minute increments!!!

[Sleeper_Awakens]

Interesting observation. From what I see in my log there seem to be a lot of 11 (or so) minutes. But I do have many that are shorter or considerably longer. Maybe 11 is what your body needs to recover from whatever awoke you and fall back to sleep.

I've kinda learned to appreciate that only one long sleep cycle is being recorded. On several ocassions I've tapped my Flex to check status only to discover that it'd gone to sleep mode. Once I observed the switch to sleep mode while using a hammer to tap a board I was bracing with my left hand.

That's not to say that multiple cycles shouldn't be recorded. But if they are, we'll need a way to tag which ones are actual sleep.

[Colinm39]

Click on your RH arrow of your sleep tile and examine.the sleep records and you hover over each in turn and delete.it or turn it into an activity record.

[Sleeper_Awakens]

I'm aware of the Sleep log and the ability to delete. Since the sleep log currently only records one per day (which is where this post started), I don't want to delete anything. What I'm saying is, if the sleep log is "upgraded" to enable multiple sleep activities, it will have to allow us to control (delete or adjust) those activities for more than one activity per day.

[bruce_]

I think it's also interesting to note that on Dashboard, there is a 12 hour clock showing where sleep-mode was activated.  Either there should be an AM and PM clock or a 24 hour pie-chart.  The folks that programmed the Fitbit and wrote the software for the webpage can certainly do better.

[Leopardfish1]

No one is asking for NASA scientist levels of accuracy, man.  We're just asking for a basic level of sleep tracking which the advertising for the device offers.  It's not even a huge stretch of programming or additional functionality.

[ToolPackinMama]

The question is why pay extra for something to track your sleep activity, when it doesn't actually track total sleep activity? 

[Sabrinamoore84]

If the charts are correct on your post and you fell asleep in 2 minutes then this is not normal. If you took two naps that day for about 20 minutes each time and you felt refreshed after then this is not normal. You probably have a sleep disorder if this is a typical pattern. Unless the fitbit is inacurate in this as well. I was going to purchase this sleep tracking service, but if it only tracks one sleep per day then it is not worth it because I take several naps per day and always wake up at least once per night. Thank you for the heads up.

[bruce_]

Yes, I do have sleep apnea. -Bruce

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[Sabrinamoore84]

I have narcolepsy so I sometimes do not even know I am asleep in the day time. Wish there was something to track that.

[TessnJess]

Indeed - but for that money a bit of accuracy would be nice.

[sgtgary]

I know this post has died some time ago but when I searched for my isuse, this is what came up (and the only thing).

I work straight night shifts 5 days a week, sleeping twice during the day, and on my days off, my sleep schedule is even worse. I am also the caregiver for my wife who needs some assistance during the day.  I was also quite disappointed to find that Fitbit doesn't summarize my daily sleep on the page for analysis.  Yeah, I know... my health and so on.  But it is what it is and this is just how I have to survive right now.

My suggestion to Fitbit would be to allow a person to set a daily "midnight" that is different from local time so that my overnight sleep schedule makes sense to the day sleepers.  Secondly, I too would like to see my daily sleep summarized on my homepage like the rest of you get.  That is all. 

🙂              Gary

[GoMo2014]

Point made. Now go take a nap !

[ladybrit]

I just upgrade to the premium and was hoping the visuals would be a bit clearer before I go to the Doctor next week, but I don't see a difference at this point.  When I first used the fitbit my sleep was perfect and then nows it's all over the place.  I've gone from 7 hrs sleep a night to 2.3 hrs while laying in bed for 8 hours.  Nothing's changed except it's gotten really cold outside.. I thought Premium would have better graphs that would show clearly the difference between sleep (REM) and nonRem .... don't really want to do a sleep study!  How can I cancel the Premium.  I can't see any phone numbers, address or e-mail addresses to contact anyone.  Also I'm a very healthy 70 year old, and this is very discouraging!

[ladybrit]

How did you manage to make a copy of your sleep summary ... something I've tried and been unable to do!  I just signed up for Premium so perhaps that will help.  I wanted to show my doctor my sleep patterns!  Thank you!

[GoldaT]

You might want to check the FitBit site and ask how to cancel Premium.  Also, if you have a receipt, there may be information on it.  Googling FitBit Premium might also be an option. As for printing the graphs, I just right click on the graph page and "print" comes up as an option ---- I'm using a PC with Windows 7 (don't know if that matters). GoldaT.

[GoldaT]

@Sabrinamoore84:  I know this response is a long time coming and I don't know if you've received any solutions.  I found that I could record more than one sleep per day just by clicking on sleep tab and entering the new information ---- it will be recorded along with the original tracked sleep; so this way you can monitor your naps as well.  This will give you a clear record of your day's sleep and show any patterns that may be there.  Good luck.  GoldaT.