Fascia : a sleep mask for conducting sleep studies

Abstract

In this thesis, I discuss the importance of sleep and therefore the study of sleep. I highlight limitations with existing methodologies to conduct sleep studies and collect sleep data, and present a solution to overcome current limitations by providing better mechanisms for sensing during sleep in the wild. This document details the thought process of every aspect of design and development of the progress made on the project so far. First, I present the motivation for the project and provide general background. Second, I discuss the physiological signals that sleep studies monitor and their relationship to sleep. If the reader is familiar with these physiological signals and how they are relevant to sleep studies, they should feel free to skip that section. Next, I provide an overview of some existing alternatives in the market and discuss why they do not satisfy the purpose of in-the-wild sleep studies. Next, I detail the design of the device, physically and on the system level. Then, I go into a detailed description of the components of the device in hardware, firmware, and software. I include a brief description of some of the efforts made in the code to make it easier to debug while developing. Lastly, I discuss what work was completed, and what work remains to be done. I close with a full list of the tasks remaining and some implementation concerns. There is a glossary near the end of the document of terms and acronyms I use throughout the thesis. Feel free to consult it should any confusion arise regarding the meaning of words used. The document ends with a list of appendices starting with a complete usage guide for the system in its current state. The other appendices include copies of all the firmware and software code, and circuit and PCB designs.