Tech
This music playing pillow is killing it on Kickstarter
by Richard Howard
August 4, 2016
This smart pillow will monitor your sleep, vibrate when you snore and pump out your favourite songs.
What’s that? Oh, you just picked up the newest Smart TV? Ho-hum…seen it, buddy. Here’s a question for ya – how “smart” is your pillow? If that seems like a ridiculous question, I suggest you feast your eyes on the ZEEQ Smart Pillow. According to its Kickstarter page, ZEEQ is “the super comfy pillow that plays your music, monitors and reacts to your snoring, analyzes your sleep and intelligently wakes you up.” And how exactly does this genius bit of bedding pull all of this off?
ZEEQ will help you fall asleep by allowing you to listen to music through the pillow and letting you choose music from your favorite sources. You can set a sleep timer in the app so the music will stop automatically – that way you can focus on sleep. We have even created some new relaxing tracks (some even using binaural beats) to help you fall asleep faster and achieve even more restful sleep. If ZEEQ hears snoring, it will gently vibrate the pillow to encourage a new sleeping position. Your natural sleep movements are recorded and used to wake you up at the ideal moment in your sleep cycle, making groggy mornings a thing of the past.
Oh, they ain’t playing over there at REM-Fit. The company offers a number of products designed to improve your sleep and track how it ties into your fitness regime, but this is by far their most ambitious yet. Using Bluetooth speakers, you can wirelessly stream music from your favourite sources, while snoring and sleep activity (or lack thereof) is recognized using both a microphone and motion sensors. Its rechargeable battery lasts a week (using the ubiquitous micro USB for top ups), and the ZEEQ app lets you analyze the collected sleep data as well as program your nocturnal jams.
All this comes in what they claim is “the most comfortable pillow you will ever own.” Think people will bite on the idea? Well, of their $50,000 goal, the page has so far raised over a quarter of a million dollars. Move over, dumb rectangle full of feathers.
