Admit it or not, insomnia is an issue for a lot of people, mind you call it sleep disorder. Spec Computer, a company based in Japan, says its new gadget helps you find out the cause of your sleeplessness. It calls the device the ZZZ Checker and unlike similar products, it does not require additional accessories, such as bracelets or skin electrodes.

This little device sports a microphone for recording sounds while you sleep, like teeth grinding, snoring, hard breaths and such. On the other hand, the built-in infrared sensor catches visual information of you tossing around or shaking. But where there’s good news, there’s bad news as well. Thanks to the highly sensitive sensors inside that cover, 120  degrees and up to 4 meters, you only need to place it on the bedside table at night and the rest will be taken care of, but at the same time, you should give up sleeping with music playing.

Other than that, the ZZZ Checker analyses all the data that it has recorded, converting it into graphs that help you acknowledge how deep you were sleeping in three different states like light, medium and deep. You get one graph for the visual data and one for audio. All that and you should know how well you got your rest last night. This gizmo seems useful, but I must admit that the thought of a robot monitoring my sleep is a little odd to me.

For ease of use, it sports a high-contrast touch-screen display and can store time graphs of sleep habits without being connected to the PC. USB connectivity is provided to save your data for archiving or further analysis. With a size of only 108 x 80 x 37mm, it's even small enough to be carried with you for monitoring your sleep wherever you may go. Weight is also not a problem either - only 148g. An AC adapter is included in the package, a CR2032 watch battery for the time function, but for $258, they didn't include the alkaline battery too.


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