Special Kid-Friendly Sleep/Activity Tracker?
December 14, 2018 7:03 AM Subscribe
We (the caregivers of an epileptic, developmentally-delayed six year old) are looking for recommendations for a consumer-grade wearable that might help monitor the kid's day-to-day sleep outcomes and certain physiological responses at school.
It should:
- have robust sleep sensing/analysis capacity;
- track and log pulse/stress during waking hours;
- be water resistant and hard for a small child to remove and lose; and
- have minimal/hide-able screen and/or physical interfaces that could be distracting or be otherwise messed with without external software management
It'd be nice if it:
- were fully water proof;
- could map movements by GPS; and
- had a really long charge cycle.
It should:
- have robust sleep sensing/analysis capacity;
- track and log pulse/stress during waking hours;
- be water resistant and hard for a small child to remove and lose; and
- have minimal/hide-able screen and/or physical interfaces that could be distracting or be otherwise messed with without external software management
It'd be nice if it:
- were fully water proof;
- could map movements by GPS; and
- had a really long charge cycle.
This thread is closed to new comments.
- Sleep tracking is decent. Or, at least, it roughly reflects the way I feel my night went most of the time.
- Stress tracking also seems fairly accurate (I never realized how much reading the MiFi politics thread gets my heartrate going until I got this device).
- Waterproof.
- Regular watchband type buckle; I don't know if this would be to easy to remove, but it definitely doesn't come off accidentally.
- The screen is not big, and you can set its "do not disturb" time to be all day, meaning that moving your wrist wouldn't turn it on. The tap to access mode is kind of tricky for an adult trying to use it; I think it would be pretty unlikely for a kid to figure it out on their own.
But:
- No GPS
- Charge cycle is OK. I can go about 5-6 days on a charge, and that is with phone notifications for everything turned on. If you turned that option off for your kid, I'll bet you could charge once a week. This is way better than most rechargeable options out there. My previous band, a Fitbit Flex 2, needed charging almost every other day.
The Garmin Vivosmart 3 is cheaper and has pretty much the same capabilities, I think, just a generation older and a little bulkier. The Vivofit Jr 2 is designed for kids, and the nice thing about it is its replaceable battery, which is supposed to last about a year. However, it won't do stress tracking (no HR monitor), and ironically, the screen is probably more distracting as it's designed to be easier for a kid to interact with.
posted by Kriesa at 9:41 AM on December 14, 2018