New Device Monitors Conditions To Help People Sleep Better

By John Dodge

CHICAGO (CBS) -- When somebody wakes up "on the wrong side of the bed," we know one thing: That person is cranky due to poor sleep.

However, determining why somebody slept poorly is often unknown.

Short of heading to a sleep clinic to determine the root cause, many people simply go through their routine not knowing if there is something they could do to fix the problem.

That is the mission of developers at a company called Hello, which is developing a device that is designed to monitor a series of factors while a person is sleeping.

Hello launched a Kickstarter campaign and has easily exceeded its goals. More contributions are coming in each day.

Sense is a spherical gadget that is designed like the Beijing Olympics Station (aka the "bird nest.")

Sense monitors temperatures, light, noise and particulates during your sleep cycle and uploads that information to an app that gives you a sleep score. Using the data, a person having trouble sleeping can make adjustments that could lead to a better slumber.

Sense also has a smart alarm that measures your sleep cycle and will make you up at the right time. For example, let's say a person sets their alarm to wake up at 6:30 a.m.

However, that person is actually in a light state of sleep at 6:15.

Sense will wake you before you fall into a deeper sleep and wake up feeling groggy.

Sense also comes with a little device called Sleep Pill. It attaches to a pillow and invisibly tracks sleep at night. Sense knows when the user is falling asleep, soundly asleep, thrashing about, or waking up.

You can read more about the technology behind Sense here.

The company aims to deliver the first devices to Kickstarter backers in November.