Samsung SmartThings: company launches sleep tracker and connected home hub

Samsung has unveiled a new sleep tracker, letting people put a white disc under their bed that watches them while they sleep and control their home.

The SleepSense was one of a range of new products unveiled at the IFA tradeshow in Berlin as part of Samsung’s SmartThings range of devices for connecting up people’s homes. They include sensors and controllers – so that people can switch on their lights before they get in the house, for instance.

The sleep sensor is intended to let people track and analyse their sleep. It sits under the bed monitoring breathing and other measurements to track how deeply people are sleeping – and then presents that in a points and graph system.

As well as providing in-depth measurements, the disc can also create “the best environment for falling and staying asleep”, according to the company. By hooking up to internet-enabled devices, it can control the entire house – so that it can switch off a TV when its owner nods off, or turn up the air conditioning on a warm night.

It can also control devices when it senses that people have woken back up. An internet-connected coffee machine could turn on as people get up, for instance, and smart curtains can open.

That is powered by Samsung’s broader commitment to the internet of things – the idea that in years to come, more and more devices will be able to go online and talk to one another. The company’s vision is built around its SmartThings team, which makes a kind of operating system so that devices from various manufacturers can control one another.

Samsung unveiled new products for that ecosystem including an updated SmartThings hub. That hub is intended to sit in the middle of the home, connecting everything else together – talking to cameras so that they can be viewed remotely, for instance, and alerting their owners if they see anything unusual.