Understanding Data Usage: Sleepme vs. Other Smart Home Devices

The Chilipad Dock Pro and Sleepme Sleep Tracker are both Wi-Fi enabled smart devices, and they both send and receive data from the Internet. But what data is being sent back and forth, and how much?

Let’s dive into what kind of data these devices transmit on your network, and how the usage compares to other common devices you’ll find in your home.

Why Does Data Usage Matter?

With today’s homes having an ever increasing amount of smart, internet-connected devices - having devices that clearly identify how much data they use, and what they use that data for is a critical step in protecting your privacy and fostering trust between smart device manufacturers and customers.

As software in general grows in complexity and functionality, it can easily become chatty and bloated, i.e. sending data that’s not providing value, or sending more data than what is necessary.

Much is the same with software on smart devices. In fact, if you track your home’s data usage, it’s very easy to see which devices are more chatty than others.

Sleepme and Data Usage

Sleepme is committed to being open and transparent when it comes to how our devices use Internet connection and what kinds of data is transmitted. We believe that being a good steward of customer data means not only trying to use as little data as possible, but also actively managing and updating the types of data we send, and making sure this data aligns with product improvement and customer experience.

Now, let’s explore common data usage on devices you might find in your home today.

Typical Smart Device Data Usage

A smart device’s data usage depends on a number of factors, including the types of data that’s being downloaded and uploaded, and how often that device is transmitting that data.

For example, streaming music or video can be very data-heavy, even if use is intermittent throughout the day:

• Music can range between 50 - 100MB/hour [1]
• Video can range between 700MB - 1GB/hour [2]

Smart devices, while usually sending much smaller data frames less often, can vary depending on usage and the types of data they are sending back:

• Smart plugs, smart lights, and thermostats range from 50MB / month. [3]
• Smart doorbells and cameras can use 50-300GB a month, depending on image quality and how often video is uploaded. [4]

Given this large range, let’s take a real world example - my house. We’ll take a look at the last full month, April 2024. I have Sleepme devices, along with other common smart home devices, providing an ample representation of what you might expect to see in your own home.

Just to note, I’m using an eero network which provides me the ability to view data usage (download and upload) across all my devices.

Chilipad Dock Pro Data Usage

My personal Dock Pro utilizes a standard sleep schedule with 4 temperature events throughout the night, and it is most likely running 9-10 hours per day.

This chart illustrates that my Dock Pro uses a small amount of data - evenly split between upload and download data, which equates to less than 2mb per day, or 40-60mb per month.

Sleep Tracker Data Usage

My personal Sleepme Sleep Tracker receives approximately 9-10 hours of data each night. This chart illustrates that my tracker overwhelmingly uploads more than it downloads - specifically, it downloads live data streamed to the cloud from the sleep tracker’s sensor readings.

All in all, data usage is usually less than 50mb for a full night, averaging just over 1GB per month.

Google Home

My Google Home System displays pictures and responds to voice commands. My household mainly uses it to add items to our to-do or shopping lists, and to check the weather.

Regardless, it can rack up over 600MB a day. In fact, mine used 11.2GB last month!

Google Pixel 8 Data Usage

I use my cell phone for both work and personal purposes. I often use it to take photos, check stocks, browse the web, and control smart home devices like cameras.

I don't recall what happened on April 20th, but I clearly uploaded a significant amount of data that day! Therefore, it’s evident that I easily use 1 gig or more per day and I totaled 30GB of usage last month.

My Work Laptop

For work I do a large amount of development, send and receive emails, video calls, YouTube videos, music, etc. and I used 67 GB from my laptop alone last month.

Family AppleTV

With streaming rates approaching 1 gigabyte an hour of streaming video, it’s no surprise our AppleTV took the cake for data usage last month. A staggering 255 GB of videos were played!

Data Usage Product Comparison

Let’s chart all this out for easy comparison:

It’s pretty clear our devices use very little data compared to all sorts of smart devices in a home today. Moreover, I’ve included example usage of another smart bed product that reports a 20x increase in data usage, compared to Sleepme, to track sleep and bed temperatures!

Though we do expect Sleepme usage to grow over time, as we work towards better features and integrations, we promise to not only keep you informed - but to also keep data usage to a minimum.

What data are Sleepme devices sending and downloading?

Okay - so what are we actually downloading and uploading from our devices? Let’s break it down in a chart:

All Devices

All devices need the ability to download new firmware for additional features and bug requests.

Uploaded data includes basic information about the device when it connects (MAC address, firmware version, hardware version, etc.).

Devices also report back any kinds of error conditions and metadata around those issues.

In addition, we include a variety of debugging messages - such as why the device is making certain decisions, or the internal state of the device, including Wi-Fi signal strength to help us debug how strong your device’s connection is.

Chilipad Dock Pro

The Chilipad Dock Pro downloads its sleep programs data at connection time, and keeps it stored in memory even if the unit disconnects from Wi-Fi or enters airplane mode. It is also able to receive manual commands to turn the unit on/off, change temperature, including AI temperature controls, and other product settings.

Unique to the Dock Pro is an uploaded event log - this allows us to populate the Recent Activity log.

Non-wearable Sleep Tracker

The sleep tracker’s unique data is mainly the sensor data when you are on your bed. The tracker uploads data every 10 seconds when you’re on your bed, allowing for the calculations of heart rate, sleeping HRV, respiration rate, as well as your sleep stages.

You can learn more about the other sleep metrics the tracker collects and how it works.

The tracker also sends your room’s temperature and humidity to feed into our AI-driven real-time temperature adjustment system to make informed changes through the night.

Is WiFi Required?

For the sleep tracker, yes. It requires Internet connection. However, the Chilipad Dock Pro has numerous functionalities that can be accessed without connecting to the Internet, and it can be put into airplane mode after initial setup.

For example, sleep programs are downloaded to the unit on first connection to the internet. To enjoy automated temperature adjustments offline, let your unit connect and receive its sleep programs, and then turn the unit to airplane mode.

As always, the Chilipad Dock Pro can also run manually without any Internet at all - you can turn the unit On, Off, and adjust the temperature by using the buttons on the face of the control unit.

Closing & Commitment

For the sleep tracker, yes. It requires Internet connection. However, the Chilipad Dock Pro has numerous functionalities that can be accessed without connecting to the Internet, and it can be put into airplane mode after initial setup.

For example, sleep programs are downloaded to the unit on first connection to the internet. To enjoy automated temperature adjustments offline, let your unit connect and receive its sleep programs, and then turn the unit to airplane mode.

As always, the Chilipad Dock Pro can also run manually without any Internet at all - you can turn the unit On, Off, and adjust the temperature by using the buttons on the face of the control unit.