If there's one thing that many techies have in common, it's some form of insomnia. Whether it's because you can't fall asleep easily, you wake up too early, or you keep waking up throughout the night, not getting a good night's sleep can seriously affect your health and productivity.

From a personal perspective, staff members here at Ars (myself included) have had trouble sleeping for many years. We run the gamut from full-on CPAP machine users, to over-the-counter and prescription medicators, to new-agey meditators, and more. And now, some of us have become gadget experimenters.

Aside from the obvious advice—"go see a doctor, you freaking tool," as forum-goers would say—we wouldn't be geeks if we didn't investigate the various technological solutions that claim to help improve our sleep cycles. Some only track the quality of your sleep, while others actually try to make it better, but we thought we'd give a rundown of what's available to try and hack a good night's sleep.

Tracking

There are a number of gadgets available that help you track how well (or poorly, as the case may be) you sleep at night. They all generally follow the same methods—you usually have to attach something to your wrist or clothing that will track the frequency and severity of your movements throughout the night. Then, you can see how many times you're waking up and attempt to adjust other things in hopes of fixing the problem.

The fitbit doesn't just track your sleep—it also tracks your physical activity. It's a tiny clip about the size of a third-gen iPod shuffle that clips onto your clothing and, if you're using it to follow your sleep patterns, will record how often you move during the night. The company claims on its FAQ page that "sleep data from the Tracker correlates very strongly with results from polysomnograms found in sleep labs," and the device will transmit your data wirelessly to both a Mac or PC. (Unfortunately, the fitbit's official release has been pushed back several times and it's not yet available.)

Similarly, sleep monitoring watches such as the SleepTracker Pro follow your nocturnal movements in the same way. However, this watch (and many others like it) also has an added feature: it will wake you up in the morning at what it considers to be the most optimal time in your sleep cycle. It determines this by the frequency of your waking periods towards the end of your sleep and determining a window of time when you should wake up, based around a "no later than this" time that you set.

The most expensive of these options, the aXbo "sleep phase alarm clock" does exactly the same thing as the other two combined, but does so wirelessly and can track two people at once. Both individuals (or just one if you're flying solo) must wear a soft armband that will transmit signals to the alarm clock across the room. The clock can gather data over a period of days and you can download it to your Mac or PC via USB. From there, you can view your individual sleep graphs. And, like the sleep monitoring watch, the aXbo lets you set a time to wake up and then wakes you up at the most optimal time for you within that window.

I have used the aXbo myself, but found it to be somewhat of a let-down. The alarm clock itself is very difficult to use without the help of its manual (and even with the manual, it wasn't exactly easy). It did, however, track my sleep movements very well. The feature that wakes you up at the "appropriate" time is easy to game, though—when you know it'll wake you up within a certain window if you're moving around too much, you learn to stay incredibly still to avoid setting the alarm off. Your mileage may vary.

Improving

So you already know you sleep like crap—what can you do to make it better? Again, there are a number of things you can try, but beware that without a doctor's diagnosis, there's no guarantee that all of them (or any of them, for that matter) will work for you. If you're looking for excuses to try out new gadgets and software, however, we suppose there's no better excuse than your sleep health.

One of the most well-known (non-medicated, anyway) methods of improving sleep is to use pzizz, a piece of software for both Mac and Windows that takes the concept of a "relaxation CD" to the next level. It pieces together unique audio soundtracks that help you to nap during the day or get to sleep at night with a mixture of voice, music, and other sound effects for every single time you use it. Theoretically, this means that your brain will never get used to the same sounds over and over. But that's not all pzizz does—the soundtracks contain inaudible "binaural beats" that supposedly stimulate a particular range of brainwave frequency to be more conducive to sleep. If it all sounds a bit new-agey to you, you can try out pzizz for free before laying down any cash.

I gave pzizz a try for roughly a week, testing out the sleep files (I don't take naps, so I didn't try the nap ones). The software is easy to use and, if you're on a Mac anyway, the files will import directly into iTunes so they can sync with your iPod. I found the audio files to indeed be soothing and falling asleep was very easy—then again, staying asleep tends to be my problem moreso than falling asleep. When you're creating the file on your computer, you can make it almost any length of time, though a minimum of 20 minutes is recommended. If you have trouble falling asleep, it's definitely worth a shot.

Another way to relieve stress and fall asleep is to try an acupressure band, like the Sleeping Aid Dreamate. Bands like this claim to massage acupoints—such as the "sleeping Golden Triangle"—in your wrists. Supposedly, this will enable to you to relax to the point of getting deeper and longer sleep without having to rely on medication.

Finally, you could try the DaVinci sleep schedule (also known as polyphasic sleep). This isn't so much a gadget as it is a method that involves sleeping in 10- or 20-minute bursts throughout the entire day. Supposedly, building up to a schedule like this allows people to sleep between two and five hours a day—much less than the typical person—and feel energized for longer. Proponents of polyphasic sleep say that this pattern mimics the sleeping pattern of infants and the body's natural sleep rhythms. Of course, the downsides to this are that you have to actually be able to nap frequently throughout the day, it practically destroys your social life, it's difficult to adjust to, and you can screw up your entire schedule by missing even one nap. However, if you're desperate to stay awake for almost 22 hours a day and try something new, have at it.

Are these things enough to turn you from an insomniac to a well-rested person? Maybe, and maybe not. Some of us at the Orbiting HQ have severe enough sleep issues that a sleep study and a CPAP machine are the only solutions (and believe us, if you have sleep apnea, it definitely helps). But if you have some time on your hands and some cash to burn, these solutions could be worth a little experimentation.