This whole project started because I have trouble falling asleep at night. I was looking at potential solutions and came across a smartphone app that produced a pattern of light to follow with your breathing as you try to fall asleep. The main problem with this is that the phone screen is so dim that you can't see it without having your eyes open! This seemed counter-productive to sleep, so I sought a better way.

This is the very first prototype of the Sleep Sensei. It consisted of a breadboard with 4 blue LEDs performing a simple brightening and dimming cycle. I chose blue LEDs since the smartphone app I used performed a similar feat, and it used blue light. This was before I began researching the effects of various colors of light on sleep quality, so I didn't really know any better.

The breadboard was clamped onto a wooden base with a pivot to allow me to aim the light towards my eyes. The idea was that the light from 4 LEDs directed towards my eyes would be bright enough to be seen with my eyes closed through my eyelds. And it worked!