How to track sleep through Android app

Introduction

Our HealthKart application helps users to achieve help and fitness goal through our digital platform. Achieving help and fitness goal requires lots of things to be incorporated in daily routine and sleep is an important parameter for the same.

Sleep tracking can be done through couple of methodology and one of the popular way is to track it through smart band/watches. HealthKart app has integration with various health and fitness bands to track the sleep however we wanted to have another way to track the sleep of users through much easier way so that we can have maximize the data inputs from our users on this front.

In today’s time, all people use their phone from morning to night and first use the phone as soon as they wake up in the morning. So by using the user activity on the phone calculating the sleep time.

Now the question is what all activities are capturing for this. So the answer is only two and these are below.

• User device screen comes in On Mode by user intention or any other application eg. phone ringing.
• User device screen goes into Off Mode.

Android Components used for this

• Started Service
• BroadcastReceiver

Steps for using Android Components

1. Create a SleepTrackerService that extends Service Class.

class SleepTrackerService : Service() {

  override fun onBind(p0: Intent?): IBinder? {
    return null
  }


  override fun onStartCommand(intent: Intent?, flags: Int, startId: Int): Int {
    Log.i(TAG, "Sleep Tracker Service")
    return START_NOT_STICKY
  }

  override fun onDestroy() {
    super.onDestroy()
  }

}

2. Make two BroadcastReceiver  ScreenOnReceiver and ScreenOffReceiver. So these two receivers for checking when the screen is coming in ON Mode and OFF Mode.  Register both the receivers in the Service class of onStartCommand method.

private var screenOffReceiver: ScreenOFFReceiver? = null
private var screenOnReceiver: ScreenONReceiver? = null

screenOffReceiver = ScreenOFFReceiver()
val offFilter = IntentFilter(Intent.ACTION_SCREEN_OFF)
registerReceiver(screenOffReceiver, offFilter)

screenOnReceiver = ScreenONReceiver()
val onFilter = IntentFilter(Intent.ACTION_SCREEN_ON)
registerReceiver(screenOnReceiver, onFilter)

3. To keep running the service in the background and the kill state of the application used the foreground service.

val notificationManager =getSystemService(Context.NOTIFICATION_SERVICE) as NotificationManager
createNotificationChannel(notificationManager)

val notificationIntent =
  Intent(this, SleepTrackerActivity::class.java)
val uniqueInt = (System.currentTimeMillis() and 0xfffffff).toInt()
val pendingIntent =
  PendingIntent.getActivity(
    this,
    uniqueInt,
    notificationIntent,
    PendingIntent.FLAG_CANCEL_CURRENT
  )

val builder: NotificationCompat.Builder =
  NotificationCompat.Builder(this, SLEEP_CHANNEL_ID)
builder.apply {
  setContentText("Sleep Tracking")
  setSmallIcon(R.drawable.notification_icon)
  setAutoCancel(true)
  setChannelId(SLEEP_CHANNEL_ID)
  priority = NotificationCompat.PRIORITY_HIGH
  addAction(R.drawable.blue_button_background, "TURN OFF", pendingIntent)
}

val notification = builder.build()
notification.flags = Notification.FLAG_ONGOING_EVENT

startForeground(SLEEP_NOTIFICATION_SHOW_ID, notification)

4. Now calculate the timing in ScreenOnReceiver and ScreenOffReceiver.

inner class ScreenOFFReceiver : BroadcastReceiver() {
  override fun onReceive(context: Context, intent: Intent) {
  }
}

inner class ScreenONReceiver : BroadcastReceiver() {
  override fun onReceive(context: Context, intent: Intent) {
  }
}

5. Unregister the receivers in onDestroy method when service is destroyed.

override fun onDestroy() {
  screenOffReceiver?.let {
    unregisterReceiver(it)
  }
  screenOnReceiver?.let {
    unregisterReceiver(it)
  }
  with(NotificationManagerCompat.from(this)) {
    cancel(SLEEP_NOTIFICATION_SHOW_ID)
  }
  super.onDestroy()
}

We capture these on/off screen event data for user and send it to backend for calculating the sleep behind scene through our algorithm.

This methodology is much easier to implement at the same time user does not need to wear his gadget all the time. Obviously there are few trade off here too however this was the balanced approach to maximize the data inputs from our end users.

This tutorial is outcome of our own experience of implementing the sleep tracking. Your suggestions and feedbacks are heartily welcome.

Photo by Lauren Kay on Unsplash