Patent ID: 8096960

Claim:
An alarm system, the alarm system comprising: a single housing that contains an accelerometer, a user interface, a display for rendering the user interface and a processing unit; wherein the single housing can be mounted to a body part; wherein the accelerometer operates to detect motion on at least one plane; wherein the user interface enables a user to program various alarm parameters and settings for the portable alarm system; wherein the processing unit is communicatively coupled to the accelerometer and the user interface and, in response to inputs from the accelerometer and the user interface, in cooperation with programming instructions, is operative to: receive a user selected alarm setting via the user interface, the alarm setting including an alarm time and a threshold value for at least one alarm; monitor the accelerometer for data indicating a positive movement; analyze the accelerometer data to establish the timing of sleep cycles and to identify shallow sleep periods of the sleep cycles; apply heuristics to estimate the conclusion of a sleep cycle based on sleep cycle data for the user by: identifying a typical sleep cycle for the user; if a sleep cycle that is substantially longer than the typical sleep cycle for a user is detected, comparing the duration of the long sleep cycle to the typical sleep cycle; if the long sleep cycle is approximately a multiple of the typical sleep cycle, concluding that the detection of one or more sleep cycles was missed; and incrementing the sleep cycle count in accordance with the estimated number of missed sleep cycles; and trigger an alarm condition when a shallow sleep period of a sleep cycle occurs within a threshold of the at least one alarm time.