DIY Home Sleep Studies - Tools?

I hope this non-CPAP question is appropriate here. If there's a better forum for it, please let me know.

I'm a non-CPAP user and struggling to stay that way. Several home studies have indicated that I have borderline severe apnea but that it responds somewhat to an oral appliance and to sleep position.

So I'm trying to tune those for best effect. That requires doing my own measurements at home. I've found one tool - a Contex pulse oximeter - and am wondering if anything else is available.

In just the first few nights, the pulse oximeter indicates that my oral appliance helps the apnea. I would like to add measurement of sleep attitude because my AHI is dramatically different depending on position.

Any suggestions for how to do this? Any other thoughts?

Hi - I just sent you a PM re your question.

Has any progress been made on this in the past year? Any more tools to measure AHI at home, for example using a smartphone, pulse oximeter, etc.?

bilofsky wrote:Has any progress been made on this in the past year? Any more tools to measure AHI at home, for example using a smartphone, pulse oximeter, etc.?

you can't measure ahi without a breathing sensor in your nostrils, and preferably a chest band.

there are numerous home sleep tests available.

palerider wrote:you can't measure ahi without a breathing sensor in your nostrils, and preferably a chest band.

there are numerous home sleep tests available.

Are the home sleep tests something that I can use over and over without major costs?

The cheap pulse oximeter I bought on Amazon comes with software that prints out a report including an SpO2 index. I understand this isn't the quality of measurement obtained with more sensors, and it doesn't impress the doctors.

However, I use it to adjust my oral appliance and can see consistent measurable changes in the index with every millimeter added to the appliance setting. I believe it's a valid tool to improve my sleep and reduce my apnea.

I plan to adjust bed tilt and see if that has any effect.

I'm waiting for someone to make a smartphone app that would use a bluetooth SpO2 sensor and other inputs like sound and sleep attitude to get a better approximation to a real repeatable home sleep study.

Follow the links in my signature for old threads about building a sleep lab for some ideas: Build a Lab
With patience, you could probably find a data capable CPAP machine for less than the cost of a smart phone, though without a Rx, you would have to buy from a private seller. Bedside Zeo units show up on eBay from time to time around $150, or so, and they're still useable, see Zeo. The new ResMed S+ is getting some marginally positive reviews.