Introduction to a Method for Manufacturing a Sleep-Monitoring Pillow

　　As the pace of life accelerates, people’s health is increasingly under threat, and everyday stress continues to mount. Many working adults and older adults experience sleep problems to varying degrees, with symptoms such as excessive dreaming, insomnia, and snoring afflicting a significant portion of the population. Sleep is a vital physiological state; from a physiological perspective, it serves as a process of synthesis and energy storage, representing the body’s natural phase of rest and recovery.

　　However, when the body transitions from a state of normal health to “subhealth” or even “unhealthy” status, the processes of synthesis and storage also change accordingly. Some people purchase sleep-assistance pillows, but in most cases these pillows do not provide targeted therapeutic benefits; as a result, patients can only seek medical care to alleviate their sleep problems. Yet, given the unique nature of each case, physicians can only make judgments based on oral symptoms and other external manifestations, making it difficult to accurately diagnose and treat the underlying condition.

　　To overcome the aforementioned shortcomings of the prior art, technicians have developed a sleep-monitoring pillow capable of real-time monitoring and recording of physiological data during sleep. The technical solution comprises a sleep-monitoring pillow consisting of a pillow body and a monitoring device housed within the pillow body. The monitoring device includes a signal-processing module, a signal-acquisition module, a power-supply module, a microcontroller-control module, and a wireless-transmission module. The power-supply module provides power to the other modules; the signal-acquisition module comprises MEMS sensors and a spirometry-sensing module, with the microcontroller-control module connected to the spirometry-sensing module; and the wireless-transmission module is configured to transmit signals processed by the microcontroller-control module to a mobile terminal.

　　The signal acquisition module is responsible for collecting environmental signals, including whether a person is sleeping, whether the body is awake and turning over, as well as heart rate, respiratory rate, and snoring intensity. The MEMS sensor and the spirometer sensing module work in coordination: the MEMS sensor is a piezoelectric sensor that generates a weak voltage when a person lies down. The signal processing module amplifies this weak voltage signal and then feeds it to the microcontroller-based control module.

　　Meanwhile, the sensor module of the gyroscope directly transmits information such as the pillow’s placement status to the MCU control module. After the MCU control module analyzes and processes this data, it is sent via the wireless transmission module to a mobile terminal, enabling direct monitoring and diagnosis by the patient’s family or physicians. The signal processing module comprises a connected amplification circuit and a secondary amplification circuit; both circuits include an operational amplifier and three fixed resistors, which respectively amplify the received signal. The two-stage amplification ensures that the signal is clearer and more reliable. The power supply module includes a plug, a charging circuit, and a voltage regulation circuit. The wireless transmission module supports Bluetooth, Zigbee, or Wi-Fi transmission.

　　Compared with the prior art, the aforementioned sleep-monitoring pillow offers the following advantages and effects: it can acquire various physiological parameters of the human body during sleep in real time, transmit these data to an MCU control system for analysis and processing, and then send the processed results via a wireless transmission module to a mobile terminal for storage and display. In this way, it not only provides accurate diagnostic evidence for medical diagnosis, but also offers great convenience to patients’ families or nurses, enabling them to monitor the patient’s sleep status at any time and facilitating timely emergency intervention.