Sleep more comfortably with Pepaminto
Do you sometimes feel too warm when you sleep, or are you cold when you go to bed? Then Variowell's Pepaminto mattress topper could sweeten your sleep.
The company Variowell uses an app for the Apple Watch to regulate the temperature of a foam topper. The start-up from MĂĽnster developed the mattress and app together with Bosch and is showcasing them at CES.
Variowell makes use of the principle that heat energy always spreads from a warm place to colder areas. The manufacturer has inserted thin strips of thermally conductive graphite, known as Kikoo strips, into a foam topper. These guide the body heat from the contact surface to the edges and distribute it evenly in the insulating foam. This reduces the average temperature of 32 degrees in the middle of the mattress to 22 degrees. Variowell then heats the Pepaminto topper in the foot and lumbar areas to a temperature that is comfortable for the person sleeping on it.
Data gold
What temperature this is depends on various factors, including the room temperature, the air quality in the room, the sleeper's body temperature and the sleep phase the person is in. The Apple Watch records precisely this data, Variowell evaluates it in the app and transfers it to a controller in the topper.
(Image:Â Ulrike Kuhlmann, heise online)
The heating elements in the Pepaminto topper are controlled via the controller embedded in the foam topper. This is about the size of an AppleTV and is supplied with power via USB-C. Its maximum power consumption is therefore 100 watts, but should be significantly lower in normal operation. Normally you end up with 20 watts, explains Variowell's Managing Director Tobias Kirchhoff.
Anonymized
According to Kirchhoff, you don't have to register with the manufacturer in the app, so Variowell only has access to anonymized data. But such data is also extremely valuable, Kirchhoff knows. The usual room temperature in bedrooms alone is not normally recorded; it lies somewhere between 10 and 28 degrees, he explains. If you sleep with the window open, you get more oxygen but quickly have very cold air in the room; the heated surface then ensures more comfortable temperatures without having to heat the whole room.
Compared to simple electric blankets, the intelligent overlay has clear advantages, explains Kirchhoff. Unlike electric blankets, there is no heat build-up and the mattress remains at a comfortable temperature at the end of the night. Compared to other heating systems such as a heat-regulated waterbed or intelligent toppers with heat pumps, installing the Pepaminto system is very simple: place the topper on the bed, connect the USB-C charger, activate the app on the Apple Watch and you're done.
(Image:Â Ulrike Kuhlmann, heise online)
The heat regulation of the topper works best if you also wear the Apple Watch while sleeping. This is because Variowell can then use the heart rate, for example, to determine which sleep phase the sleeping person is currently in. Without this recorded body data, the topper automatically changes temperature phases after a predefined time, for example after the predicted falling asleep phase and in the second half of the night. Various parameters such as temperature limits and interval times can be set in the app and the ambient parameters can be checked via the watch.
Variowell is initially offering the heated mattress topper in two widths of 0.90 and 1.60 meters and a length of 2 meters. The narrower version will cost 500 euros, the topper for wider beds 900 euros, and the Pepaminto app, which is only available for iOS on the Apple Watch, is free of charge.
Heise Medien is the official media partner of CES 2025. (uk)
