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The app can tell you which teeth are correctly cleaned (i.e. you spend enough time on it) and which teeth you forgot or went too fast. Personally I just used i

The app can tell you which teeth are correctly cleaned (i.e. you spend enough time on it) and which teeth you forgot or went too fast. Personally I just used it once and ended up removing it, but I can see some people using it to ensure their brushing is efficient. Anyway, it's completely optional, you can just use the brush ignoring the existence of the app.

dyauspitr 2y ago
That’s actually kind of cool. That’s exactly the sort of feedback that gets me to do things correctly. Detailed feedback has enabled me to consistently work out, wake up early and eat healthy. They’ve helped me keep those good habits going for 4 years now. I’m the kind of guy these apps are built for.
- leipert 2y ago
  If you don’t mind me asking, how do you keep track of eating healthy?
  - dyauspitr 2y ago
    It’s not one app but a mix of different things. Alarms to take supplements at meal times, Amazon subscriptions set to the right intervals so I always have oatmeal for my breakfast, supplements before they run out etc., alarms that tell me when to stop eating and start eating again after a 14 hour gap for IF, shopping in bulk at Costco and making sure there is nothing in the house that’s “bad” for me. I’m not tracking my meals. I did use MyFitnessPal for a bit but I didn’t find it useful.
- jjulius 2y ago
  But "detailed feedback" isn't "accurate feedback". I mean, it's pretty 'neat' that it can tell you which teeth have been 'correctly' cleaned based on the amount of time you spend in a specific spot, but is that an accurate gauge? What if you (for whatever reason, doesn't matter) only ate on the left side of your mouth for dinner? You'd spend plenty of time on the left side, but the app might tell you you've done a bad job on the right. Further, depending on what you ate, it might take longer than whatever their predetermined time is to clean the side that had a disproportionate amount of food on it. What if you have had a tough time with a couple of "problem teeth" that need a bit more love? Is the app capable of tracking where those "problem teeth" are and ensuring that you're spending extra attention there? I dunno... to me, it seems like it's a no brainer to me when my teeth are clean - I can feel it. Unless a toothbrush has some detailed sensors in the head, I'm gonna seriously doubt its ability to tell me when my teeth are actually clean.
  - TeMPOraL 2y ago
    > to me, it seems like it's a no brainer to me when my teeth are clean - I can feel it Then I envy you, because the only thing I feel that's different before and after brushing is a generalized "my mouth is sticky on the inside" feeling. I definitely lose track of how much time I spent cleaning each side relatively, and I'm sure there are areas I rarely reach because I don't know the brush isn't touching them. I'd love having a toothbrush that would monitor if I reach every spot as a baseline; I can handle my problem teeth or any eating side imbalance on my own, especially that there is no rule saying you need to brush exactly 2 minutes (or 2.5 or whatever) and not a second more - I could do my baseline and spend extra 30 seconds or so in the problem areas.
  - dyauspitr 2y ago
    Honestly it doesn’t matter, it’s gamifying the activity that makes the difference for me. At the very least I’ll spend the recommended amount of time cleaning each tooth.
  - doubled112 2y ago
    I can't even reach all of my teeth with my tongue. The ones I can always seem to feel the same unless I just drank a can of Coke. How do I know if I got them all?
- Cyriou 2y ago
  I am really interested, what do you use for waking up early?
  - dyauspitr 2y ago
    I use the wind down reminder on the Apple health app under sleep. This gives you a wind down reminder 45 mins before you need to be in bed. I built a habit to drop whatever I’m doing to start getting ready for bed at that point. I turn on sleep focus on my Apple Watch as I go to sleep and seeing that I’ve slept 7.5-8 hours under the health app (along with the deep/core sleep breakdown) gamifies this for me. Right before I sleep I also do 4-7-8 interval breathing in bed that slows down my heart rate and gets me calm and sleepy. I use a simple app called iBreathe for that. This breathing session also lets my Apple Watch give me an accurate reading for my heart rate variability (HRV) that gamifies this for me.
cal85 2y ago
How does it know which tooth you’re cleaning?
- stavros 2y ago
  Probably an accelerometer.
  - lupusreal 2y ago
    I could see that working if your head is locked in a vise, but otherwise that's hard to believe.
    - TeMPOraL 2y ago
      There's only so much maneuvering space, and so much time a single brushing session takes; perhaps the error of double integration is small enough they can get away with dead reckoning. Especially since you mouth is a small, confined space, so they could estimate its bounds and use that to further correct their position estimate. (I imagine a system like this would need at least two accelerometers - one close to the tip, and another one in the grip area; the second one would be used to cancel out the movement of users' head and body, allowing the first one to effectively operate in a mouth-relative coordinate system.)
    - stavros 2y ago
      It's probably not going to be accurate to a single tooth, but to a region.
    - BobAliceInATree 2y ago
      Once you've moved the brush around a little bit, it can probably make a basic 3d map of you teeth to do the job.
    - fennecfoxy 2y ago
      I think it would be quite accurate if you parse based on training data, think about how we brush our teeth and the relatively consistent and unique angles and accelerations. Maybe not from brushing one tooth but brushing the whole mouth you'd get a pretty good picture I'd say. The app would justify itself if it did give you a rough map of how you brushed your teeth and suggest areas that you're missing/if it's being done incorrectly.
jon889 2y ago
I recently bought an oral-b toothbrush with the AI app thing, and it’s worked really well. Something about making the little dots disappear mean I’m now cleaning my teeth properly for 2m30s. Wish I’d had it a lot earlier and maybe I wouldn’t have so many fillings. (I swear this isn’t an ad, I bought it on prime day thinking I’d probably return it). Also I doubt it’s AI, just doing something fairly basic with the accelerometer data

dyauspitr 2y ago

That’s actually kind of cool. That’s exactly the sort of feedback that gets me to do things correctly. Detailed feedback has enabled me to consistently work out, wake up early and eat healthy. They’ve helped me keep those good habits going for 4 years now. I’m the kind of guy these apps are built for.

leipert 2y ago
If you don’t mind me asking, how do you keep track of eating healthy?
- dyauspitr 2y ago
  It’s not one app but a mix of different things. Alarms to take supplements at meal times, Amazon subscriptions set to the right intervals so I always have oatmeal for my breakfast, supplements before they run out etc., alarms that tell me when to stop eating and start eating again after a 14 hour gap for IF, shopping in bulk at Costco and making sure there is nothing in the house that’s “bad” for me. I’m not tracking my meals. I did use MyFitnessPal for a bit but I didn’t find it useful.
jjulius 2y ago
But "detailed feedback" isn't "accurate feedback". I mean, it's pretty 'neat' that it can tell you which teeth have been 'correctly' cleaned based on the amount of time you spend in a specific spot, but is that an accurate gauge? What if you (for whatever reason, doesn't matter) only ate on the left side of your mouth for dinner? You'd spend plenty of time on the left side, but the app might tell you you've done a bad job on the right. Further, depending on what you ate, it might take longer than whatever their predetermined time is to clean the side that had a disproportionate amount of food on it. What if you have had a tough time with a couple of "problem teeth" that need a bit more love? Is the app capable of tracking where those "problem teeth" are and ensuring that you're spending extra attention there? I dunno... to me, it seems like it's a no brainer to me when my teeth are clean - I can feel it. Unless a toothbrush has some detailed sensors in the head, I'm gonna seriously doubt its ability to tell me when my teeth are actually clean.
- TeMPOraL 2y ago
  > to me, it seems like it's a no brainer to me when my teeth are clean - I can feel it Then I envy you, because the only thing I feel that's different before and after brushing is a generalized "my mouth is sticky on the inside" feeling. I definitely lose track of how much time I spent cleaning each side relatively, and I'm sure there are areas I rarely reach because I don't know the brush isn't touching them. I'd love having a toothbrush that would monitor if I reach every spot as a baseline; I can handle my problem teeth or any eating side imbalance on my own, especially that there is no rule saying you need to brush exactly 2 minutes (or 2.5 or whatever) and not a second more - I could do my baseline and spend extra 30 seconds or so in the problem areas.
- dyauspitr 2y ago
  Honestly it doesn’t matter, it’s gamifying the activity that makes the difference for me. At the very least I’ll spend the recommended amount of time cleaning each tooth.
- doubled112 2y ago
  I can't even reach all of my teeth with my tongue. The ones I can always seem to feel the same unless I just drank a can of Coke. How do I know if I got them all?
Cyriou 2y ago
I am really interested, what do you use for waking up early?
- dyauspitr 2y ago
  I use the wind down reminder on the Apple health app under sleep. This gives you a wind down reminder 45 mins before you need to be in bed. I built a habit to drop whatever I’m doing to start getting ready for bed at that point. I turn on sleep focus on my Apple Watch as I go to sleep and seeing that I’ve slept 7.5-8 hours under the health app (along with the deep/core sleep breakdown) gamifies this for me. Right before I sleep I also do 4-7-8 interval breathing in bed that slows down my heart rate and gets me calm and sleepy. I use a simple app called iBreathe for that. This breathing session also lets my Apple Watch give me an accurate reading for my heart rate variability (HRV) that gamifies this for me.

cal85 2y ago

How does it know which tooth you’re cleaning?

stavros 2y ago
Probably an accelerometer.
- lupusreal 2y ago
  I could see that working if your head is locked in a vise, but otherwise that's hard to believe.
  - TeMPOraL 2y ago
    There's only so much maneuvering space, and so much time a single brushing session takes; perhaps the error of double integration is small enough they can get away with dead reckoning. Especially since you mouth is a small, confined space, so they could estimate its bounds and use that to further correct their position estimate. (I imagine a system like this would need at least two accelerometers - one close to the tip, and another one in the grip area; the second one would be used to cancel out the movement of users' head and body, allowing the first one to effectively operate in a mouth-relative coordinate system.)
  - stavros 2y ago
    It's probably not going to be accurate to a single tooth, but to a region.
  - BobAliceInATree 2y ago
    Once you've moved the brush around a little bit, it can probably make a basic 3d map of you teeth to do the job.
  - fennecfoxy 2y ago
    I think it would be quite accurate if you parse based on training data, think about how we brush our teeth and the relatively consistent and unique angles and accelerations. Maybe not from brushing one tooth but brushing the whole mouth you'd get a pretty good picture I'd say. The app would justify itself if it did give you a rough map of how you brushed your teeth and suggest areas that you're missing/if it's being done incorrectly.

jon889 2y ago

I recently bought an oral-b toothbrush with the AI app thing, and it’s worked really well. Something about making the little dots disappear mean I’m now cleaning my teeth properly for 2m30s. Wish I’d had it a lot earlier and maybe I wouldn’t have so many fillings. (I swear this isn’t an ad, I bought it on prime day thinking I’d probably return it). Also I doubt it’s AI, just doing something fairly basic with the accelerometer data