Local-first control for Eight Sleep Pods. No cloud, no subscription.
Every Eight Sleep Pod has a small Linux computer inside it. Nightstand puts a server on that computer so you control the Pod yourself, from your own network, without the official app or the cloud.
Try the live demo, the real app running against mocked data in your browser, nothing to install.
Nightstand is an independent open-source project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or supported by Eight Sleep, Inc. "Eight Sleep" and "Pod" are used here only to describe which devices the software is compatible with.
Nightstand is a fork of jmew/free-sleep, which builds on the original throwaway31265/free-sleep. Local control of the Pod exists because of that original project, and presence detection, sleep stages, adjustable base support, and the WebSocket UI came from jmew's work. Nightstand keeps free-sleep's on-disk layout so it stays compatible with the other forks' tooling, and the credits below record what came from where. If you're moving from another free-sleep fork, see Coming from free-sleep.
Nightstand is tuned for running one Pod well, rather than trying to be a general-purpose platform, and that shows up in a few deliberate choices.
Privacy comes first. The Pod's internet access is blocked at the firewall, and the firewall script here is written for exactly that setup. The parent fork's error-reporting integration pointed at an account this fork doesn't have access to, so it's been removed here rather than sending reports nobody can read; debugging instead relies on the Pod's own local logs. Version checks run from your browser rather than the Pod, so the only time the Pod touches the internet at all is during an update, and the firewall closes again as soon as the download finishes.
Versions follow their own semver stream starting at 3.0.0 (see
CONTRIBUTING.md). serverInfo.json tracks upstreamBase,
the last release of the original project reviewed for changes worth
cherry-picking. When the original project ships something newer, the app
shows a small note about it, but nothing merges automatically; changes get
reviewed and pulled in deliberately.
Updating happens through the app itself. Once a new build lands on main,
the Settings page shows an Update button; pressing it has the Pod pull the
build from GitHub, back itself up, install, and check its own health, rolling
back automatically if anything fails.
If there's no adjustable base connected, the base-control page simply stays hidden instead of logging retry errors indefinitely.
| Pod | Compatible |
|---|---|
| Pod 1 | ❌ |
| Pod 2 | ❌ |
| Pod 3 (with SD card) | ✅ |
| Pod 3 (no SD card) | ✅ |
| Pod 4 | ✅ |
| Pod 5 | ✅ |
Pod 3 without an SD card is identified by FCC ID 2AYXT61100001, printed on
the back of the pod near the water tubing.
Yes. You can firmware reset the Pod and go back to the official Eight Sleep app.
No cases have been reported on Pod 3 without the SD card, Pod 4, or Pod 5, and a firmware reset restores the stock software if an install goes wrong. Follow the directions and read ops/ANTIBRICK.md before deploying anything custom. As with any unofficial software, you install it at your own risk.
Nightstand is not supported by Eight Sleep, so it could affect your warranty. That said, you can fully reset the firmware and return the Pod to its original state at any time. There is no permanent modification to the hardware.
- Complete control of the device without internet access. If you lose internet, the Pod keeps working, and you can block its WAN access entirely at the firewall.
- Dynamic temperature control with real-time updates, in real Fahrenheit degrees or the -10..+10 level scale from the official app, whichever you prefer
- Schedule management:
- Set power on/off times
- Schedule temperature adjustments
- Schedule daily time to prime the pod
- Alarms with vibration patterns and configurable intensity/duration, auto-skipped if the pod was turned off before the scheduled time
- Sleep tracking and biometrics dashboard: heart rate, HRV, breathing rate, movement, sleep stages, sleep score, sleep consistency
- Adjustable base control (Pod 4+): position presets, manual head/foot control, stop command
- Real-time UI updates over WebSocket (
/ws/events), so temperature changes, schedule events, and service-health flips arrive without polling - In-app updates: the Pod fetches new builds of this fork from GitHub on request, with automatic backup and rollback
- Settings customization: timezones, away mode, LED brightness
- Works on desktop and mobile (PWA-installable)
- Optional remote access from outside your home network via Tailscale, encrypted and with no public exposure of the pod. See INSTALLATION.md step 20 for setup.
- The only biometrics data that has been validated is heart rate. HRV and breathing rates have not been validated and may be inaccurate. Heart rates were validated by the original project over 33 sleep periods from 3 males and 3 females, mostly against Apple Watches. Heart rate calculations tend to be slightly less accurate for females.
- Summary statistics for all 33 periods:
- RMSE - 2.88 average, 1.45 min, 7.63 max
- Correlation - 80.8% average, 27% min, 95% max
- MAE - 1.83 average, 1 min, 5.77 max
- How to enable:
sh /home/dac/free-sleep/scripts/enable_biometrics.sh
- How to disable:
sh /home/dac/free-sleep/scripts/disable_biometrics.sh
- All biometric and sleep data lands in SQLite at
/persistent/free-sleep-data/free-sleep.db. The vitals stream (biometrics/stream/stream.py) runs continuously, calculates vitals when it detects presence, and inserts a row every 60 seconds. Raw data is at<POD_IP>/api/metrics/vitals.
The normal path is the app itself: when a newer build is published to this
repo's main branch, the Settings page shows an Update button. The Pod
downloads the build, backs up its code and data, installs, health-checks, and
rolls back automatically if anything fails. fs-update over SSH runs the same
script.
For development there are two more paths:
ops/deploy.shships the committed HEAD of your local clone over the LAN, with the same backup and rollback safety. See ops/ANTIBRICK.md.scripts/deploy-dev.shis the fast iteration loop: it builds locally and copies only the files that changed since the last deploy. Usage notes are in the script header.
- Server: Node.js, Express, TypeScript. REST API plus a WebSocket channel
(
ws) for live updates. Per-command timeouts on thedac.sockhardware pipe so a hung pod doesn't stall the server, and/api/metrics/serverexposes queue depth and command latency for debugging. - App: React, Material-UI, Zustand, React Query, Vite.
- Databases: LowDB (JSON files in
/persistent/free-sleep-data/lowdb/) for schedules, settings, and server state; SQLite via Prisma (/persistent/free-sleep-data/free-sleep.db) for biometric time series. - Biometrics pipeline: a Python service (
free-sleep-stream.service) reads the piezo/capacitance RAW data, computes presence, heart rate, HRV, and breathing rate, and writes to SQLite.
- Read the contributing docs
- Developing: front-end, back-end
MIT, unchanged from the original project. See LICENSE.md for the full text and the original project's disclaimers. The MIT license is what makes this fork possible: it allows anyone to use, modify, and redistribute the code as long as the license text stays with it, and the same permission extends from this repo to you.
The software is provided as is, without warranty of any kind. This project is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or supported by Eight Sleep, Inc.; all product names and trademarks are the property of their respective owners and are used only to identify compatibility. Nightstand runs on hardware you own, changes only software, and is fully reversible with a firmware reset.
Nightstand exists because people did hard reverse-engineering work and gave it away:
- throwaway31265 built the
original project: the installer, the server, the app, and the biometrics
pipeline. If it helps you, consider supporting them via
PayPal or BTC
(
bc1qjapkufh65gs68v2mkvrzq2ney3vnvv87jdxxg6). Community support for the original project lives in its Discord. - jmew built the fork this repo is based on, adding presence detection, sleep stages, one-off alarms, adjustable base control, and the WebSocket UI.
- @bobobo1618 researched how the device is
controlled via
dac.sock, which everything here depends on.
Issues with this fork's changes belong here; issues with the original project belong upstream.
These come from the demo build (npm run build:demo in app/, or
VITE_ENV=demo npx vite for a live version), which runs against mocked data
with generic side names rather than a real Pod. The temperature page is at
the top of this README; the rest are full scrollable pages, so they're
linked as expandable sections rather than crammed into a grid:
Adjustable base elevation and presets
Schedules, temperature transitions, and alarms
Sleep stages, sleep score, and health metrics
System status
Settings
