Nintendo device could read your sleep, make smells

Nintendo is still thinking about a quality of life peripheral, more than half a decade after it first announced plans to enter the health-related space.

Its latest idea to be patented is a base station for a mobile device which sits by your bed. The gadget would be able to monitor how well you slept and judge your performance, with results beamed onto your ceiling. This projector could also show soothing images to help send you off to slumber.

A Doppler sensor would pick up your breathing, pulse and body movement, while outputs could include a display, omnidirectional speaker and an odour generator. Maybe it could release a soothing sleep mist if it detects you're not yet asleep? Or a bad smell to wake you up?

The mobile device, meanwhile, would track your activity over the course of a day and sync with the basestation when nearby.

The idea for Nintendo to branch out into the quality of life gadget business was dreamt up back in 2014 by the company's late CEO Satoru Iwata as a means of diversifying during the lacklustre Wii U era. Indeed, the design for a base station in this latest patent uses the same illustration as in another patent filed in 2015.

These details come from a patent filed last September which has recently been made public (thanks Japanese Nintendo). It's the latest in a line of ideas for such a device which Nintendo has taken to the patent office but (so far) not decided to mass produce.

The following year, replacement Nintendo boss Tatsumi Kimishima told shareholders he had paused work on the firm's quality of life plans, while in the background the company pressed ahead with work on a little console codenamed NX.

Does the 2019 filing suggest work has resumed on the idea? In the meantime, The Pokémon Company has announced its own idea for a sleep-tracking app, Pokémon Sleep - though it's now been a year since we last heard about that.