Fast-forward to today. PCs and consumer electronics provide us with a gazillion things to do all night. Video games, TV, social networking, chatting with friends, catching up on work. These things are addictive, and they call to us. Getting a good night’s sleep has become a challenge.

Gadgets are contributing to this problem. But gadgets can help solve it, too. Electronic sleep helpers have been around for quite a while. Here are some of the newest and most interesting electronic sleep helpers:

1.SleepTrek. If you don’t want a doctor to do the studying of your abnormal sleeping patterns or would want to know privately, then chances are this device can do it for you. The SleepTrek@3 can easily identify if you do have a sleep problem and rather than have a doctor say it up straight, you know have a device to do so.

2. Sleeptracker PRO monitor. It may seem like something out of the Jetsons, but the Sleeptracker PRO monitors your body while you sleep. It gently wakes you up when it determines your body is ready. You’re left feeling awake, refreshed, and well-rested.

3. Dreamate uses accupressure techniques to gently massage the “sleeping golden triangle” on your left wrist. Used 30 minutes before bedtime, you can retune and reset your biological clock and train your body to relax and sleep. See results in as little as a week’s worth of use, with best results after eight weeks. These precise pressure points, when gently massaged, calm the body, lower stress levels, and induce sleep. Unlike addictive sleeping pills that knock you senseless, but offer little improvement in your sleep quality.

4. Sleepsonic’s Speaker Pillow. Holiday parties, Christmas shopping, final exams… All that hustle and bustle this time of year can leave you feeling worn out. Here are some gadgets sure to help you make the most of your days. They’ll help you fall asleep faster and wake up refreshed in the morning. If you enjoy music at bedtime, then rest your head on this. Sleepsonic’s Speaker Pillow can be used with any portable MP3 player. It delivers clear sound straight to you ears and won’t disturb your significant other.

5. Sleeping Pill iPhone App. There is a new app for the iPhone or iPod Touch that was made to help the sleep deprived folks and it goes by the name of the Sleeping Pill 1.0. This is a new app that is said to provide people a good night’s sleep where three stages to accelerate tiredness of users are used. Stage 1 clears the mind so you can relax and free yourself to fall asleep, stage 2 helps users to relax and relieve stress. Finally stage 3 helps your eyes to tire by getting users to follow a “Z” across the device screen in a specific pattern.

6. Got kids? Then take a look at this. The Cloud b Sleep Sheep plays four different comforting sounds for infants on the go. It’ll help your baby go to sleep and will make your travels loads easier.

7. Sleep Phase Alarm Clock. There is a new device in town and it aims to help the people who want to determine the best time to wake up and sleep. It is called the Sleep Phase Alarm Clock, a new gadget that is placed on the wrist of a person which monitors sleeping patterns and supposedly determines the right time to wake you up.Now most people would be relieved by it but the question is, what is the best time to wake up and to sleep? It may address the problem of comfortable sleep, but does it address the problem of insomnia and waking up when needed?

8. Princess alarm. If rolling alarm clocks aren’t your thing, there are always flying ones. When your alarm goes off, Princess PI-722 goes flying into the air. To turn off the alarm, you must physically retrieve the propeller piece, which can fly as high as nine feet in the air.

9. Sunrise emulators — wake up lights. My trusty Philips HF3480 Wake-up Light — I use the sunrise function of this every morning to get off to a good start.

It will slowly fade up the intensity of a natural light lamp, causing your body to adapt to it as if there was a sunrise, even if you have your blinds down or, as it is for me, you live far north and the sun doesn’t rise until late.

While waking up can still be just as brutal even in a light room, I find that getting out of bed is considerably easier with this than in a dark room and a normal alarm clock.

I’ve switched the alarm clock sound off though, because of the gadgets mentioned below.

10. Zeo personal sleep coach. Here’s one I am planning on testing shortly, but haven’t had the time to yet… the Zeo personal sleep coach actually uses a wireless headband to measure your brain activity, constructing an accurate graph of your sleep cycles and waking you up at a good point. I doubt this is worth the hefty price tag if all you want is to wake up refreshed, but for me I’d like to map out and understand as much as possible about sleep (especially in combination with my polyphasic sleep experiments, which I’m planning a new one of soon).