I fall asleep listening to pocasts, etc., which then keep on going and going...Is there a fix?

[Dark Penguin]

I've become very habituated to listening to Tune-In, podcasts and/or other content on my phone at night, just when I'm ready to go to sleep. In fact, it helps me get to sleep, a little too well as it turns out because I practically never consciously decide, "I'm sleepy enough now, so I'll turn this thing off." Instead, almost always, I fall asleep while it's playing.

The program rolls on as I sink into the arms of Morpheus, and this can continue for an hour and a half or more, depending on how I've set the sleep timer. Two problems arise from this: First, when I want to resume listening the next day, it's not always easy to find the spot where I fell asleep the previous night. Second, and worse, is that after initially falling asleep I'm frequently awakened when the playback or Tune-In stream gets to a volume spike.

Is there any way to prevent this from happening, other than setting my sleep timer to fifteen minutes? Ideally, there would be some kind of widget or second app that would work with Play Music, TuneIn, Scribd, Librivox, etc. While one of those apps is in use, at regular intervals adjustable from ten to sixty minutes, this app or widget would emit a discrete click or chime as it forces the streaming or playback app to pause, then the user would have to press the headset resume button to continue listening. The goal would be that the user can continue listening without having to pull out the handset itself and look at the screen.

Does there exist a setting or app for this already? Or a different approach entirely, that I've overlooked?

 

[Rukbat]

1) I think that would be extremely annoying. It would also keep you from falling asleep, as you'd have to wake up (not just be half-asleep) every ten to 60 minutes to press something.

2) I've never seen an app like that.

A different approach? Yes, if you can afford it. An EEG that turns the player off when your brain wave frequency drops below 8Hz. That means you're falling asleep. You could probably automate that through the microUSB port and an app like Tasker.

 

[Dark Penguin]

1) I think that would be extremely annoying. It would also keep you from falling asleep, as you'd have to wake up (not just be half-asleep) every ten to 60 minutes to press something.

No, that wouldn't happen. As I envision it, the timing/signaling app would force the player to pause at the desired interval, and the user would have to manually press the pause/resume button on the headset to continue listening; otherwise, the timing app would detect that playback remains paused and terminate itself. The playback app, of course, is paused already.