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I'm trying to develop an app for a fitness tracker(can be any), which has an API to track the live hand movements (For every couple of seconds). To be specific, trying to find aggressive hand movements to track users who need help (like seizures, under attack by someone etc.,) and alert the friends/family.

Can anyone suggest a fitness tracker which has such API exposed? Learned that FitBit don't have such API exposed.

Anand
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    I'm not sure what's wrong with the question to get a down vote :( I've done enough search before posting and couldn't find a tracking with API for hand movements. Someone please help with this – Anand Aug 02 '17 at 02:33
  • I doubt there is such an API for any device. You may find something that will let you get access to the raw sensor data. You will then have to work on the algorithms yourself. It's will be none trivial. – Ifor Aug 04 '17 at 14:16
  • @Ifor I just need the hand movement. Raw data works as well. Fitbit which I've looked for doesn't support raw data as well. Do you know any device which do provide ? – Anand Aug 06 '17 at 05:27
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    I find the question ok too. Maybe one of the downvoters could comment – Arigion Aug 10 '17 at 12:28

3 Answers3

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You do not get raw data from the fitness trackers. Here is an article about it.

In short it says:

Fitbit: No access to minute-by-minute (intraday) data with public API, only with Partner API (needs approval by fitbit)

MisFit: No access to minute-by-minute data (intraday) with API. There’s only a summary for each day available.

Jawbone: The Jawbone API provides a nice endpoint called ‚moves‘ for hourly data as well as intervals every minute or even 10 seconds (for defined workouts)

Withings: No access to minute-by-minute data without activation through Withings (request needed)

Garmin: Getting detailed information about the Garmin API is quite difficult. It seems that the only option to get access to tracker data, is to get access to all data from end users worldwide ($5,000 One-time License Fee).

Sony: Sony only grants access to tracking data through the Lifelog API. You can therefore read all of the extra lifestyle data you logged besides the movement data. Could get bulky, but you got the possibility, if you like. You can recall the tracked activities via API, subdivided in minute-by-minute data.

You could try to find a device which supports the FitApi from Google (Android Wear device). It supports access to raw sensor data (Example).

Arigion
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  • Thanks for the detailed answer :) Will check on the Jawbone API and may be Samsung gear which users Android Wear. – Anand Aug 10 '17 at 17:51
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I don't think that you can access to these data using a fitness tracker, because the sensors are not that accurate to track the hand movement exactly. There are some that are that accurate but then you have the problem that you can not access these data using their official API.

I would recommend you to use a more powerful wearable like the Samsung Gear or the Apple Watch (I know it is much more expensive, but much more powerful). To use the sensors on these devices is much more easier and you have a very stable system.

kpalatzky
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  • "use the sensors on these devices is much more easier" Do you have an example for that? – Arigion Aug 10 '17 at 11:49
  • You can use the motion sensors (i. e. Google Watch) - https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/sensors/sensors_motion.html – kpalatzky Aug 10 '17 at 12:17
  • Samsung Gear runs under Tizen, not Android. But nevermind I found it: https://developer.tizen.org/development/guides/native-application/location-and-sensors/device-sensors – Arigion Aug 10 '17 at 12:27
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I don't think you can get those raw data for several reasons:

  • raw data, second by second, are the intellectual property of fitness trackers companies, it's what they use to build their analysis, return interesting feedback to the user, and it's gold to them: the more data you have, the more powerful / accurate analysis you can make, the better services you can offer. So they are not going to give it away easily (unless you are a partner and/or pay for it)

  • the movements they are tracking are maybe not the ones you want (in short you want to know if the user made a sudden movement to counter a hit but they only check if the user made 1 step), and you might have to transform some already transformed data and need to make big assumptions on that (if he made 2 quick steps according to fitbit, maybe it means he tried to grab sthing quickly..?), and that's likely to fail.

  • what you might actually need are the raw accelerometer data and analyse them yourself to detect specific hand movements. I wonder how many of them gather that level of details, because it's very resource consuming to store that data and send it to the cloud, which has a dramatic impact on the battery life. they probably do analysis directly on the device and return the expected feedback (he made X steps in the past 5 seconds)

I think the solution would be to build it yourself on an open platform (as advised by archos) for smartwatches where companies want people to develop applications with their products (typically iOS/android compatible watches). You could also build an android/iOS app and use your smartphone's accelerometer to get started (but it's obviously not straight forward :) ).

This is only my humble opinion, I didn't have any insights in the mentioned companies work, but I'm building a fitness tracker and I guess that from my own experience.

Jeremie
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  • Thanks for the detailed response. I've tried Embrase Watch with their inbuilt app. Yes there are lots of fast positive detection and battery intensive for sure. But it works with inbuilt analysis and not in cloud. Trying to do a different kind of use case..Not seizures, but personal threat kind of situation,. – Anand Aug 10 '17 at 17:56
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    would be really interested to understand the down votes I got on this one? – Jeremie Feb 14 '18 at 16:38
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    I've up-voted your question, the time you've answered. Lately, I'm seeing lots of down votes on the question as well as the answers. Even the question got closed saying "Questions asking us to recommend or find a book, tool, software library, tutorial or other off-site resource are off-topic for Stack Overflow as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam". But the question is actually asking on the feasibility of accessing some specific data out of tracker API. I'm not sure why community takes such call and I felt this is so rude! I appreciate your help though :) – Anand Feb 14 '18 at 21:37
  • It makes us(who also answer and contribute to the stack overflow community) when someone down votes without even giving a reason in the comment. I wish stack-overflow makes such changes . – Anand Feb 14 '18 at 21:39
  • btw.. Just read about trackener...being a Horse raider myself, found that tracker very interesting! – Anand Feb 14 '18 at 21:46
  • yes agree! feels like votes should always come with a small comment to explain. And your question is totally relevant, we wondered the same when we started working on Trackener! I'd like to down vote the closing of the topic :D! such a small world, I'm pretty sure there is not so many horsey lovers developers around here :)! Cheers! and I hope you found a solution for this too! – Jeremie Feb 15 '18 at 15:11