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Retrieving steps data from Fitbit API

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phpI recently got a FitBit One (review forthcoming), and one of the big reasons I got it was their open API. Basically, the FitBit will sync over Bluetooth 4.0 (Lower Power) when it sees it’s Dongle, or if you have an iPhone/Android phone, it can sync to that in the background. That data syncs up to the FitBit website, at which point you can pull the data back down using their API… at least, that was my hope.

After playing with things for a few days, I finally got this working, and my steps information will now dynamically update. I still am not sure how I’ll correct for issues like being out of town, etc… but I’ll figure something out.

Anyway, since no one seems to have detailed how to do this with PHP, I thought I would here. This is all assuming you’ll only be grabbing your own info.

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TED 5000-C

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TED 5000-CSince I first bought my TED 1001 I have wanted a TED 5000. Even back then, there was talk about the forthcoming TED 5000, and at the time, I would email TED support, and they would comment it was in the works. Six months would go by, email again, and same thing. I believe in the end, the product was delayed about a year or more (at least, from the time they were saying 6 months, and the time it actually came out).

Anyway, it came out, and consisted of 2 main parts, and 1 optional one. The MTU (the part that actually measures the electrical usage from the current transformers and then sends that info over power line transmission), the Gateway (which takes that info in, and either uploads to a power monitoring website, or presents it from its webpage), and the optional display unit. The Gateway and the Display talk over XBee. In theory, the MTU and Gateway bit are basically the same as the MTU and station piece of the TED 1001 with the addition of an ethernet port, and internal web server. This provided a relatively platform agnostic approach to the TED, which previously only had a Windows based “client” for the TED 1001, which was only usable if you purchased the unlock code for the USB port on the TED 1001.

Anyway, all of this was good, on paper. As we’ll see, this didn’t all quite play out as one would hope ((an interesting tidbit is that I had asked repeatedly over the years for a review unit, and only recently was replied to, and told they stopped offering them in 2009, which we’ll come back to)).

So, I recently won a TED 5000-C (includes the display, vs. the TED 5000-G which does not) on eBay for about half the cost of a new unit. After some shipping time, the unit arrived, and as it turned out, the Gateway dated back to the original production run of 500 (signified by the serial number of the Gateway starting with 20). After that initial 500, they made some hardware changes to the Gateway, and then incremented the serial number to ≥21. From my understanding, the upgrade was mainly adding more RAM, but there could be more (they haven’t been forthcoming). I’m uncertain if the display and MTU date from a similar time period (it appeared the set I got had been a bit of a mishmash from a couple different sources).

So, first thing, I was a bit disappointed that the gateway was old. I had read that the latest firmware didn’t run well, or at all, on those original gateways. Now, I was able to get the latest firmware(s) onto the gateway, but it was a bit sluggish, and I honestly can’t say I know how well it really worked because of the next section…

The display. The display was… terrible. I actually can’t believe they shipped a product that was so bad. So, the display box consists of a wall wart (fine), a dock, and the display that is quite light, and feels pretty cheap. There’s a large screen on it, a single button (that only changes the info being displayed), and on the bottom, a DC power jack. This “docks” to the charging base that simply has a long DC power plug sticking out of it, which is simply an extension of the jack on the back which you plug the wall wart into. So really, the “dock” is just a plastic box, with a right angle DC jack in it… So first off, docking the display requires way too much force. Because it requires so much force, the dock moves around while plugging and unplugging. You actually have to hold the dock to “dock” the handset. Worse, with the unit I had, if you moved the dock at all while the display was docked, the display would “reset” and register as plugged in, rinse and repeat. I’m guessing the jack on the display had a cold solder joint, but I’m not going to bother checking, it’s just a sign of shoddy construction. Then all that out of the way, there’s the actual LCD. The backlight was quite bright (fine), but I can only describe it as low resolution… maybe it was the font choice, but the readout was extremely blocky. Further, pressing the button required a good second or more to switch between information being displayed, which is completely worthless. Maybe this is because the display isn’t actually receiving information unless it asks for that specific info over XBee, and it takes that long to get the info back from the Gateway, but it seems very user unfriendly.

All of this combined, I didn’t actually bother to install the unit fully. It really started to make me understand why Energy Circle stopped carrying them ((I believe a bigger reason was issues with Power Line Communication, but I’m sure build quality didn’t help)). Contacting TED about the Gateway resulted in them A. saying they didn’t support purchases from non-authorized resellers (understandable), and B. Updating the Gateway would be $75 + $10 shipping. Huh.

What is most ironic about all of this is all of these items probably date back to 2009, when The Energy Detective stopped sending out review units. So the last review units provided to people were before they have, in theory, fixed these issues… but no reviewers would know! In some fairness, they did offer to sell me a refurbished TED 5000 unit for a discount (about 25% off), but not enough of a discount to discourage those interested from buying through eBay, or to encourage reviewers of new hardware. Worse still, their Press department doesn’t respond to email at all, nor does their Support much of the time. Sad, from a really pioneering company. I truly hope they reach out and try to help address my concerns.

After all of this, I’m going to be looking at other products before I consider coming back around to the TED. On paper, and in literature, the TED 5000 looks like an awesome product, at a great price point. In reality, at least the unit I got, was extremely disappointing. I am actually returning it to the eBay seller thanks to his understanding of my frustrations. And unless TED (the company) want to change some minds about this, this review is really going to stand at the rating I give now. This is really sad, actually, because by and large, I like my TED 1001 a lot. It does what it does very well, and reliably.

[xrr rating=1/5]

Diablo 3

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Diablo_III_coverI’ve been wanting to write this review for a while now, and have had a very hard time figuring out where I stand with this game. I was a huge fan of Diablo, Diablo 2, and Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction. They were really the pinnacle of top down, kill all, click click click, Dungeon Crawlers. They were all about playing several times through on each difficulty to get slightly better gear, to do slightly better damage, so you could kill things slightly faster, to get slightly better gear. They really were one of the first truly addictive games. And the nice thing was, you could either play them for hours on end, or jump in for 5 minutes shop or crawl, and leave again.

So, fast forward to Diablo 3, and you have many of those same things. The click click click is still there. As is the gear race. But… something ended up missing. I haven’t ever quite put my finger on it, but several friends, and others online have all claimed it was the Auction House(s). The game released with the Gold Auction House. This allowed you to spend Gold (from the game) to buy gear (and conversely, sell gear). Which, at face value, is a great idea. There were just a few problems.

  1. It unfairly biased the game toward farmers. Those that spent all their time collecting gold, so they could buy gear.
  2. It took away the challenge from early game since you could pretty easily buy very good gear, if not sexy gear, for cheap
  3. And most of all, Blizzard didn’t implement any kind of FED, or organization to regulate the value of gold. So VERY quickly, things that used to cost 10,000 gold, started being listed at 100,000 or 1,000,000 gold.

Some of the above was made WORSE by the Real Money Auction House. This allowed people to spend real currency on items. And as you’d guess, it allowed you to buy gold for currency as well. Further exacerbating the gold inflation issue. Plus, once real money was brought into the equation, things just didn’t feel right.

Now, to Blizzard’s credit, they heard these complaints, and as of March 18, 2014, both the Gold and Real Money Auction Houses will shut down. At the same time, they’re going to be implementing a new Loot system which hopefully will fill the gap the Auction House will leave.

All that aside, the Story of the game was pretty good, though it felt a bit too much like a Diablo 2 remake. This being largely due to the reuse of the “lands” that were in Diablo 2. Obviously they looked much better, but it just always felt like I knew what was going to happen next since it seemed like I had been there before. This may have been due to me playing through Diablo 2 and LOD in the previous months. I’m sure Blizzard did this for continuity rather than out of laziness, but for me, it felt more of the latter rather than the former. But I’ll admit, I have to be careful bitching about any of this too much, since a friend of mine was on the writing team ((Hi V!). =)

Graphics are very good ((though, I can’t say I’ve seen it on at maximum quality as my MBA with it’s Intel 4000 isn’t capable of that task)), and the gameplay was quite good once they got the kinks worked out. And obviously the issues with launch were non-minor, but I’ll cut them some slack for that. It can be extremely hard to load test a system that is going to host over a million users.

And since I first started this post, and now, they’ve announced an expansion due at some point in the future (I would guess around the Auction Houses shutting down, but that’s purely a guess). Will I play it? Absolutely ((Once I have some free time in my life)). I’m a Blizzard whore (even though I still haven’t played Heart of the Swarm).

You can see my character profiles here (at Diablo 3 Ladders).

[xrr rating=4.5/5]