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FitBit One

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fitbit-oneTwo years ago, I purchased an Oregon Scientific Pedometer off REI Outlet as a “trial” for whether I would actually use a Fitbit, and therefore justify the price of a Fitbit (which I had seen and heard about from a colleague for years). Initially I only planned on using the cheap one for a couple months, then upgrading, but a couple months turned into two years. So, I purchased a FitBit One for my “christmas” present, and just started using it. The review will be rather short, since it’s a pedometer, but all and all, I’m extremely happy. The unit is half the size of the Oregon Scientific, so it still fits in my coin pocket. It’s rechargeable, and while the specs say it should last about 10 days on a charge, mine seems to last about 2-3 weeks between charges. The screen is OLED, and shows steps, distance, floors (the unit has an altimeter), time, and some flower I haven’t yet figured out.

The best thing about it is with the Oregon Scientific, I was having to manually add steps to the database once a week. And if I forgot to do this, I would lose days/steps. Thankfully, this was extremely rare. Since the FitBit autosyncs with my computer, and then with the FitBit site, I was able to leverage their API with some PHP to have a script run daily do download the previous days steps. Holes, such as vacations would create, are resolved at the end of month when a script runs to update all the step counts for the previous 45 days (which should help avoid issues if I was on vacation spanning the end of a month).

I am extremely pleased with the unit, and would highly recommend purchasing one. As to why I didn’t get the Force or the Flex: I just don’t care for things around my wrist.

[xrr rating=5/5]

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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Oregon Scientific AnyWear 3D Pedometer

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As a late gift to myself for Christmas ((and to see if I would actually make use of something like a Fitbit)), I bought myself a clearance pedometer from REI just before the end of the year. It arrived the friday before new year, and since then I’ve been using it extensively (6 days now, woo). I can say, it works. It’s pretty no-frills, but you can pretty much wear it anywhere (I have it in my jeans coin-pocket), and it seems to keep good track. It auto resets at midnight, but keeps the previous 7 days of logs.

The only weird thing about it is there’s really no guide for setting for gait. I found a useful page online that details several methods, which I just used the equations:
Males: Height (in inches) * .415
Females: Height (in inches) * .413

And, being the stats junky I am, I have created a DB table, and a simple form for me to input my daily distances. I hope to keep up on this, but we shall see. You can see that info next to my energy usage, and Prius mileage.

All and all, it’s a good product. I probably wouldn’t have paid the retail $50 (actually, definitely wouldn’t have), but for $18, it’s a great deal for a pretty solid pedometer.

[xrr rating=4.75/5]