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Showing posts from October, 2016

Wearable manufacturers are still not letting customers view their raw data

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I've worn a Garmin wearable fitness tracker religiously for the last 9 months. The device has now become unreliable, but with so much data collected, I was curious to quantify patterns based on physical activity and sleep (this model measures both). However, while I can view a daily step count using the online service Garmin Connect , I also wanted to download my total step count for each day and run my own separate analysis. But this isn't possible (see below). I own the device, but not the data. Garmin can provide access to an API , but this remains expensive according to this reddit feed. It would actually be cheaper to build my own device and use that instead. Personally, I don't see how preventing customers from accessing their own raw data can continue. I understand why a manufacture would restrict access to the exact algorithm that takes accelerometer data and converts this data into steps, but my request outlined above is entirely reasonable. Man