#“Wearable tech, fitness, health and the "Quantified Self"”
Nice quick intro by iJustine into this entire Quantified Self area. The section about using all of the data for predictive prevention of problems really caught my attention.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjKA0-PSA9k
I’ve obviously been into the whole SoLoMo thing since first getting my hands on an N95-8GB in 2007 and I’ve been generating lots and lots of location data since then. But location is really only step zero. It gets far more interesting the more things you measure, which is why I also tried my first fitness tracking app on the N95 back then too.
Now I spend my day with a Fitbit One connected to my t-shirt; manually entering my weight, body/visceral fat, BMI, muscle from Omron Karadascan to Google Docs; having every run/walk tracked by RunKeeper or Endomondo; and, from this week, having an array of sensors on my desk measuring temperature, humidity and light. The latter set will soon be stored live to the web. My SGS4 has a barometric pressure sensor too and will be the “base-station” for all my experiments in this area.
One bit I’m missing is heart monitoring. I have an ancient chest-strap monitor from Lidl but it has no computer interface and is very uncomfortable. iJustine showed off an Adidas smart-bra which seems to have the functionality I need. Perfect for my moobs. Now I just need to find the male equivalent (or buy one and modify it :-) ). Alternatively I could try making one with some conductive cloth and an Arduino or will I end up in DSP filter hell? A fingertip sensor like this might be fine for some scenarios but you’re hardly going to wear it 24x7. Any other suggestions?
The only way you can improve is by measuring. I think we’re in for a very interesting couple of years and I can’t wait to see what people come up with.
UPDATE 1: According to comments on the Sparkfun site, that Pulse Sensor can be used on many parts of the body, including the chest. As I haven’t found any other Open Hardware projects that do heart rate monitoring, I think I’ll take a punt on it for $25.