Support of fitbit data points and activities

[mammuth]

Hi! I stumbled upon heedy when looking for a way to get data "out" of various services like fitbit and I'm very curious about it! I especially like the architecture :blush:

After taking a glimpse at https://github.com/heedy/heedy-fitbit-plugin/blob/2ecbdffeece622652f5a3703eb30b479bbb54820/syncer.py#L292 it looks like only a small subset of data points are supported by this plugin right now.

One question & one comment :blush:

• Do you have any plans to add some of the missing data series? (I'd understand if not, no worries)
• It might be nice to update the Readme to make it easy to spot what is supported and which data points are missing

"Missing" data (as to my knowledge / assumption)

• resting heart rate
• heart rate variability
• Spo2
• "activities" (I think?)
• distance
• weight, body fat, bmi
• breathing rate
• skin temperature
• food

[dkumor]

Readme update:

definitely, I might have time to do this in a bit, but will also welcome a PR

Missing Data

This one is tough. In general, yes I want to add all the data gathered by fitbit. The two caveats are time and API availability.

• Time: In the next month or two I already have a full schedule, so probably won't be personally modifying the plugin until preparing for Heedy 0.6 release end of summer.
• API availability: When originally writing the plugin, I focused on the data available through the fitbit API, which can be automatically synced and kept up-to-date. There are portions of data which are not available through the API at all, and can only be accessed through a full data export. In other words, there are two comments here: 1) Time series data available through the API: some metrics are derived from the raw timeseries data. For example, resting heart rate comes from the raw heart rate time series. I think it might still be useful to add it though! 2) Data only available through export: I want to add an import function which can take the exported data and add to Heedy. This by necessity is a manual operation, and so is a bit less of a priority than syncing with data that can be kept up-to-date automatically.

With that, the missing data:

• RHR: Derived from sleep data and heart rate, which is already gathered. Nevertheless, available through API, so might be useful to add it.
• HRV, SP02, Skin Temperature: Not available through API: https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Sense/HRV-SPO2-Skin-temperature-API-inquiry/m-p/4573999
• activities: I really want to add this, but the API is confusing there: I only got steps from the API, but would love to see how to get activity names https://dev.fitbit.com/build/reference/web-api/intraday/get-activity-intraday-by-date/
• Weight/body fat/bmi/food: This is available, and I would love to add it, but I don't personally use fitbit for this (I use withings scale), so I'm not a good person to test it!

[mammuth]

I appreciate your lightning-fast and detailed reply! :rocket:

Thanks for sharing your experience with the fitbit API.

HRV, SP02, Skin Temperature: Not available through API

That's so unfortunate... :smirk: At least HRV can be derived from heart rate data - they use the RMSSD formula based on the longest sleep period of the last 24 hours. (source: App > health metrics > HRV > about). Might not be super straightforward to implement nicely but at least it's possible.

activities: I really want to add this, but the API is confusing there: I only got steps from the API, but would love to see how to get activity names https://dev.fitbit.com/build/reference/web-api/intraday/get-activity-intraday-by-date/

Yeah, I also had the feeling their whole activity tracking is centered around steps and works best with step-based activities... Eg. if you say you're exercising on a rowing machine (which is a predefined activity), it still counts "steps" for the exercise :shrug: