display detailed data

[dhdurgee]

I would like to suggest that clicking on the displayed current total, for example cumulative daily steps, should open a display of a chart of individual measurements comprising that total.

[jlai]

Will look into it, but I'll need to get approval from Fitbit to access intraday (hourly/minute granularity) data

[dhdurgee]

I had contacted Fitbit developer support about this and received this response.

Dave

-------- Forwarded Message -------- Subject: Fitbit Case # 00108324 : Fitbit web Dashboard is down! [ ref:!00Df4022Mbw.!5005G01vVKEt:ref ] Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2024 17:32:40 +0000 (GMT) From: Fitbit Developer Support @.> To: @. @.***>

Hi Dave,

We will be happy to help him out, but he needs to reach out to us for assistance.  The detailed data you're requesting is our intraday data set which isn't enabled by default.  If he requests access, we can enable it for him.

You can provide this information to him, just in case he doesn't know.   Once he reaches out to us, we can take it from there.

Best,

Gordon Crenshaw Senior Technical Solution Consultant Partner Engineering & Fitbit Web API Support at Google

--------------- Original Message --------------- From: David H Durgee @. @.>] Sent: 7/12/2024, 11:24 PM To: @. @.> Subject: Re: Fitbit Case # 00108324 : Fitbit web Dashboard is down! [ ref:!00Df4022Mbw.!5005G01vVKEt:ref ]

After reading your message I decided to take a look at this one myself. I granted it access only to sleep, nutrition and activity and it appears to work as expected.

Looking at the "About" he describes this as an early alpha, so a very recent development and possibly a very new developer with your Fitbit Web API.  He does accept feature requests and I asked if he could add detailed data when clicking on the totals.  His response was "Will look into it, but I'll need to get approval from Fitbit to access intraday (hourly/minute granularity) data." As I recall this being a feature of the web dashboard I imagine it is available in the API and he is not familiar with how to retrieve it.

This seems to be the closest to what I am looking for that I have found.  Perhaps someone from your group could assist him with more or less recreating the web dashboard for those like me who need it.

Thank you again for your assistance in a matter a bit tangential to your mission.

Dave

Fitbit Developer Support wrote:  I'm not familiar with dashboard.exercise.quest.  I took a quick look and they made their dashboard look very similar to Fitbit.   My initial concern with their application is they ask for access to a lot more data than is displayed in their application.   For example, their dashboard appears to display only activity and food data, but they additionally request access to profile, temperature, GPS, sleep, device, weight, heart rate and friends data.   Some of that information might be used for future roadmap features.  But they should not be doing that.   If you consent to share your data with a 3 party application, make certain to select just the data you want to share.   If you ever want to revoke consent, you can at https://www.fitbit.com/settings/applications or through the mobile app.

Gordon Crenshaw Senior Technical Solution Consultant Partner Engineering & Fitbit Web API Support at Google

--------------- Original Message --------------- From: David H Durgee @. @.> @. @.>>] Sent: 7/10/2024, 5:34 PM To: @. @.> @. @.>> Subject: Re: Fitbit Case # 00108324 : Fitbit web Dashboard is down! [ ref:!00Df4022Mbw.!5005G01vVKEt:ref ]

Thank you again for getting back to me on this.

I have seen mention of myfitnesspal in the thread, so if the Fitbit web dashboard is not revived I will check it out.  I also saw a mention of "dashboard.exercise.quest" in the thread.  Is that also a partner you are supporting?  Do you have any familiarity with it?

Dave

Fitbit Developer Support wrote:  Hi David,

A majority of our consumer partners are providing specific functionality to meet an individual needs.   For example, Strava tracks only activity with a focus on elite runners and bikers.  Then we have clinicians and researchers using the Web API for their wellness programs and research studies.  There are companies that migrate data from Fitbit to other systems, like Epic or Apple Health.  So, it may be difficult to provide you a list of replacement dashboards.

Have you checked out MyFitnessPal?  It's been a while since I've used their product, but they do integrate with Fitbit and have a web dashboard.  There is a free and paid version of their solution. They are known for their nutrition tracking, but also include activity summary and weight tracking too.   Check them out!  If you feel it is a good replacement for the Fitbit Web Dashboard, you can recommend it and take credit.   :)

Also, my mom uses Fitbit and falls in to the category of users with "older eyes".   I spend time researching answers to her questions and showing her how to find data in the mobile app.  Mostly, she finds the mobile application to be helpful for her needs.  One thing that has helped is increasing the phone's text size to the max so she can read it.   The text size in the mobile app will be adjusted.

I don't know if Fitbit will bring back the web dashboard, but I could suggest to our support and marketing teams to host some webinars on the mobile experience, discuss how to find information with the new look, and maybe help answer questions for the older age demographic.  What functionality are you struggling to find in the mobile application or that makes it unusable?

Best,

Gordon Crenshaw Senior Technical Solution Consultant Partner Engineering & Fitbit Web API Support at Google

--------------- Original Message --------------- From: David H Durgee @. @.> @. @.>> @. @.> @. @.>>>] Sent: 7/10/2024, 1:42 PM To: @. @.> @. @.>> @. @.> @. @.>>> Subject: Re: Fitbit Case # 00108324 is Closed [ ref:!00Df4022Mbw.!5005G01vVKEt:ref ]

Thank you for getting back to me so quickly on this.

Perhaps as you are the Partnership and Web API Support team you can tell me if there are any of the partners you support who offer an alternative web dashboard that I could use in place of the one taken down yesterday.  That would solve the problem for those of us who find the phone based app unusable.

If you can provide me with such an alternative then it would be good if you could take the time to point this out in the community thread on the topic.  If however you don't have that much time I would be happy to make such a post with your permission.

Dave

Fitbit Developer Support wrote: Dear David,

Case # 00108324: "Fitbit web Dashboard is down!" is now closed. If your question was not resolved to your satisfaction, please reply to this email with additional details to reopen your case.

Thank you,

Gordon Crenshaw Senior Technical Solutions Consultant Fitbit

(ref:!00Df4022Mbw.!5005G01vVKEt:ref)

[jlai]

Thanks for the outreach to Fitbit developer support. I'm not quite ready to submit the site for approval for intraday (have some travel plans coming up so I'll be a bit busy) but glad to hear they're potentially receptive. I'll also remove some of the unneeded permissions as mentioned in the email thread.

[dhdurgee]

I had a thought occur to me, but I don't know if it would be helpful or not.

My suspicion is that the Fitbit web dashboard made use of the same web API that you are.  Assuming that this is so, I would expect you to be able to retrieve their code via the Wayback Machine or other internet archive of their website from the day before they took it down.  It might not be trivial to do so, as scripts might be on another server, but they should likewise be archived.

Does this sound worth pursuing?

Dave

Jason wrote:  Thanks for the outreach to Fitbit developer support. I'm not quite ready to submit the site for approval for intraday (have some travel plans coming up so I'll be a bit busy) but glad to hear they're potentially receptive. I'll also remove some of the unneeded permissions as mentioned in the email thread.

— Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/jlai/fitness-dashboard/issues/15#issuecomment-2231804029, or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ABDDU72ZL47BDBUFZDFYSSDZMWBODAVCNFSM6AAAAABKZHTEOSVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHMZDEMZRHAYDIMBSHE. You are receiving this because you authored the thread.Message ID: @.***>

[jlai]

To avoid any legal issues, we shouldn't be looking at any scripts or source code from the old website. We should try to work with Fitbit developer relations to add or document any APIs we need.

[jlai]

Got intraday approval from Fitbit. Right now it's used in the activity history view to show calories/minute, will look into adding it to the dashboard later.

[dhdurgee]

I see you have made progress on this issue. As a suggestion, perhaps clicking on the tile should default to showing details as opposed to an overview. Perhaps a setting to choose?

I see an hour;y detail when I select it. I believe the data is stored at a 6, 12 or 15 minute granularity for my flex 2. Perhaps you could display the individual entries with labeling at the hourly level. Perhaps granularity displayed should be a setting.

Thank you for your work on this.

[jlai]

The data is available in 1 minute, 5 minute, and 15 minute intervals, but I'm finding the graph is very spiky and difficult to read on a 24-hour timescale.

5 minutes is a bit better although "steps per 5 minutes" is a little weird to label compared to steps/minute or steps/hour. The calories chart uses 5 minute intervals and displays the per-minute average.

I guess ideally there'd be a zoom/pan feature although the graph library I'm using doesn't support it out of the box.

[jlai]

I've updated the tile details dialog to remember which tab you had opened

[dhdurgee]

Perhaps you could display the 1/6/15 in the same manner you do the hourly data as vertical bars but of course narrower than the hourly display. It would work for me to display the the hourly data sized as it is now with the hour summary lightly shaded and the 1/6/15 data displayed on top of it in dark shading.

It might also make sense to allow a click on a day in the main display and have it open up the details.

[jlai]

The charts library that I'm using seems to have issues (very bad performance, difficult to read) trying to squeeze that many vertical bars into a bar chart. It's fine when the same data is rendered as a line chart.

Some of it could be solved by using visx (another chart library that allows much more customization) but I'm not sure it's worth writing a custom chart right now when a line chart works just as well (or likely better when it comes to tooltips).