low friction personal data collection - qs portland

Low FrictionPersonal

Data Collection

@aaronpk • aaronparecki.com

Quantified Self PDX • September 2013

Things I track consistently

Location: GPS (since 2008)

Location: Checkins (since 2009)

Sleep (since November 2011)

Weight (since October 2011)

Steps / Activity (since November 2011)

@aaronpk

Things I track consistently

Location: GPS (since 2008) iPhone

Location: Checkins (since 2009) Foursquare

Sleep (since November 2011) Jawbone UP

Weight (since October 2011) Withings Scale

Steps / Activity (since November 2011) Jawbone

@aaronpk

Things I track inconsistently

One photo every day – off and on since 2007 – various apps

Bike Rides – Usually rides only > 1 mile – Strava

Heart Rate – During bike rides or other activities – Strava

Food I Eat – Aug 19 - present – text file on my phone

Publishing My Location

One decimal point of precision (about 5km)

City name

Local time and timezone

aaronparecki.com

Publishing My Location

Four decimal points of precision (within a block)

City name

Local time and timezone

Automatic reply to an SMS

Publishing My Sleepaaronparecki.com/metrics

Also includes the city I slept in from my GPS data

Publishing My Weightaaronparecki.com/metrics

Location2008 - Present

@aaronpk

Hardware GPS Logger (2007)

@aaronpk

GPS-Enabled Phone (2008)

@aaronpk

Geoloqi on an iPhone

@aaronpk

Stored in PostGIS

Queryable by timestamp or by area

Timezone API

Created with github.com/esri/Terraformer

curl http://api.example.com/?lat=45.5118&lng=-122.6433

{ status: "ok", timezone: "America/Los_Angeles"}

SMS Interface

Your Phone

Google Voice

Gmailnotification

of SMS

aaronparecki.com

You send me an SMS

Google Voice sends me an

email with the SMS

A Gmail filter catches it and

forwards it to my web server

then sends an email reply to the “from” address of

the SMS notification

Google Voice sends you an SMS

from my phone number

My web server retrieves my location data

* it would also be simpler to use Twilio for this, but I like that the SMSs are to and from my own number, hence the Google Voice round trip

@aaronpk

WeightOct 2011 - Present

@aaronpk

@aaronpk

Withings Wireless Scale

Weight Data Flow

Withings Scale IFTTT

Gmailnotification

aaronparecki.com

Withings API reports to

IFTTT

IFTTT sends me an email with all the

data

A Gmail filter catches it and forwards it to my

web server and creates a new post

* the Withings API was too difficult to use directly, so I had to go through IFTTT as a proxy. I would love to find a simple Ruby/Sinatra or PHP app that someone else has written as a template!

@aaronpk

Withings Wireless Scale

@aaronpk

Withings Wireless ScaleGeoloqi

Acquired

SleepNov 2011 - Present

@aaronpk

Sleep Cycle App

Place your phone on your bed

Requires your phone to be plugged in

Can wake you up at an appropriate time

@aaronpk

Original Fitbit

Tracks steps, activity, and sleep

To track sleep, requires you wear it around your wrist

I was not able to sustain this because of the extra effort of using the wrist strap

Long button press to put into “Sleep” mode, gives visual feedback but no vibration (timer starts running)

@aaronpk

Jawbone UP

Always on my wrist, so I never forget about it

Battery lasts 8-10 days

Long button press to put into “Sleep” mode, gives visual and tactile feedback

@aaronpk

Sleep Logs

@aaronpk

Times are localized using location data

Timezone is found using Terraformer

Using a reverse geocoder to add City, State, Country

Sleep Logs by City

Sleep Logs by CityJetlag

SXSW

Sleep LogsNov 2011 – September 2013

Sleep LogsNov 2011 – September 2013

PrivateDatabase aaronparecki.comPublic

Some patterns are only visible after looking at a

long-term dataset.

@aaronpk

I set up systems to passively collect data so that I have lots to work

with later!

@aaronpk

Low Friction

Thanks

Aaron Parecki

@aaronpk

aaronparecki.com