Low Friction Personal

Data Collection

@aaronpk • aaronparecki.com Quantified Self • San Francisco • October 2013

Things I track inconsistently

¡ One photo every day – off and on since 2007

¡  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

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

@aaronpk

¡ One decimal point of precision (about 5km)

¡ City name

¡ Local time and timezone

aaronparecki.com

Tracking My Location

¡ Four decimal points of precision (within a block)

¡ City name

¡ Local time and timezone

Automatic reply to an SMS

Tracking My Location

Hardware GPS Logger (2007)

@aaronpk

Tracking My Location

GPS-Enabled Phone (2008-2009) Tracking My Location

@aaronpk

Geoloqi for iPhone (2010-Present)

@aaronpk

Tracking My Location

@aaronpk

Stored in PostGIS

¡ Queryable by timestamp or by area

Tracking My Location

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" }

Tracking My Location

SMS Interface

Your Phone

Google Voice

Gmail notification

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 ** if you have an Android, you can just use Tasker

Tracking My Location

@aaronpk

Publishing My Weight

aaronparecki.com/metrics

Tracking My Weight

Withings Wireless Scale – 2011-Present

@aaronpk

Tracking My Weight

Weight Data Flow

Withings Scale IFTTT

Gmail notification

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!

Tracking My Weight

@aaronpk

Tracking My Weight

Withings Wireless Scale

Withings Wireless Scale

@aaronpk

Geoloqi Acquired

Tracking My Weight

Publishing My Sleep

¡ Local time based on the timezone of my location

¡ Includes city I slept in from my GPS data

aaronparecki.com/metrics

Tracking My Weight

Sleep Cycle App

¡ Place your phone on your bed

¡ Requires your phone to be plugged in

@aaronpk

Tracking My Weight

Original Fitbit

¡ 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

Tracking My Weight

Jawbone UP – 2011-Present

¡ 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

Tracking My Sleep

Sleep Logs

@aaronpk

¡ Times are localized using location data

¡ Timezone is found using Terraformer

¡ Using a reverse geocoder to add City, State, Country

Tracking My Sleep

Sleep Logs by City

Tracking My Sleep

Sleep Logs by City Jetlag

SXSW

Tracking My Sleep

Sleep Logs Nov 2011 – September 2013

Tracking My Sleep

Tracking My Sleep

Sleep Logs Nov 2011 – September 2013

Private Database aaronparecki.com Public

@aaronpk

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

collect passively

analyze actively

@aaronpk • aaronparecki.com

Low Friction: