Reminders to move in clock face

[ChrisF-Alta]

I would like to see the hourly activity feature on the watch face for the Versa. It is unfathomable that you can see calories but not your hourly steps. Supposedly the Versa is aimed at the mass market, in other words people who are trying to be more fit but don’t necessary exercise on a regular basis.

I think one of the greatest features for those trying to increase their activity is to do at least 250 steps each hour. And if you use this feature, you are going to be checking it probably a few times every hour. So why isn’t it on the watch face? It is available on the Charge 2 watch face. I would like some reassurance that this oversight by Fitbit will soon be remedied, otherwise I may give serious thought as to whether I keep this watch or not.

Moderator edit: subject for clarity

[AlejandraFitbit]

It's great to see you around @ChrisF-Alta.

Thanks for your feedback about Versa, I just want to let you know that I have moved your post from the Blaze board to the Versa board, where I think you might be able to find more answers about this Fitbit.

About your request, actually the Fitbit Versa have the "Reminders to Move" feature, you just need to swipe up from the clock face, the "Today" option will appear and there you will be able to see how many steps you have walked during that hour.

But I also think that having this option in the clock face would be great, I took the liberty and searched for a request like this but didn't find any. Feel free to visit our feature suggestions board and share your ideas.

Keep the stepping up. 

[ChrisF-Alta]

Thank you for your reply.  However, since I don’t always feel the vibration in the “Reminders to Move” feature, I often try to do my steps earlier in the hour.  Usually I do these steps walking around the house and thus check my FitBit several times while walking.  Without this feature on the watch face, it will mean that I not only have to go to my watch face but then swipe up each time to see if I have completed my 250 steps all while trying to walk at a fairly brisk pace.  Believe me, having to do this several times each hour will be very annoying.  In fact I am hoping it won’t be a deal breaker for me.  I pre-ordered my Versa and expect to receive it next week. If I find it too much of a pain, I may just stick with my Charge 2 and return the Versa until such time as you have this feature on the watch face.

As I said before, it is unfathomable to me that calories is on the watch face but not your hourly activity.  I think people like me, who are just trying to live a bit healthier, would use this feature most of all.  I am not a 10,000 step a day person and, while I try to do 5,000-7,000 steps a day, moving each hour and doing my 250 steps is my main goal.  I am keeping my fingers cross that FitBit will do this.

By the way, I did not find this community forum the easiest to navigate and think people who have the same complaint might just give up.  To me it is a no brainer.  Is it so difficult that when there are two, three, four or more stats on the watch face, to allow the user to choose which stats they want to see?  You were able to do it on the Charge 2, so why not the FitBit.  In fact this last suggestion about letting the users choose which stats they have on the watch face could be a separate suggestion for a new feature. Thanks for listening.

[ChrisF-Alta]

Thank you for your reply.  However, since I don’t always feel the vibration in the “Reminders to Move” feature, I often try to do my steps earlier in the hour.  Usually I do these steps walking around the house and thus check my FitBit several times while walking.  Without this feature on the watch face, it will mean that I not only have to go to my watch face but then swipe up each time to see if I have completed my 250 steps all while trying to walk at a fairly brisk pace.  Believe me, having to do this several times each hour will be very annoying.  In fact I am hoping it won’t be a deal breaker for me.  I pre-ordered my Versa and expect to receive it next week. If I find it too much of a pain, I may just stick with my Charge 2 and return the Versa until such time as you have this feature on the watch face.

As I said before, it is unfathomable to me that calories is on the watch face but not your hourly activity.  I think people like me, who are just trying to live a bit healthier, would use this feature most of all.  I am not a 10,000 step a day person and, while I try to do 5,000-7,000 steps a day, moving each hour and doing my 250 steps is my main goal.  I am keeping my fingers crossed that FitBit will do this.

By the way, I did not find this community forum the easiest to navigate and think people who have the same complaint might just give up.  To me it is a no brainer.  Is it so difficult that when there are two, three, four or more stats on the watch face, to allow the user to choose which stats they want to see?  You were able to do it on the Charge 2, so why not the FitBit.  In fact this last suggestion about letting the users choose which stats they have on the watch face could be a separate suggestion for a new feature. Thanks for listening.

[ChrisF-Alta]

Hi,

I got my Versa watch today and LOVE the Today App. I didn’t realize that once I was in the app, if I was doing my hourly steps and flicked my wrist, it was the Today App screen that would appear. (I mistakenly thought I would have to see my watch face and then have to swipe again to get to this app each time I wanted to see it while doing my hourly steps.) And I love that you can see two lines at once, such as hourly steps & steps or steps, active minutes, etc. & heart beat.

This app is much better than having the stats on the watch face as the numbers are a lot larger. My only problem is that the app seems to lag behind that actual hourly step count. Sometimes I am looking at the same figure for a long time and then it suddenly jumps 15 or more steps. It would be good if this feature was in a real-time sync with the steps you were taking.

My other complaint has to do with the active minutes. This feature also does not update in real time. It seems it does not show the correct total until you are done exercising. For example, today it took a long time for my active minutes to show even 1 while I was exercising and stayed at 1 until I was finished and then it jumped to 15.

Another thing I wish could be changed is the strength of the vibration signal at ten minutes to the hour. I have it set at strong, however it only gives two short pulses. If I am concentrating hard on something else, I don’t even feel it. It would be nice if the “strong” setting meant the vibration would have the strength of the silent alarm vibration. Of course not the duration, but perhaps for two or three seconds.

Again, thanks for listening. And I have to say that I do love the Versa.

Chris

Sent from my iPad

[JDW62]

I like to echo the sentiment of this thread.  As an office worker, being able to see my progress of my hourly steps is important to me.  On the Charge 2, I made the Hourly Activity my default screen.  A twist of my wrist and I knew how many more steps I needed.  Very easy and very discrete.  The Versa requires me to use both hands.  Try checking your Hourly Activity while driving... on second thought, don't do that... pull over instead.  

There is a real need for a watch face that can be customized, so that the user's choice of stats shows up with a flick of the wrist.  If I have to wake up the watch and scroll, then that information is too far away. I love the display of the Versa, but it's usability is lacking in this regard.  I like the readability of the Versa.  It's more comfortable to wear to bed even though the screen wakes even in "manual screen wake" mode.  

[JDW62]

If we could make the FitBit Today app the watch face, then we wouldn't have to scroll to get to the daily stats.  Just an idea.  🙂

[ChrisS-999]

I agree that having to wake the watch then swipe is too far away, especially since I and others seem to experience a lot of lag when trying to wake the watch.

I would find it WAY more useful to launch the Today app with one of the right-side buttons, as that seems to wake things up immediately. 

That said, there is a watch face called Nothing Special that you can customize with the primary stats in the four corners of the face, (but no options for hourly info), as well as weather and battery percentage remaining. I'm pretty impressed with it, as you can change the color of each individual element like the numbers, split lines, backgrounds, etc. You can tap on each stat "area" to cycle through them and you can lock them to avoid accidentally changing them too.

[JDW62]

Perhaps FitBit has not enabled "Hourly Activity" in their SDK for watch faces, which would explain the statistic's absence on all of them.

[dviiijp]

Another request for hourly activity on the clock face screen.

Had this on my charge HR on the main screen, would love this on my Versa!

Looks like no developer clock faces have it either...

[Donna80]

Yeah, It seems likely the hourly stats aren't available in the API, only daily stats, which is rediculous as at a glance hourly stats would be far more useful -

https://dev.fitbit.com/build/reference/device-api/user-activity/

[Drifty26]

I just published a clock face that shows the hourly reminders to move.  Look for "Move It!" in the gallery.

Note that since the hourly data is not available in the SDK the clock face code must monitor the steps for this to work and the clock face code exits if you run another app (such as Today or Weather).  This causes a restriction that you must show the clock again after using any application or the counts will not be correct if the hour changes while the clock face code is not running.  It tries to warn you if this happens, but it cannot report on steps that it "missed".

Other notes and features:

• It comes predefined for the reminder hours from 8 am until 6 pm.  You can change that in the settings but for now you need to use military time, so the initial values are 8 and 18.  For some reason the initial values don’t show up in on the settings page but they do if you change them.  Setting the new values is a little cumbersome – hopefully I can get a more user friendly version of the settings UI to work.
• It provides additional reminder vibrations, if needed, at 52, 54, 56 and 58 minutes after the hour.  Each additional reminder also displays a reminder screen with the stick figure and a circle showing your progress, but that only shows for 5 seconds and it doesn’t turn on the display so you might miss it.  But you can always see where you are in the hour from the main screen.
• It shows the steps for the current hour, even if it isn’t in the reminder window.  And unlike the app in the device, the count goes above 250.
• The circle has 2 components:
  • The dots represent the reminder hours.   A red dot will be present if you make the goal and it will be blank if not.  If you make all of the reminders for the day, the dots turn green.
  • The circle represents the progress towards your daily step goal (e.g. 10000).  If you make the goal, the yellow line turns green.

 Give it a try if this will help.

John

[805976]

@AlejandraFitbit - thank you for suggesting this feature. Can you please provide an update on how this is coming along? 

I upgraded from Charge 2 to Versa yesterday and I am disappointed. I may return it for Charge 3 once SE is available, as I like Fitbit Pay. 

Will Charge 3 allow me to put the reminders to move on the initial screen? 

Thank you, Eric 

[Cazamataz]

Thanks for this watch face John! I like being able to see my hourly activity with the steps for the hour I’m as well as my progress toward my step goal - all at the same time without having to flick the screen. I’ve been hoping for option like this since the Versa was releases. I hope all the others looking for hourly activity in the watch face find this. If you do any updates in the future and can find a way to show heart rate that would be nice but it’s not essential for my. Peace, Caz

[Drifty26]

Hi,

Thanks for the good words about the watch face. 

I am working on a new version that i hope will incorporate most, if not all, of the following changes/features:

• Hear rate will be displayed inside the circle
• You will be able to customize the number of steps/hour (e.g. change 250 to 350, 650, 100 or any other value)
• You will be able to set the extra reminder times as you desire.  So instead of having them fixed at 52, 54, 56 and 58 minutes after the hour, you can set any values you want, such as 15, 30, 45.  For extra emphasis, enter the number twice (e.g. 15, 30, 45, 52, 54, 56, 56, 58, 58.
• You will be able to do a bit of analysis after the fact by temporarily changing the start and end hour, as well as the steps/hour and have the circle and dots update
  • This enables analysis like how many hours did I get 500 or more.
  • To make this easier to do, an you will be able to keep the display on all the time (but you wouldn't want to do that for long as it would kill the battery)
• And somewhat related, I hope to have a customizable reminder if the daily goal has not been met. My current thoughts are you could say something like from 5pm until 9pm, notify me hourly if the daily goal hasn't been met.

I have most of this running in a prototype, but am not sure when it will be released as I need to redo most of it for a variety of reasons.

John

[Cazamataz]

These are excellent improvements John! Please keep us posted about the updated app on this forum. It will be very useful for people like me who are trying to remember to get up and move more often (500 steps per hour) but also for people who are trying to lose weight, people with heart disease, and people with type 2 diabetes. Recent studies support that they get up every 20-30 minutes and move around. Peace, Caz

[Drifty26]

I just uploaded the new version of Move It! (1.2.0):

Special thanks to my beta testers - Caz and another person who prefers to remain anonymous!

From the gallery description:

A clockface that displays Reminders to Move counts with custom notifications.

The circle shows:

1) The sweep of the yellow line shows your progress towards your daily step goal.

2) The dots show which hours you have achieved your RTM goals: a red dot for each hour that you make your goal and the dots turn green if you make all of them.

3) Heart rate.

You can:

• Specify the number of steps/hour (e.g. change 250 to 500 or other value)
• Set extra reminder times, separated by commas. For example, 15, 30, 45.  For extra emphasis, enter the number twice (e.g. 15, 30, 45, 52, 54, 58, 58.
• Temporarily change the start and end hour, as well as the steps/hour and have the circle and dots update.
• Set hourly reminders if the daily goal has not been met by setting the start and end time, such as from 5pm until 9pm.

Note that the clockface must be running for it to work so you may need to show the clock after using any other app.

If you are using the current version, please change to another clock and then install the new version rather than upgrading.

---------------

Please let me know if you have any questions or encounter any problems.

John

[ChrisF-Alta]

I have finally found the solution for everyone who has been looking for a Versa clock face that shows your hourly steps.  It is called AcidClock and you can find it easily by typing in AcidClock in the search bar in the Fitbit app under All Clocks.

     I asked the developer two days ago if he could add the hourly steps and today he did it. I actually like it better than the Fitbit Today reading as it does not stop at 250 but actually gives you the total number of steps you are doing that hour.  On the clock face line for steps it gives the total steps + the current hour’s total steps, for example 5,678 + 964.

     All the information is easy to read — time, date, steps/hourly steps, distance, floors climbed, calories burned, active minutes, heart bpm and battery indicator. I absolutely love it!!!

[Natty17]

What is the name of your clock face ? 

Did you incorporate the above changes  ?

[Cazamataz]

I use “Move It! Clock” by Driftwood Computer Systems - it tells me everything I need to know on the clock - and you can set your own hourly target step goal and multiple reminders to move per hour