Understanding Accelerometer API Capabilities

[nbfb]

Hello all,

I am interested in using the Accelerometer API on my Fitbit Versa to access and save the raw accelerometer day throughout the day. However, I am not always in the vicinity of my phone. I am very new to the world of using APIs to develop software, so I just wanted to check the feasibility of what I have in mind. To access and save the raw accelerometer data, would I need to be within the range to connect via bluetooth to the phone/laptop running the app? It seems to me that the raw accelerometer data is erased from the Fitbit rather quickly (assuming for memory reasons), so I would think that the device needs to be paired with the phone running the app to be able to store this data, and you can't upload it later. Does anyone have any insight? Any help is appreciated!

[Gondwana]

I think you're on the right track. By default, accelerometer data isn't stored at all; it's used to detect steps and then discarded. To save it, you'll need to write an app/clockface to do so. That will need to run continually without interruption. You're limited to 15MB storage, so I doubt you'll be able to save a whole day's data (but do the maths).

The hardest part is getting the data off the watch. Unless you use a lot of tricks, the data can take roughly as long to download as it does to collect (eg, it could take 24 hours to transfer 24 hours worth of accel data).There's also nasty security issues that can make it hard to transfer the data to a server (which you may have to write).