EDA and body responses, what does it do?

[t.parker]

So far I have no idea. I have enabled cEDA in the app in the Stress Management section. It does drain battery faster but there is a warning about it. Anyway, I'm trying to understand the purpose of using cEDA as it's a big feature and selling point for Sense 2. So far I'm only confused.

I have enabled the cEDA and since then it detected a few body responses (I don't quite understand what it is despite reading Fitbit blog). Now, the app asked me to identify my mood by selecting one of several icons. It's no different from using the EDA app on Sense but I guess it's now automated and all-day. That would be ok if only I could see something more than binary output of measuring (body response or nothing). I don't think this feature is what some people expect it to be (some kind of ringing alarm when one gets stressed). I counted that it could be an answer to Garmin's Body Battery feature but it isn't.

The notifications for responses are coming quite late so that won't be any help during a moments of stress. I believe it's more for looking back at the data in retrospect and think what was going on but that doesn't seem to be very useful. Here's example. I have received notification at 22:19 while the response has been identified 10 minutes before:

Notification came at 22:19

 And that's pretty much it.

So my question is how the cEDA feature should help? Am I missing something here? I'm not quite convinced it's worth to sacrifice battery for logging smileys (there is no even field to describe anything like "had argument with boss"), to input something meaningful.

Moderator edit: clarified subject.

[rbittman]

I’m reserving judgment on cEDA for a few weeks. I think you have to log responses several days to “teach” the device how you react to things. It’s not just about negative stresses. Your body responds to excitement, happiness, etc too. 

[t.parker]

@rbittman "think you have to log responses several days to “teach” the device " - who thinks and what is the source of "thinking"? I was assuming there may be some machine learning (or something simpler) involved but according to this it's nothing like that. Did Fitbit mentioned anywhere the algorithm first learns and then will identify type of stress by itself or something like that?

[rbittman]

I could swear I thought I’d read that in one of the Fitbit emails or links but I can’t re-find it. Maybe logging moods is just a personal exercise, lol. In that case, I’d likely turn that off. But I’m still hoping to find my reasoning for thinking it’s a kind of machine learning. 

[t.parker]

So far I'm getting notifications out of nowhere. Sitting and sipping my coffee, buzz, body response (always 10 minutes ago, it's 10 minutes delay between response and notification). Those notifications start getting on my nerves 😁 I can see this feature becoming a source of stress rather than remedy 🤣

[RonaldM]

I totally recognize your questions. Yesterday I received 8 notifications during the day from which one could count for stress (phone call from manager, didn't see that one coming 😅). But in the morning I had a a first consultation with a psychologist. During the preparation for the meeting, the ride to the office and the meeting itself felt stressful and emotional. But cEDA registered nothing, not one notification before, during or after the meeting.

I feld stressed, but cEDA thought I was nerveless/cool-headed 😎

[t.parker]

@RonaldM I noticed too that it misses real stressful situations. I have been just trying to book flight ticket for somebody who didn't show much of cooperation and that ground my gears a bit and nothing, no response from sensor. But got several notifications when doing nothing and actually relaxing 😁

[N8teGee]

@t.parker Is there no historical record in the app that you can look back on? Maybe a graph or something? I don't really think I'd find much use from it either, I don't need something/someone to tell me when I'm feeling stressed. Now if that data is used for a bigger cause and drives other metrics then fine, but on its own not much use. 

[RonaldM]

You can see the responses day-to-day and what you have registered with the response. You also get a week report but I guess non of us has enough data/days logged for this.

So next week we will know more 😊

[t.parker]

@N8teGee there is a log of moods and repsonses that it's possible to view (so user can reflect more) but for now I don't see the stress management doing anything for me except annoying me from time to time. Just now I got another notification doing nothing, definitely not stressed 😁 so I picked mood "Calm" and this is what watch told me:

Oh... why do I feel calm? 🤔 Maybe I will go for that walk into the rain so that should help me to stop being calm and make me angry 😂

[RonaldM]

So we don't need a full week to get a week report, funny to see the mix up translation English/Dutch. 

[t.parker]

One more annoying thing is that the feature woke me up twice with vibration. That, if not fixed, for many will be a deal breaker.

[RonaldM]

I can imagine that for sure. I have 'Sleep mode' on at night myself so I guess this is why I haven't noticed this. 

[t.parker]

I use DND (I didn't try sleep mode) yet got the notification but even if the user wouldn't use DND/sleep mode Fitbit detects sleep (and kind of knows when the middle of the night is). It may be that such notifications were rare or never happened during tests so nobody thought that stress management shouldn't stress people by waking them up 😄

I looked into the weekly reports. This seems more like a log. So far I see the feature making no attempt to be "smart". It detects body responses mostly when I actually relax. I was surprised there were no body responses detected before/after the HM race yesterday (mental and physical stress). There were a number of opportunities to detect stress responses (both, good and bad stress).

Here's Garmin's stress tracking snapshot between 9:30am to 3pm:

and here are responses from yesterday (both exciting and stressful day, pretty much great test ground for cEDA and stress management feature):

The 22:55 - 23:03 I was already sleeping (went to sleep by 10pm). Only 14:20 - 14:26 seems to be detecting something real and it's also the highest spike on Garmin's stress chart.

One thing I can think of is that the cEDA sensor detects responses in my sleep because of night sweating (some people just sweat more when sleeping).

[RonaldM]

Or on the positive side, Fitbit saved you from a very scary dream 😇

Anyways it's good sharing these issues and findings, who knows some Fitbit devs are lurking around here and will try to fix it 😊🥸🧐

[t.parker]

@RonaldM I sometimes doubt anyone from Fitbit uses those devices at all. But what we post here serves other users. This product has been pretty much abandoned before release leaving users confused. It's always a source of information for others when one can't count on the company's support.

[N8teGee]

Yes it seems as though support has been pretty much non existent, especially the presale support when users were understandably wanting questions answered. 

[Goosse1962]

I haven't received any notifications from the feature. It took me a while to figure out how to activate and turn it on. It looks like during that process I also turned off the notifications on the phone side. I currently don't want notifications anyway.

Per some documentation it identifies physical stress, which may not be connected to a person's emotional stress. I am normally calm. Looking at the logs, it appears the stress is occurring during exercise. That makes sense for me as I am strengthening and stretching muscles as part of post-surgery therapy. It will be interesting to see how it works over time.

[rbittman]

While I used the Sense 2, I had the cEDA all turned on, in addition to all notifications. I did receive alerts that I should check stress levels (the "How are you feeling?" question). Sometimes these seemed related to emotional stress, and sometimes to just emotions happening, but not necessarily stressful ones. For instance, I could have an excited or happy moment and would get a notice for that. I also got notices when say, someone would cut me off on the freeway, which is a more stressful option, in my opinion. However, even when I dutifully entered what my feelings were at the time, I received little additional feedback, and the device did not seem to do any machine learning about my stress inducers. This feature became more annoying than useful. That was one of the main reasons I returned it, since it also did not offer what I'd hoped would be excellent HR and sleep tracking (it offers the same old metrics and sensors for those things as in older models).

I would be interested to hear if other users find the cEDA feature helpful.

[denmike2]

It would be really nice if someone from fitbit could explain what the cEDA is supposed to do, and what the answers to all these notifications are used for (if anything).

It feels like they're just being logged and ignored, but hopefully something else is going on in the background. It would just be really nice to know WHAT is going on.

Or maybe it has already been described, but I didn't manage to find it?