First video on cEDA

[Dopovo]

@KelseyClubb has posted the first video on how to setup cEDA and she gives her first impressions on Sense 2.

I have a question to the Fitbit moderators: Fitbit advertises Sense 2 as 6+ days battery life. During the video it appears that the activation of cEDA decreases the battery life.

So my question is: if I activate the cEDA will the battery life go below 6 days or it will be anyway more than 6? because the 6+ gives me the confidence that battery life will never decrease lower than 6 days with all features enabled.

[Odyssey13]

@Dopovo from the sales information: "◆ Battery life varies with use & other factors; GPS may reduce battery life."

[Dopovo]

@Odyssey13 It also says "Sense 2 tracks all your health and fitness stats for 6+ days".

So let me rephrase the question "Is the utilization of cEDA included into ALL your health and fitness stats?"

[Dwuuds]

This is the issue I've been trying to press as well. It CLEARLY states 6+ days in multiple places and in the official documentation.

The question is: what exactly does that "+" signify? 6 days and 5 minutes laying if it's lying on a table in a 68F room somewhere?

6 days and 4 hours?

14 days?

1 Million Years?

There is no official explanation anywhere.

So Fitbit forgive me if I'm way off base here, but to me what the "+" actually signifies, is a premeditated intention to create misinformation about a product. It is simply and blatantly false advertising. 

All of this leads me to my other other question: How long is it going to take for a Google/Fitbit stan lurking about to put together an amazing display of mental gymnastics?

[N8teGee]

Seeing as they mention it as being a battery drain, it leads me to think it must be quite significant.

The last time they used this same statement was with the night time spO2 tracking and snore detection. Both of this reduced the battery life significantly, so much so I chose to not use either of them. 

[Dopovo]

Hey @N8teGee maybe you remember better than me but weren't SpO2 and Snore detection (I'm sure about the latter, not the former) brought in a subsequent update? Because if so in that case I agree that the fine print "might affect battery life" is justified. 

However in this case cEDA (the only realy improvement compared to the Sense 1) is available since the launch of the product and Fitbit can't say "hey, if you use it then the declared 6+ days is no longer valid". Hence my question.

[N8teGee]

SpO2 was an update on the Versa 2, but nothing much changed with the Versa 3 where it was a launch feature. It is still the same big battery guzzler unfortunately.

I agree though that such features (shipping with device) should already be included in the battery life specifications.

We still also have the Elephant in the room, the reported 5 hour GPS battery life. 

[RonaldM]

 Off topic but thank you for linking to the video from @KelseyClubb! I will be receiving my Sense 2 on Friday. So it's nice to see the unboxing and first hand experience.

[BenSF]

I have been using my sense 2 for about 20 hours with cEDA and spO2 on. It drained about 18% in total. Keep in mind that during this time I also set it up and meesed arround with the watch faces so that might have affected the battery as well. I'd say cEDA is not draining it that fast. It should easily last at least 5 days.

[t.parker]

I understand that cEDA is an optional feature like GPS and SpO2 tracking. All of them, as the spec says, will require more frequent charging. Now, my experience tells me that 6+ days is probably for the watch which is as-is, out of the box. Enabling anything optional will start reducing battery life. I assume that using cEDA won't provide 6+ days. Probably easy to check by those who already received the watch by monitoring 24 hours usage and see how much power is consumed within 24 hours of using cEDA.

@N8teGee "We still also have the Elephant in the room, the reported 5 hour GPS battery life." not only that but also it seems like Sense 2 doesn't have a connected GPS at all which would leave users with a rather short battery life when using GPS.

[N8teGee]

It would be shame if the main selling point of the Sense 2 couldn't be used because of excessive battery drain, I mean what else has it got going for it?

Battery aside, I'm honestly not sure how useful such a feature would be for me anyway. I never used the EDA function (outside of a couple of tests) on the original Sense as I didn't really know what it was telling me, or how it was helping me in any way. 

[t.parker]

@N8teGee have you noticed that the EDA app on Sense measures HRV? I'm trying to figure out whether it's a recent addition (I honestly don't remember it spot-checking HRV but have been using the EDA app only a few times only in the beginning to see what it could do). No user responded which also shows how popular the feature really is. Somebody would notice long ago considering lots of discussions about accuracy of HRV, right?

The use of EDA isn't clear to me. After finding the original app measures HRV Fitbit may try to make it into some kind of BodyBattery feature but add additional data from the EDA sensor. But that's just a guess. For me, it's one of those features that is supposed to tell me what I already know but maybe I just don't understand its purpose fully 🙂

[Guy_]

@t.parker- HRV shows on 44.128.5.38, that's 2 firmwares ago. Used it about a dozen times max in 2 years. Results were not that interesting or particularly helpful. Your observation about it's usage may be correct.

For reference: SDK/Firmware release history 

[N8teGee]

@t.parker unfortunately I can't be of any help, as like yourself and @Guy_ I have only used the feature a handful of times.

You are likely right that it didn't initially measure HRV, or at least present it to the user in a visible way. Perhaps if we actually had change logs that were useful, things like this wouldn't go under the radar. 

[RonaldM]

@LissaxKristine great YouTube video on cEDA 👍🏼

[RonaldM]

Just found interesting research on stress management using a wearable, guess Fitbit is on to something with cEDA scans (using biocueing and ambulatory biofeedback to enhance emotion regulation). 😅

Wearable biofeedback applications have been developed to enhance emotion regulation 

[t.parker]

@RonaldM this is interesting indeed. The conclusion coming from the paper is at best "promising" which yells "we're not there yet". I'm not sure how far Fitbit is "there yet" but cEDA is a mere data-collecting feature. If that was its purpose of it (collect data for future algorithms to work on) then that would be great but Fitbit shoots its own foot "forgetting" to tell that. Simple example. If I was aware that for now, Fitbit needs data to feed ML algorithms and selecting moods is nothing more but data labelling which is so common in machine learning then I would take more care about using it and who knows, maybe continue feeding it with data (rather than getting annoyed, the labelling with whatever and eventually turning it off). cEDA feels like an incomplete feature.

[sgbednar]

I started out using cEDA, just to see what it could do.  I was charging twice a week (my past experience with Inspire 2 was that once a week was sufficient.  When it obviously was not for Sense 2, I went to twice a week).  I turned off cEDA a couple of weeks ago, because I found the interruptions annoying and stressful 🙄.  I am now squeaking by on one charge per week again, using spO2, but not GPS.  I mean squeaking for real.  It was down in the teens when I charged it last.  

Being a retired mental health professional, I had serious interest in what this feature could do.  It is essentially providing biofeedback, which technically should enable the user to learn how to moderate their own stress levels.  In reality, I wasn't finding it useful.  First of all, the feelings list was too restrictive.  I may know that I am stressed because I am exhausted, hungry, or angry.  I don't get to pick those options.  So I have to reclassify my feelings into something else.  (I guess being exhausted or hungry make me sad or frustrated).  Secondly, the interruptions came at terrible times, like when I was in the middle of something and could not take time out to respond.  Finally, it sometimes asked the impossible, like identifying how I felt last night when I was fast asleep.  How would I know?  

So I just turned it off.