Does time series contain the current partial minute?

[Kevin-H]

I'll be periodically fetching the steps time series (minute level steps). I'll be using the start date/end date variant, and I'm planning to set the start date to the date/time of the last element already downloaded plus one minute and the end date to "now". My question is: will the API return a value for the current incomplete minute such that if I were to download again I would get a different value for it (assuming the user is active for that whole minute)?

[ibahdanau · Accepted solution]

I'd say it more depends if tracker had synced to fitbit servers or not. 

When using API you read the data not directly from tracker, you read it from Fitbit servers.

Also trackers normally send data per minute, since most of the data had minute precision and there is no data that can be accessed via api with second level precision.

That means that, for example, if tracker decides to sync at 10:33:23, it will send all the data it has up to 10:33:23 and won't send last 23 seconds.

Since trackers try to sync approximatly every 15 minutes, you can do the math and see with what precision you can get the data using Fitbit API.

[Kevin_H]

Thanks Ivan!