Fitbit-external data connection

[risoms]

I'm working on a graduate school project related to bioinformatics over at utaustin. I'm hoping to use the fitbit charge2 to aid in this but I have a few questions related to data collection that I'm hoping to have answered. I did take a look at the answers provided in the forum, but of what was available, some were out of date, and some were for older devices. I appreciate any help you can provide with the following:

1) How often (i.e. seconds, days) does the charge2 send data to the ios app?

1.1) What kind of data (i.e. heart rate) and in what form (i.e. string, hash)?

1.2) Does charge2 send the same data to the app and server simultaneously?

2) How often does the fitbit ios app send data to the server (i.e. seconds, days)?

2.1) Do 3rd party applications require an internet connection to access real-time fitbit data?

2.2) Can data be accessed by 3rd party apps from the fitbit ios app directly?

[AndrewFitbit]

@risoms 

1) Depends on the user. They could manually sync however often they want, or they could have it background sync to a compatible device (every 15-20 mins).

1.1) I'd suggest browsing through our documentation for that, it's similar to any of our other more recent devices.

1.2) Meaning the Fitbit app, or your app? Data has to sync to the server before it's available through the Fitbit Web API. As soon as data is synced, it will show up in the Fitbit app.

2) You have to have an Internet connection to sync, and I think this is answered by 1.2

2.1) You can't get real-time Fitbit data, the closest you can get to that is by using subscriptions and then pulling data as soon as you get notified that there's new data to pull.

2.2) Also answered by 1.2, data needs to be synced to Fitbit before you can pull it using the Fitbit Web API.

Hope that helps answer your questions. 

[risoms]

1) Is there anyway to automate the sync from the fitbit app to the server for an interval less then every 15 minutes, ideally once per second?

1.2) Thats not completely true. Heart rate data is updated from the charge2 to the fitbit app in what looks like once per second. Also, the question was asking if the data from the fitbit device gets synced directly to the server or if the fitbit app has access to it first. If heart rate is indeed available on the fitbit app before arriving at the server, is there any other data thats available on the fitbit app first?

[AndrewFitbit]

@risoms 

1) There isn't a way to automate a sync (other than background syncing).

1.2) Sure, if the Fitbit tracker (Charge 2 for example) is bonded to the iOS device, then you'll see data in the Fitbit app in real time. That's only applicable to the Fitbit app though, my answers previously were in regard to third party apps. So yes, it's possible for data to show up in the Fitbit app before it syncs to the server since Fitbit devices only directly communicate with Fitbit, but as far as third party apps, the data will need to sync before you're able to access it via the Web API.