Fitbit subscription api sending data too frequently

[Hefe316]

We have a subscription set up with your api. We have been seeing weird occurrences with a good number of our customers where our server is being alerted that their data has been changed several times within a few seconds. For example, one user synced 539 times between 12:00 AM and 3 pm. When i dig into that user for the day i see that the requests are coming in every second for periods of time throughout the day. Please see below for a small sample taken from my analysis. What could cause this? 

Time sync request came from FITBIT	Seconds between syncs
12:01:53 AM
12:03:30 AM	37
12:03:31 AM	1
12:03:32 AM	1
12:03:33 AM	1
12:03:33 AM	0
12:03:37 AM	4
12:03:39 AM	3
12:03:41 AM	1
12:03:42 AM	2
12:03:45 AM	3
12:03:51 AM	6
12:03:56 AM	4
12:03:59 AM	4
12:04:00 AM	1
12:04:02 AM	2
12:04:04 AM	2

[runalyze]

Dito - I see the  same on our API. It's crazy and I think the API is just "broken"

[Hefe316]

Are you guys just handling the load or are you throttling per user?

[runalyze]

@Hefe316 Do you mean us? Handling the couple of requests is not a problem for us, but the subscription notification cannot be valid

[Hefe316]

I read in a response, here on the forum, that "Noisy or malfunctioning devices may cause erratic updates that will be passed along to the subscription endpoint and need to be limited at the application level"  

It seems as if the Fitbit notification system needs to throttle by user somehow. 

[runalyze]

Sorry, Fitbit's just crap then. We've connected 21 users to the API and get a notification almost every five minutes....

[Hefe316]

We have over 40K users. we are processing upwards of 3 million requests per day. like i said above, some of them are for the same user every couple seconds. 

[runalyze]

It just don't make sense - I subscribed for the activtiy for user x and it can't be that I get a notification for the same user every x minutes (in the end of the day the users has maybe three activities). 

It can't be that hard for Fitbit to put a little intelligence into their backend.

[runalyze]

I mean...."

"Noisy or malfunctioning devices may cause erratic updates that will be passed along to the subscription endpoint and need to be limited at the application level"  

That just sounds like incompetence to me. Either one provides an API with notification that works properly or one does not. By the constant notifications to us, also their system is has clearly more load to handle. Thus Fitbit also has more costs on the server side. 

Polars and Suuntos API (for example) work so fine!

[Gordon-C]

Would you please provide me with your client ID and the types of notifications you're getting in such a short period of time?  Do you think any of these notifications could be duplicates?

[Hefe316]

Is there a way to private message this? I don't want to post my client id over public forum.

[Hefe316]

nevermind. figured out how to send a private message. 

[runalyze]

I just sent you the client ID, too.