Hacker News Reader

Comment by haberman | Hacker News Reader

For a long time I've wanted to create an Android/iOS app called "Sample Me" or something similar, for collecting exactly this kind of data about yourself. You design a survey with whatever data you want to collect, then the app gives you a notification at whatever interval you configure. A couple taps and you have a sample point about your life, which gets appended to a Google Sheet or similar, and maybe some in-app visualization of trends.

I'll probably never actually get to it, but it would be perfect for a thing like this.

View on HN

Track & Graph [1] could work for you, it's FOSS and your full DB is easily exportable. You can set reminders and track either numbers, durations, or MCQs. I'm using it to track long-term post-COVID symptoms, fun stuff.

[1]: https://github.com/SamAmco/track-and-graph

I'd love this on an apple watch. Would be especially nice to combine with an NFC tag. e.g. when you brush your teeth, just hold your watch to the brush which has an NFC tag, then start brushing. That activity is now recorded somewhere.

It's really not a big deal to open an app, browse to the particular activity, and register it. But somehow in practice it is. It's another chore that I never really get around to doing consistently. And if you're not tracking data consistently, it's very quickly quite useless.

The “Today View” (swipe left on the Lock Screen, Notification Center, or Home Screen) would also be a great place for this

I've been doing that for a year.

I have NFC tags everywhere (toothbrush, dental floss, water bottle, toilet, pills, plants), and I just tap my phone on them to track things. For the rest (e.g., exercise) I use Google Assistant on my phone and smart speakers.

It's working very well.

I've hacked something like this using a Pebble and Tasker for Android.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20625346 for the description of source code (it's unfortunately not easy to actually share source code of Tasker scripts, at least not in an easy-to-read form).

The benefits of this approach over writing an app are, to quote: "I made it one afternoon in a grand total of ~30 minutes (including debugging and testing). It requires no Internet connection, doesn't spy on me, I can use it anywhere I am as long as I have my phone in my pocket, I get to own my data in a machine-readable format, which I can trivially send out to my desktop for processing later."

> I made it one afternoon in a grand total of ~30 minutes (including debugging and testing)

One of the interesting side effects of time-tracking is that I became very sensitive to how much can be done with very little effort, just by choosing the right tools.

Tasker is a huge productivity win for getting stuff done in the Android space.

There's Reporter App [0] on app store. It was designed for a very similar purpose.

0: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/reporter-app/id779697486

I have a personal MongoDB that I just throw data into.

Except I don't really track activity data except sleep.

I use it to track other things, such as my location, so that I can answer questions like "where was that restaurant i went to" or "what was that weird building i passed on the highway today".

I also built an air quality box that throws all kinds of stats on my indoor CO2 levels, PM2.5 levels, etc. as well in there.

I developed iOS and Android app - http://atimelogger.com. It allows to create activities you want to track, set goals for them, export to CSV and many other features. It also includes watch integration and today widget. Hope it help someone

I'm building an Apple app that does this and saves everything as a journal.

Do you have a waitlist? I want to sign up

Wasn't planning on it. I'd be happy to email you when it launches.

Please ping me here: radleymarx at gmail.

If anyone is curious:

https://radleymarx.com/work/time-journal

I used a combination of Google Forms and IFTTT-scheduled emails for that.

Might be more convenient to use on a smart watch.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com