A personal statistics dashboard and API | Hacker News Reader

A personal statistics dashboard and API

api.chocol.it

82 pointshopkinschris54 comments

I built this dashboard for the Chart.js Dashboard Challenge. You can vote for it here: http://cpo.st/1bmi7Yf and you can see the actual dashboard at the link above.

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I'd pay a monthly fee for a service that let me create one of these and integrate it with the various workout/personal stats apps/gadgets/services. An app like Moves + a sleep monitor + a workout tracking app + a diet tracker all on one dashboard would be really neat.

We've just enabled third-party app support via our API and have a pretty powerful personal dashboard https://api.howareyou.com/ and https://howareyou.com/ – we're still working on integrating different applications and devices, but using our API, there is no reason why you or any other developer can't add your own.

Very nice documentation! Mind sharing how you are generating your API documentation?

Edit: Looks like it is Swagger.

https://developers.helloreverb.com/swagger/

https://github.com/wordnik/swagger-core

fyi, it seems I can't get it to work on Google App Engine (because of Scala dependency I think)

You can run Scala on GAE as long as you have the Scala dependencies so that shouldn't be a problem.

That looks really nice. The demo and some of the ideas seem to good to be true. I'm not sure my doctor spends her time scanning a social network for status updates to decide who to drop in on.

That's a fair point, however, we're seeing a lot of social engagement from a community care aspect (chronic care / long-term conditions / nurses / mental health etc.)

Very impressive - I had no idea that this existed.

I recently bought a fitbit, their online dashboard is pretty similar and you get access without a monthly fee. I'm pretty sure you can sign up and try it without getting a fitbit tracker, but the tracker is pretty nifty and it lights up the dashboard with all your info.

I have an aria, not a fitbit, and it's pretty cool. I really really really want integration with mint.com though, then you'd be able to track the fitness goals vs money spent, and come up with an optimized plan for everything.

I've been using mine for two months and I love it. They have an data API http://dev.fitbit.com/ and said they may open a hardware one too.

I got a flex a month ago and I love it! I don't use the silent alarm feature, because I'm a light sleeper and I wake up when I wake up. The food log is a feature that I thought I won't use, but I am. Wish I also had a heart monitor.

Does the vibrate wake up feature work well? Do you feel you are able to wake easier? That is pretty much the only feature I care about.

Been building something like that at http://ontrack.io with a very robust api (http://ontrack.io/api) with ability to input data and export at will.

First of all, this is awesome! Secondly, what do you use to collect all this data?

From https://github.com/chocolit/dashboard it looks like he uses Jawbone UP and Withings.

brilliant! thanks for that link

Seconded, I'm really interested in the hardware you use to collect all that data.

Thanks for the kind words :)

I'm using a JawboneUP to track mood, steps, calories, and sleep. And the Withings Smart Body Analyzer to track weight, and heart rate. And a few open source gems to pull down the data: https://github.com/chocolit/dashboard

I think the author is using Withings: http://withings.com/

No idea this existed, is it me or does Withings look way more awesome than the Nike+ gear?

Different. Nike+ is more about exercise and sports motivation, Withings is more about the data. I feel inspired to workout with Nike+, Withings just gives me the data I want.

http://withings.com/en/api

Looks very slick! I suggest swapping the colors in the sleep quality circle so the aqua color represents the 72% of the circle, matching the color of the text label inside the circle.

Secret services are gonna love the spread of people uploading their vital statistics to cloud services. I find it an incredibly worrying idea.

I find it more worrying that people are hand-wringing obsessively over any service that collects any amount of personal data. Promoting innovation and finding creative ways to approach problems are both much more important than enumerating the nefarious ways that people or groups or governments can use the resulting data.

While it's an important cause to fight for, some privacy discussions that are consuming various parts of the tech community these days are just silly.

I don't find anything about this service incredibly worrying. I'm much more worried about what we don't know -- the data-collecting activities we don't knowingly participate in. But since we don't know what we don't know, I try not to waste away my life hand-wringing over those things either.

What specifically worries you about this idea?

After the OP made his first blog post about it [1], I've considered making one for myself too. But I'm open to being convinced otherwise.

[1] http://blog.chocol.it/2013/06/08/personal-api/

I've been building something similar, allowing anyone to track _anything_ about themselves or their daily life in pretty graphs: http://ontrack.io/

I've also built a very extensible API for it from the beginning: http://ontrack.io/api

Awesome! Excited to check this out -- I've had the same idea kicking around in my head for a while.

Is there a demo of it that's up for people to see?

Here's a screenshot example: http://imgur.com/S8IzLRe

You can make an account and enter data, but there is no demo available now. That's a good idea, though.

https://www.tictrac.com do a good personal dashboard too. They normalize the data from different sources allowing you to, for example, compare stress levels against exercise and productivity etc allowing you to spot negative working patterns and other personal insights.

Not affiliated with them.

It reminds me of http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1461902402/a-bit-e-of-me, but in a very fancier way. This idea might be pretty cool in an app to monitor your health.

You have a little bit of a problem with the beating heart animation -- it's jumped out of it's container and is on the border, and I'm running chrome 28

Thanks for catching that, I've made an issue for it :)

https://github.com/chocolit/dashboard/issues/3

my company open mhealth is building an open software architecture for digital health data. we want to make it easier to be able to integrate data from siloed applications so we can tell the patient story in a coherent and data driven way. check out the spec https://github.com/openmhealth/developer/wiki/DSU-API-1.0-Be...

You should put some axes on the steps/calories burned graphs. The upper left time looks like the updated time, but is the graph time over the past hour, day?

That's a great point! I initially had labels along the x-axis and then removed them for simplicity. But looks like I went a little too far.

Each individual data point is total steps and or calories for a singular day. The count in the top right is for today (and it's always the last data point on the graph). Then it goes today-1, today-2, etc..

Thanks for taking the time to check it out and providing some feedback, I do appreciate it :)

This is my biggest gripe, otherwise I like it. Visually the design is pretty, but in terms of representing information it leaves a lot to be desired.

Have this for seniors & babies and you'll make a lot of money.

There are very limited devices available to track data though.

Shouldn't the quality be calculated doing DeepSleep/TotalSleep as opposed to LightSleep/TotalSleep?

I thought the same as you at first. But the "sleep quality" metric I'm using here is provided back from the JawboneAPI. It's yielded from some oddly weighted formula Jawbone uses.

How is the bio data collected (by what device)?

Mood, sleep, steps, and calories burned are tracked using a JawboneUP and pulled down hourly from the JawboneAPI.

Weight, and heart rate are tracked using a Withings Smart Body Analyzer and pulled down hourly from the WithingsAPI

This is awesome Chris! Exquisitely executed.

I'm sorry folks, but my first knee-jerk reaction was yuck! To paraphrase Cristina "Is That All There Is To A Dashboard?"

Impressive. Time to get a Jawbone.

Locked up my screen. (iPhone)

Ah! I think this is related to a known issue: https://github.com/chocolit/dashboard/issues/1

Appreciate the feedback :)

This is really awesome.

cool dashboard, would be better if we could make more than just these fluff measurements

they are fluff measurements, i'm a biomedical scientist i know what i'm talking about

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