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Comment by jamesRaybould | Hacker News Reader

I love my fitbit and wear it pretty much religiously, it tracks how much I move in a day and how much I sleep, but 2 things irk me about it. It is constantly broadcasting my location via bluetooth LE. You have to have an internet connection to retrieve any data from it.

As a software dev I'd love to get my raw data out just to see what fun an interesting things I could do/see with it. When I have asked in the past they have turned me down flat saying that they don't provide access to the raw data because people could "figure out how we calculate our raw data and algorithms, so this data is all proprietary"

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There is one open-source project that manages synchronizing a fitbit to their service. Apparently, one used to be able to get data from listening to this communication, but they now encrypt all data coming off of the device.

I got a Jawbone Up24 for my birthday, which seems to be a similar device. I'll see how easy or difficult it is to get data off of that. (I think it's designed to sync via bluetooth directly to a smartphone, which then syncs to their service, so there might be some more wiggle room on communicating to the device).

It looks like Jawbone has a reasonable-looking API [1]. Alternatively, you can set up Beeminder [2] to collect the data (or for Fitbit) for free and then use Beeminder's API [3].

[1]: https://jawbone.com/up/developer [2]: https://www.beeminder.com [2]: https://www.beeminder.com/api

Privacy concerns are one of the reasons I went for the Garmin Vivofit -- it only powers up the radio when you activate sync by holding the button (necessary to achieve the one year battery life).

Great point about the Bluetooth LE.. I've been doing some BLE investigations recently and one of my apps showed both my Fit Bit One and My Wife's. I've been thinking maybe I could use this to automate some stuff around the house.. ;-)

"Supposedly" it randomizes the BDADDR but it seems everytime I look it's the same for both devices.

> saying that they don't provide access to the raw data

This was exactly why I'm awaiting Misfit to fulfill on their promise to open up Shine's data. I will trade my fitbit in right away.

You can minute-resolution step counts through their Web API.

If you're interested in raw accelerometer data, why not just write an app that uses the accelerometer in your phone?

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