Speaker 1: With technology with hook stuff from how stuff dot com everything.
Speaker 1: Hey there, everyone, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm Jonathan's
Speaker 1: Trickland and on Lauren Vocbum and we're gonna track your
Speaker 1: activity with activity trackers. That's what we're talking about today.
Speaker 1: We're talking about various devices that allow you to see
Speaker 1: how much activity you've you've you've generated over a certain
Speaker 1: amount of time, and sometimes it helps you figure out
Speaker 1: how many calories you've burned or how well you've been sleeping.
Speaker 1: We want to talk about what these devices are, what
Speaker 1: they do, how they do it, and whether or not
Speaker 1: they're actually effective if you want to do something like
Speaker 1: lose weight or get fit. Yeah. Just I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: not that that many people are interested in that kind
Speaker 1: of thing, you know, Yeah, there's like maybe two right, Okay,
Speaker 1: So the last few times I've gone to C E
Speaker 1: S I have noticed really it was I think it
Speaker 1: was two years ago where that it was dramatically apparent
Speaker 1: that fitness tracking and activity tracking is a real thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's huge, huge, booming industry. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, as as between circuitry getting smaller
Speaker 1: and uh sinking, technology improving and the software improving, and
Speaker 1: just all of these things have been coming together to
Speaker 1: create these smaller, sleeker, you know, better devices that can
Speaker 1: really help people out things that are things like interoperability
Speaker 1: to where it can interact with computers or smartphones. Not
Speaker 1: not every device does that. Let's be clear about that.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of devices out there that have
Speaker 1: kind of a limited use like that. Maybe they just
Speaker 1: sink with a computer, or maybe it's just a standalone device,
Speaker 1: but a lot of them do sync up with more
Speaker 1: than one device. You could do it with a smartphone
Speaker 1: application or or a computer or other things as well,
Speaker 1: and they'll let you They'll let you up port port
Speaker 1: whatever data you record into different apps, so that if,
Speaker 1: for example, you're into this kind of thing and you
Speaker 1: have a favorite app you can you can use that
Speaker 1: one to crunch your numbers rather than whatever other proprietary
Speaker 1: thing they have created. Right, Right, So this gives you
Speaker 1: a chance to, uh, to really keep a good look,
Speaker 1: you know, get a really good look at how much
Speaker 1: activity you are you have throughout a given amount of time,
Speaker 1: like a week or a day. So you might say,
Speaker 1: all right, I want to set a goal for myself
Speaker 1: and this device will help me measure up against that
Speaker 1: goal and decide, you know, am I am I meeting
Speaker 1: my goal? Do I need to uh to crank up
Speaker 1: the activity? Do I need to maybe you know, do
Speaker 1: a three mile jog in the morning in order to
Speaker 1: hit what my goals are? Do I need to UM
Speaker 1: to scale back or for for for hardcore trainers, am
Speaker 1: I running my heart rate too hard? Yeah? Yeah, So
Speaker 1: it all depends on what device you have, whether or
Speaker 1: not you can actually do these things, because, like we said,
Speaker 1: not every device does everything. In fact, depending upon what
Speaker 1: you want, that's going to really guide your choices when
Speaker 1: it comes to picking an activity tracker. If you're interested
Speaker 1: in something like that, absolutely and is um there's a
Speaker 1: lot of really terrific reviews out there on the internet.
Speaker 1: We'll mentioned at least one good site to go to
Speaker 1: later on in the podcast. Yeah, there's I came across
Speaker 1: lots and lots of them. And it's interesting too because
Speaker 1: you can see where the different preferences come into play,
Speaker 1: because one reviewer might say, well, you know, X is
Speaker 1: the best activity tracker because it does things this way,
Speaker 1: and someone else will say, no, no no, no, why is
Speaker 1: the best activity tracker because it does things in this
Speaker 1: other way, and it's just because it appeals to that
Speaker 1: particular person a very personal choice. Right So, so that's
Speaker 1: one thing you can get you can walk away with
Speaker 1: right now, is that we're not gonna at the end
Speaker 1: of this podcast. It's not like we're gonna say the
Speaker 1: best activity tracker is blah blah blah, because it all
Speaker 1: depends on what you want to get out of it now. Frankly,
Speaker 1: I think if you are looking at one of these things,
Speaker 1: the thing you really want to get out of it
Speaker 1: is is making sure that you are living a healthy lifestyle.
Speaker 1: And most of the ones that are on the market
Speaker 1: right now will help you do that, depending on how
Speaker 1: you use it. It's it's not magic device that automatically
Speaker 1: turns you into a fit pro athlete right now. Now.
Speaker 1: You have to you have to have your own personal
Speaker 1: sense of motivation about exercising first. Probably obtaining a fitness
Speaker 1: tracker is going to be one of the steps that
Speaker 1: you're you know, carrying out in this motivation um and
Speaker 1: and study studies have shown um that that that just
Speaker 1: mindfulness about this kind of thing can really help you
Speaker 1: out from lots lots of different corners of health and
Speaker 1: fitness when when you are given the power to track
Speaker 1: your own data and to kind of take it into
Speaker 1: your own hands like that, maybe gamify at a tiny
Speaker 1: bit um you, it really helps you out right. There's
Speaker 1: an expert, her name's Dina Bravada. I'm sure you ran
Speaker 1: across her name several times as well, because it's all
Speaker 1: over the place in the research on activity tracking, and
Speaker 1: she has said that there there is a bit of
Speaker 1: a bias that's present with activity trackers in the sense
Speaker 1: of the people who who are interested in them. She
Speaker 1: says that here's a quote. Often those kind of programs
Speaker 1: have been criticized because they attract people who are already
Speaker 1: physically active. In general, there are two categories of people
Speaker 1: who use these trackers, those who are told to wear
Speaker 1: them by a doctor because of an underlying health problem
Speaker 1: and those who are really active and just get a
Speaker 1: kick out of knowing their data. Now, none of that
Speaker 1: is a smack against these activity trackers and whether or
Speaker 1: not they are effective in what they do. She is
Speaker 1: simply saying that this is the person side of that equation,
Speaker 1: not the technology side of that equation. So let's assume
Speaker 1: that at least some of you guys out there listening
Speaker 1: are very much interested in this kind of stuff, and
Speaker 1: you are either interested in just knowing how they work
Speaker 1: in general, or you're actually thinking, hey, I would kind
Speaker 1: of like to look into one of these How do
Speaker 1: they track activity? What exactly is being tracked? And what
Speaker 1: other features might I be interested in if I want
Speaker 1: to get one of these things myself. So I thought
Speaker 1: we'd talked a little bit about some of the basic
Speaker 1: technologies that you find inside some of these trackers, all right,
Speaker 1: because these little these little bitty watch sized or bracelet
Speaker 1: sized or clips clips, you know, you have very very
Speaker 1: small devices these days. You can pack a lot of
Speaker 1: tracking devices into them. Yeah, the sensors that are available
Speaker 1: now really boggle the mind. And like we said, I
Speaker 1: don't think there is a device out there that has
Speaker 1: every single version of what we're about to talk about.
Speaker 1: But they I have not seen one. Yeah, but but
Speaker 1: many of them have several some of them only have
Speaker 1: one or two some and it may be that the
Speaker 1: way that they're packaged is very attractive, but they but
Speaker 1: from a technological point of view, they are comparatively simple.
Speaker 1: But I think one very basic technology we can talk
Speaker 1: about that you can find and in fact, some people
Speaker 1: will argue that this is really all you need if
Speaker 1: you just want to track some basic activity. Is a predometer, right,
Speaker 1: and these have been mechanical predometers. I believe it's been
Speaker 1: around since the nineteen sixties. And they hypothetic like this
Speaker 1: is this is tenuous, tenuous reportage. But but some people
Speaker 1: say that the da Vinci or Thomas Jefferson came up
Speaker 1: with the idea many many moons ago. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: pretty big spread in years if I know my history.
Speaker 1: But yeah, and I do. But yeah, a podometer today,
Speaker 1: it takes a pretty basic form. Usually you have some
Speaker 1: sort of display that's going to tell you how many
Speaker 1: steps you have taken. That's what a podometer does. It's
Speaker 1: supposed to measure how many steps you take. So how
Speaker 1: does it do that. It's essentially counting the number of
Speaker 1: times your foot makes impact with the ground. And really
Speaker 1: that means it's just measuring various shaking of your body.
Speaker 1: So if you are in a car and you're on
Speaker 1: a particularly bumpy road, it's going to start registering that
Speaker 1: as footsteps if it's particularly bumpy, right, or or if
Speaker 1: you hold it in your hand and sway your arm
Speaker 1: back and forth, you would totally fool the device, right,
Speaker 1: not that I know that from prior get Fit corporate
Speaker 1: UM programs that I have cheated a tiny bit on right, Uh,
Speaker 1: if you're not benefiting anyone at that point, let's let's
Speaker 1: stop the cheating. Hey, Lauren, aren't you the team captain
Speaker 1: of our own departmental cheating. I was demonstrating to people
Speaker 1: how the device worked, and I was accused of using
Speaker 1: that as a way of boosting your numbers. All right,
Speaker 1: team captain, Now I've learned a little more about you.
Speaker 1: So anyway, what's what's going on here is inside the
Speaker 1: pedometer you have a a system that essentially forms a switch.
Speaker 1: All right, You've got you've got a weight, and when
Speaker 1: that weight moves it can make a connection that closes
Speaker 1: a switch and counts as a step. And then when
Speaker 1: it moves away that and hits it again, that counts
Speaker 1: as another step. So every time this weight disconnects and
Speaker 1: then reconnects with a contact, a step is registered. And uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it used to be that these were pretty
Speaker 1: big mechanical things where you had a weight suspended on
Speaker 1: like a spring or a pendulum or a small ball
Speaker 1: that could roll back and forth, a cross a tiny track.
Speaker 1: Right now, we're talking about things that are on the
Speaker 1: the micro structure level. But it's still this basic mechanical
Speaker 1: motion of making a contact, breaking a contact, and that
Speaker 1: every time you do that break is what counts is
Speaker 1: a step. Yeah, so uh, it's still still the same
Speaker 1: mechanical approach. It's just now it's much much, much, much
Speaker 1: smaller than what it used to be back in the
Speaker 1: sixties or earlier. If we are to believe that some
Speaker 1: of our our genius ancestors came up with this idea,
Speaker 1: it was probably Tesla, yeah, and it always ends up
Speaker 1: being Tesla, although his probably would also bring down an airplane.
Speaker 1: So uh. Anyway, the old predometers, if you would actually
Speaker 1: pick one up and shake it, you might hear a
Speaker 1: clicking noise, and that's the little switch that's inside it. Again,
Speaker 1: it might be that little ball if it's using that
Speaker 1: particular kind of technology. The newer ones, again, are all
Speaker 1: chip based. They don't have those little those They don't
Speaker 1: have things large enough to make that kind of clicking
Speaker 1: noise unless you've been shaking it way too hard, in
Speaker 1: which case something is probably loose and it may not
Speaker 1: be working at all. Anymore. But anyway, that's your very
Speaker 1: basic pedometer. So it's not terribly accurate in the sense
Speaker 1: that it can't it can't distinguish between different kinds of
Speaker 1: impact and say, oh, well that was definitely a step
Speaker 1: versus that was just a bump, right, um. But they
Speaker 1: are getting a little bit more technologically advanced in that.
Speaker 1: Originally you had to use the counter and combine that
Speaker 1: with a calculation of how long each of your steps
Speaker 1: were in order to calculate distance. These days, they can
Speaker 1: do that for you with onboard computers. Sure. Oh so
Speaker 1: instead of saying like, oh, my stride is this many
Speaker 1: inches long, therefore this many steps and having to get
Speaker 1: a little bit of math. By the way, I said inches,
Speaker 1: and I would say miles because I live in America
Speaker 1: and that's what we do. But centimeters meters that kind
Speaker 1: of thing, right, it would It does the math depending
Speaker 1: on what scale you're using. The more advanced version of
Speaker 1: this sort of approach is the accelerometer. Now, an accelerometer
Speaker 1: is different. It's not got a little switch that's just
Speaker 1: registering a change. Yeah, it's not just like that was
Speaker 1: a shake. It's actually detecting changes in velocity. Uh. Now,
Speaker 1: velocity is speed plus direction. So if you alter that velocity,
Speaker 1: then you are talking about an accelerating force. So, for example,
Speaker 1: when you start, when you start from a standstill and
Speaker 1: you start moving into a run, that's accelerating. You're accelerating
Speaker 1: into a run. Now, once you hit top speed, you
Speaker 1: are no longer accelerating. You may be maintaining a speed.
Speaker 1: But accelerat arometers are all meant to detect these changes
Speaker 1: in velocity. And you've got two basic categories of accelerometers.
Speaker 1: There are many types of accelerometer rometers, but they fall
Speaker 1: into two basic categories. They're static accelerometers. Now, these measure
Speaker 1: a static uh form of acceleration. For instance, gravity, Gravity
Speaker 1: is static, it's not changing when you are on the
Speaker 1: surface of the Earth. It's going to remain the same.
Speaker 1: And so you might wonder why would you need a
Speaker 1: stack accelerometer. It's so that you can determine the rotation
Speaker 1: of a device in respect to the surface of the Earth.
Speaker 1: Very important for something like a smartphone, where you are
Speaker 1: holding the smartphone, you move it from portrait to landscape,
Speaker 1: the static accelerometer is what tells it, oh, the the
Speaker 1: the attitude of this phone has changed not that you're
Speaker 1: giving off attitude. Necessarily, you might be texting I don't
Speaker 1: I usually amy, this is fair, but and rather the
Speaker 1: position in relative to the surface of the earth. So
Speaker 1: if you were to turn it into the landscape mode,
Speaker 1: the screen would would change to reflect that. That's why
Speaker 1: a stack accelerometer is useful. For dynamic accelerometers, they measure
Speaker 1: changes in motion of the accelerometer itself. So the accelerometer
Speaker 1: is part of the larger device. So this is too
Speaker 1: measure the changes in acceleration of that device, not in
Speaker 1: respect to the ground, but just within that device itself.
Speaker 1: So you might have both types in a fitness tracker.
Speaker 1: If the fitness tracker has some sort of screen that
Speaker 1: will rotate depending upon how you're holding your arm. Let's
Speaker 1: say it's a it's a screen that's on a wristband
Speaker 1: or something that's like a watch, and then it might
Speaker 1: have a stack accelerometer and a dynamic one. The dynamic
Speaker 1: one would be more useful for it to detect changes
Speaker 1: in velocity and thus translate that into motion that the
Speaker 1: user is moving around, and that means that the user
Speaker 1: is burning calories and is there's there's activity going on,
Speaker 1: so that's part of the data that this device will
Speaker 1: gather and analyze to translate that into this is what
Speaker 1: your body is doing right right, and we should we
Speaker 1: should add at this point that UM, that a lot
Speaker 1: of the actual output of data that these devices are
Speaker 1: giving you is not UM. Is not the actual data
Speaker 1: that these sensors are making in a lot of it
Speaker 1: is UM really fancy algorithms. And and thank you to
Speaker 1: Peter on Facebook for writing it and telling me that
Speaker 1: I totally say that wrong sometimes because I do UM.
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's it's approximating more complex technology, or
Speaker 1: it's UM gathering together a bunch of these little tiny
Speaker 1: numbers and figuring out something useful that I can tell
Speaker 1: you in return, exactly taking this raw data and making
Speaker 1: it meaningful to us, because otherwise we really what an
Speaker 1: accelerometer would tell you is how much voltage it was generating,
Speaker 1: which doesn't help us at all. That doesn't that's not
Speaker 1: meaningful to at least it's not meaningful to me, and
Speaker 1: I suspect not to Lauren. Uh. Some of you electricians
Speaker 1: out there might say, no, I totally get it, but
Speaker 1: the rest of us are thinking, no, we need this
Speaker 1: translated into something that makes sense like how many calories
Speaker 1: did I burn or how many steps did I take
Speaker 1: or how far did I go? So that's that's the
Speaker 1: basic uh two kinds of accelerometers. The the types underneath
Speaker 1: those are how they detect these changes in the law city. UH.
Speaker 1: And there's a lot there's there are capacitive ones, there's
Speaker 1: piece of electric, there's pizza resistive, there's magneto resistive, there's
Speaker 1: heat transfer. There's lots of different types. There's some that
Speaker 1: use light. But the one that I think, the type
Speaker 1: that's used the most in electronics as far as I
Speaker 1: can tell, is the capacitive type. And so you might
Speaker 1: wonder how does this work. You've got some micro structures
Speaker 1: within a chip, all right. One of them is you've
Speaker 1: got a housing which is is mounted directly to whatever
Speaker 1: the devices on a substrate. So this housing uh will
Speaker 1: move in uh the same way that the device itself moves.
Speaker 1: It's it's dependent upon that. Then you've got a little
Speaker 1: micro structure inside of it that can move freely uh
Speaker 1: in respect to the housing. So if you were to
Speaker 1: shake the device, the micro structure would lag a little
Speaker 1: bit and then pick up that motion, just as if
Speaker 1: you had a spring with a ball on the end,
Speaker 1: and you started moving the top of the spring and
Speaker 1: then the ball would start to move. It's this whole
Speaker 1: momentum thing that's coming up. You've also got these other
Speaker 1: little bitty structures, these micro structures inside this this tiny
Speaker 1: little chip, and I'm talking about teeny tiny we're we're
Speaker 1: tug on the level of microns. Yeah, these are all
Speaker 1: called a microelectro mechanical systems. Yeah, they're they're so small
Speaker 1: that you have to have an automated system to etch
Speaker 1: them onto chips because there's no human with the precision
Speaker 1: necessary to make these things so super tiny. But as
Speaker 1: the microstructure moves, it starts to move between these plates
Speaker 1: that have capacitance. That changes the capacities. It causes current
Speaker 1: to flow, and measuring the current tells you how much
Speaker 1: this device is moving. And by putting these chips in
Speaker 1: different arrangements within a device, you can track different types
Speaker 1: of movement. Because you can only detect movement along one
Speaker 1: axis with a with a very simple accelerometer. Uh, that
Speaker 1: means that you can detect movement along one line of
Speaker 1: one one vector. Really you can't anything up beyond that.
Speaker 1: It wouldn't detect So let's say left right versus up down. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you had three of these accelerometers or to two
Speaker 1: axis accelerometers that were at right angles to one another,
Speaker 1: you could then detect things like along the x axis,
Speaker 1: the y axis, and the z axis. So three axis
Speaker 1: accelerometers what we call those, and those are that those
Speaker 1: are the popular ones and in all of the new
Speaker 1: devices coming out these days. Yeah, and it's also the
Speaker 1: kind of stuff you find in things like video game controllers. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it's some of them you hear about six axis,
Speaker 1: which is really just getting more specifically precise. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so this will detect those changes in motion and
Speaker 1: be able to translate that into again meaningful data once
Speaker 1: you run those raw numbers through whatever software you've got. Uh.
Speaker 1: So those are your two basic ways of detecting motion
Speaker 1: from a purely like this device is moving kind of perspective.
Speaker 1: There are other things that will also detect motion, which
Speaker 1: we'll talk about as well in a little bit. Before
Speaker 1: I get to that, though, I do need to say
Speaker 1: there's a couple of are things that are important about accelerometers.
Speaker 1: One is that sensitivity of an accelerometer is extremely important.
Speaker 1: The more sensitive and accelerometer is, then the more it
Speaker 1: will generate a larger charge in our larger change in
Speaker 1: signal rather for a given change and acceleration compared to
Speaker 1: a less sensitive chip. So these bigger changes are easier
Speaker 1: to measure, and that gives the device a better idea
Speaker 1: of the actual changes in acceleration. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: if you if you make it so that these changes
Speaker 1: are are huge, uh, it can really narrow down the
Speaker 1: parameters of what that change means, and it can be
Speaker 1: more precise in thinking this is more likely an actual
Speaker 1: step versus someone just bump their knee on their desk
Speaker 1: and went out, yeah, yeah, that the technology is getting
Speaker 1: a lot better at um weeding out those false positives exactly.
Speaker 1: And then there are other things you've got to keep
Speaker 1: in mind, like what's the maximum swing of your accelerometer
Speaker 1: that's telling you how much force it can measure or
Speaker 1: how much of a change in nextceleration it can measure. Uh,
Speaker 1: this is really more important if you are designing something
Speaker 1: that moves really really fast and comes to really fast
Speaker 1: stops like a jet, not so much with a person,
Speaker 1: because while you feel you might be fast compared to
Speaker 1: other stuff, you're really slow less less fast than the jet.
Speaker 1: And then you have bandwidth, which is how many times
Speaker 1: a second you can take a reliable acceleration reading. Uh.
Speaker 1: And we don't need anything too precise for human activity
Speaker 1: because again we're not moving that quickly. But these are
Speaker 1: things that are important in accelerometers in general. Uh. We've
Speaker 1: got a lot more to talk about as far as
Speaker 1: the sensors go within this these uh, these activity trackers.
Speaker 1: But before we get into that, let's take a quick
Speaker 1: moment to thank our sponsor. Alright, we're back. So, so
Speaker 1: we've talked about accelerometers and photometers, there is one other
Speaker 1: way the device can track whether or not you've moved around, right,
Speaker 1: Because accelerometers are really great fear for example, on a treadmill, Yeah,
Speaker 1: fantastic because it doesn't have to track your location. It
Speaker 1: just has to track what you are doing. But if
Speaker 1: you have a EPs receiver in your activity tracker, and
Speaker 1: some of them do with them, you can actually track
Speaker 1: where you are in relation to I don't know anything
Speaker 1: else on the planet. But these are not so useful
Speaker 1: if you're just running on a treadmill. No, but but
Speaker 1: they are very much more accurate for calculating the distance
Speaker 1: that you have gone, right. Yeah. So GPS in general,
Speaker 1: this Global Positioning system, Uh, what what's going on is
Speaker 1: You've got the satellites that are beaming down information here
Speaker 1: to the planet and network of twenty four of them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so your GPS receiver receives this these signals from the
Speaker 1: various satellites. Now, each satellite is sending its own unique
Speaker 1: signal down that has essentially a time stamp on it, right,
Speaker 1: and they're all synchronized. Right, So you're getting these different
Speaker 1: signals all at the same time from at least usually
Speaker 1: at least three satellites. Four works best, four works best,
Speaker 1: and and so your device gets these different signals from
Speaker 1: these different satellites, and by measuring how long it took
Speaker 1: the signal from each satellite to get to that uh,
Speaker 1: that device it just compares that against its own its
Speaker 1: own little internal clock. It can tell you where you
Speaker 1: are in the surface of the Earth. Technically you could
Speaker 1: be in one of two places, but that second places
Speaker 1: inside the earth, So we pretty much just say that's
Speaker 1: not it cuts that right out. Yeah, and that this
Speaker 1: was originally military technology, I believe in the seventies and nineties,
Speaker 1: in fact, when when we first started getting consumer access
Speaker 1: to the Global Positioning System, Uh, the accuracy of that
Speaker 1: system for consumers was limited on purpose, right, Yeah. They
Speaker 1: they put limitters into the devices to say like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we don't really want you to know this. Then we
Speaker 1: can say you are somewhere within feet here is here ish.
Speaker 1: But now they're very, very accurate. That's eventually gotten to
Speaker 1: the point where, uh, you know, it's it's just the
Speaker 1: way technology works accurate. Yeah. Yeah, So the GPS receiver
Speaker 1: will act where you are by by taking all this
Speaker 1: information from the satellites and running that through its own
Speaker 1: algorithm and then determining what your location is on the Earth.
Speaker 1: And that way you can do something like, uh, if
Speaker 1: you jog a specific path and you really liked it,
Speaker 1: you can plot it against a map and share it
Speaker 1: with other people. Or you can just you know, see
Speaker 1: how far you went based upon some mapping program. It
Speaker 1: may be that you could compare how far you went
Speaker 1: based from the map compared to whatever the activity tracker says.
Speaker 1: Because some of these have multiple sensors in them, right,
Speaker 1: some of them might have a pedometer or some other
Speaker 1: um means of saying this is how many steps you
Speaker 1: took and use these in conjunction to Yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: funny because I've seen somewhere they do both. They have
Speaker 1: the GPS tracker and they have the pedometer part where
Speaker 1: it tells you how far you went based upon how
Speaker 1: many steps you took, and you can compare the two
Speaker 1: to see how accurate the pedometer is, and in some
Speaker 1: cases it's not so accurate. That's why reading reviews is
Speaker 1: really important because you might you might say, well, if
Speaker 1: I by the predometer, it says I ran four point
Speaker 1: five miles, but when I look at the map it
Speaker 1: says two miles. So yeah, that is a that is
Speaker 1: a large difference. Yeah, there there was actually a review
Speaker 1: I saw that specifically said that. Okay, so those are
Speaker 1: all the various kinds of sensors and technologies that might
Speaker 1: be an activity tracker to motion that you moving around,
Speaker 1: but there are other sensors to right, Yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of them. Um. And these these are all
Speaker 1: the physiological sensors that are going to track things like
Speaker 1: your sweat and your heart rate. And there's been a
Speaker 1: bunch of different things over the years that have that
Speaker 1: have contributed to this. The original heart rate monitor, of course,
Speaker 1: was the electro cardiogram a k a. The e c
Speaker 1: G or e kg UM and that was using electrical
Speaker 1: pickups in an amplifier circuit that would detect the hearts
Speaker 1: electrical impulses through your skin. Um. And you know, when
Speaker 1: when your heart beats, it the way that it does
Speaker 1: it is it generates these pulses, It sends a signal
Speaker 1: out over the nerve pathways on the surface of the
Speaker 1: heart that caused the muscle to contract during each heartbeat.
Speaker 1: And by picking up those electrical signals, you can you
Speaker 1: can track your heartbeat, which is really groovy for um,
Speaker 1: for knowing how hard your body is working, right, because
Speaker 1: I mean, there's there are a lot of things that
Speaker 1: are important when you're exercising, right. It's not just how
Speaker 1: much activity you're doing, how many calories you're burning. If
Speaker 1: you want to have really good cardio workouts, if you
Speaker 1: want to have a good aerobic workout, then you need
Speaker 1: to get to have your heart beating and within a
Speaker 1: certain range for a certain amount of time, right. Uh.
Speaker 1: And and that's I'll get into that a little bit
Speaker 1: more and in the moment, but uh, e c G
Speaker 1: s are a little bit more clunky. Um. Usually they
Speaker 1: work with a chest strap that many runners, especially because
Speaker 1: they're they're they're bouncing around, moving a lot, found very
Speaker 1: uncomfortable to wear. UM. And So a new technology that
Speaker 1: has come out and has become the standard in noninvasive
Speaker 1: heart rate sensor sensory m has been the photo platesmograph
Speaker 1: a k A. The PPG, which may or may not
Speaker 1: be called an optical heart sensor for people who don't
Speaker 1: even want to mess with that entire word. Gotcha, Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: photo would tell me that there's light that's playing a
Speaker 1: role in this somehow. Yes, PPGs bounce light and most
Speaker 1: cases from an l ED in terms of fitness trackers,
Speaker 1: because LEDs are cool bulbs that will not you know,
Speaker 1: burn your skin, burn your skin, which is cool. Um Uh.
Speaker 1: They bounce light through your skin and back to a
Speaker 1: sensor and measure the volume of blood moving through your capillaries.
Speaker 1: And the way this works is that blood absorbs more
Speaker 1: light than it's surrounding tissue. So the less light that
Speaker 1: comes back to the sensor, the greater the volume of
Speaker 1: blood is moving through those capillaries at the time. UM.
Speaker 1: And and this this volume pulses with each heartbeat and
Speaker 1: so by tracking those pulses, a PPG tracks your heart
Speaker 1: rate at rest and during exercise. That's really cool. So
Speaker 1: this is the same sort of thing you get when
Speaker 1: you go into a doctor's office and they have like
Speaker 1: the little finger clamp thing that ends and it uses
Speaker 1: it shines a light onto your fingertip. That is exactly
Speaker 1: what that is. UM. And these these days they have
Speaker 1: become they're they're they're getting a little bit more sensitive
Speaker 1: and UH. And most of them will come in watch
Speaker 1: format and it will be right against the inside of
Speaker 1: your wrist. But you know there they can they can
Speaker 1: be thrown off by the movement of your skin and muscles. UM,
Speaker 1: which happens during workouts pretty frequently in light I would imagine,
Speaker 1: can also cause problems. So some models are pairing a
Speaker 1: PPG with an accelerometer, sometimes a devoted accelerometer, in order
Speaker 1: to compensate for your body's movement. Cool and UH also
Speaker 1: also an interesting point, not entirely relevant fitness trackers, but
Speaker 1: I thought that this was so cool. PPG works differently
Speaker 1: with different wavelengths of light, and so in laboratory and
Speaker 1: hospital situations, infrared radiation can sometimes be used to assess
Speaker 1: blood volume in deep tissue, whereas light in the visible
Speaker 1: range is used in smaller, more commercial devices like these
Speaker 1: fitness trackers. Oh excellent, awesome, So what else? Okay, so
Speaker 1: we've got we've got various ways of tracking the how
Speaker 1: hard or how quickly your heart is beating. We've got
Speaker 1: the idea of position. Are there other ones as well?
Speaker 1: Another great thing to figure out how much you're exerting
Speaker 1: yourself is the galvanic skin response censor, which is a
Speaker 1: really fancy way of saying, how much are you sweating
Speaker 1: right now? Um? It attracts your perspiration by measuring the
Speaker 1: conductivity of your skin. Um, because your skin is a
Speaker 1: pretty good conductor of of of electricity to begin with,
Speaker 1: but when it's wet a k a. When you're sweating,
Speaker 1: it's an even better conductor. So um, so yeah. The
Speaker 1: the the amount that you're perspiring relates to how much
Speaker 1: you're exerting yourself, and so by tracking this this conductivity,
Speaker 1: you can track your exertion. Another great way is through thermometers,
Speaker 1: good old thermometers um, sometimes infra red, sometimes heat flux,
Speaker 1: which just detecting the increase in temperature on you on
Speaker 1: the surface of your skin. Right, yeah, as well as
Speaker 1: I assume there has to be one to detect ambient
Speaker 1: to perature as well. It's usually two paired thermometers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: one tracking your body temperature exactly, one tracking the ambient temperature.
Speaker 1: Because you're a higher body temperature means that you're working harder,
Speaker 1: and you'd also be working harder in a colder ambient temperature. Gotcha, gotcha,
Speaker 1: as opposed to it's just plain hot, right exactly right,
Speaker 1: all right. So these are various trackers and sensors that
Speaker 1: you can find in a lot of the activity trackers
Speaker 1: that are out there. There are other ones as well.
Speaker 1: Some of them are much more specific, and when you
Speaker 1: get down to things like, well how does it track
Speaker 1: your sleep? Well, that's usually things you know, tracking the
Speaker 1: changes in motion. Again, it's usually the accelerometer. If it
Speaker 1: has something that tracks your heart rate, it will be
Speaker 1: tracking your heart rate. Yeah, but it's basically it's usually
Speaker 1: how much you're wiggling around. Yeah. Yeah, So so if
Speaker 1: you you know, it'll that's all when you plug in
Speaker 1: this device, when you sink sink it with whatever, whether
Speaker 1: it's an app or it's your computer, uh, and you
Speaker 1: get the data back saying you had a really good
Speaker 1: night's sleep, and maybe because you took it off and
Speaker 1: set it down next to you instead of or it. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean these are these are the basic
Speaker 1: ways that gathers information. Now. The way it processes information
Speaker 1: is different from one company to the next. It's all
Speaker 1: various proprietary softwares and algorithms that take this, crunch the data,
Speaker 1: and turn it into stuff that makes sense to us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: some of them have really great onboard computers for doing that. Um,
Speaker 1: it's very tiny onboard computers for doing that to to
Speaker 1: give you a little bit of a live output, and
Speaker 1: some of them give you zero live output other than
Speaker 1: maybe a little blinking led or something like that. Right,
Speaker 1: I had a body media fit, for example, and that
Speaker 1: did not have its own screen. Rather, it would you
Speaker 1: would have to sink that either to an app via Bluetooth,
Speaker 1: or you would sink it to your computer via a
Speaker 1: USB cable, and then you could make sense of what
Speaker 1: information had been collecting. But you couldn't even tell what
Speaker 1: it had been collecting until you did that. Right, There
Speaker 1: was no uh screen indicators, so you couldn't read it
Speaker 1: at a moment's notice unless you have to have your
Speaker 1: phone they're paired with it, in which case you could
Speaker 1: pull up the app and take a look that way. Um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, there are other devices that have a dedicate screen,
Speaker 1: so it's going to give you at least some information,
Speaker 1: if not everything. And you know, it's again that depends
Speaker 1: very highly on your personal preference and how much information
Speaker 1: you need at the moment and how much you just
Speaker 1: kind of want to check up on it later. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and some of these will give you information that's
Speaker 1: in uh, very kind of concrete terms in the sense
Speaker 1: of this is how far you walked, or this is
Speaker 1: how how much activity your heart has had today. You know,
Speaker 1: how how how often were you in that perfect zone
Speaker 1: when you were working out versus you weren't quite pushing
Speaker 1: yourself as hard as you needed to, or maybe you
Speaker 1: were pushing yourself too hard you need to pull back off.
Speaker 1: Some of them are a little more vague, like so
Speaker 1: Nike's fuel Band, for example, everything's in fuel points and
Speaker 1: and I know that the fuel band is very popular.
Speaker 1: It's a gorgeous device, looks very full disclosure. My wife
Speaker 1: has one. She loves it. She and she has the
Speaker 1: app that it's paired up with her iPhone. So she
Speaker 1: can see what's going on, but it's doing everything in
Speaker 1: fuel points, and some people have said, some critics have
Speaker 1: said that that makes it less useful because you don't
Speaker 1: know what they mean necessarily. I think, well, you know,
Speaker 1: it always reminds me of Microsoft Points and how you're
Speaker 1: kind of sort of tricking the system in order to
Speaker 1: make it a little bit more of a game and
Speaker 1: less of a reality, which helps lots of people actually,
Speaker 1: because because a lot of people don't want to know
Speaker 1: how many steps they've taken. They're like, oh, that was
Speaker 1: a lot of I wasted so much time getting fit yesterday.
Speaker 1: Why did I do that? But if you get fuel points,
Speaker 1: then you get especially especially if it has a gamification
Speaker 1: element to it, where you are measuring your own activity
Speaker 1: versus the activity of other people. If you set your
Speaker 1: if you have a way of setting a specific goal
Speaker 1: using one of these trackers, and the tracker can keep
Speaker 1: track of that so that it will tell you, Hey,
Speaker 1: you met your goal today. That's a reward system, right
Speaker 1: you You immediately get that reward, that that sense of
Speaker 1: satisfact and that you have met your goal for that day.
Speaker 1: Then you have the added sasfaction. If there's a gamification
Speaker 1: level there beyond just just getting the badge for yourself.
Speaker 1: If you can share that badge with your friends and say, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: check what I did. Did you do it? You didn't
Speaker 1: do it? Stuck up right. Yeah. So if you're all
Speaker 1: using like fitbits, for example, I know people who are
Speaker 1: using fitbits as a way of challenging each other to
Speaker 1: see how many steps they could take. Uh, and they would.
Speaker 1: You know, there'd be groups of friends who were trying
Speaker 1: to walk out walk each other, which is great. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, if that gives you the motivation to
Speaker 1: get exercise, that's great. You know, there's there's nothing wrong
Speaker 1: with using the desire to rub your friends faces and
Speaker 1: your achievements in order for you to get fit, as
Speaker 1: long as you, you know, practice some restraint a little
Speaker 1: bit hytically, I can tell you that a punch to
Speaker 1: the face is not good for your physical fitness. But yeah, so,
Speaker 1: and there are other levels of a gamification to There's
Speaker 1: some devices out there that have games built into the
Speaker 1: software of the device or on the computer that you play,
Speaker 1: so that as you use the device, as you move around,
Speaker 1: you generate like online currency to play in a little
Speaker 1: online game to Strive has that there's a little online
Speaker 1: game where you can as you walk around, you generate coins,
Speaker 1: and using those coins you can buy stuff in the
Speaker 1: game world of a little bit like Sonics rings or
Speaker 1: something like that. Yeah, like Conville, but using this you
Speaker 1: generate the currency just by moving around, so that's the incentive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or um. An office favorite for a while was a
Speaker 1: Zombie Run I think is the name of the app?
Speaker 1: Which which which? I think it's run Zombie Run something
Speaker 1: like that, something like that. Yes, that that gave you.
Speaker 1: It was hooked up to a GPS related system on
Speaker 1: your cell phone, and I would would give you these
Speaker 1: little like are you out running the zombies or are
Speaker 1: you totally dying? Right? Yeah? I I used to have.
Speaker 1: In fact, I had the beta version of that app
Speaker 1: back when it came out in the beta form for Android,
Speaker 1: and the way I don't know if it still works
Speaker 1: this way. I haven't used the app in a long time,
Speaker 1: but the way it originally worked was that you would
Speaker 1: be somewhere and you would tell it where you wanted
Speaker 1: to go. You would open up a map program and
Speaker 1: this zombie app and say, all right, here's you know
Speaker 1: based on my GPS location, this is where I am,
Speaker 1: this is where I want to go. It would then
Speaker 1: generate these virtual zombies on the map that could actually move,
Speaker 1: so the little blips would start moving toward you, and
Speaker 1: your goal was to get to your destination without being
Speaker 1: intercepted by one of those little zombie blips. So you
Speaker 1: might have to find a different route than the one
Speaker 1: you had intended, and you may have to book it,
Speaker 1: and yeah, yeah, you might have to. You might have
Speaker 1: to speed up and slow down, which in running terms
Speaker 1: is is actually really great for training. So and there
Speaker 1: were also, as I recall, there were story elements to
Speaker 1: that game as well that that were added in later.
Speaker 1: I had it where it was just the game mechanic,
Speaker 1: but I know, and it may not even be that
Speaker 1: app It maybe a similar one, because there were a
Speaker 1: few that came out that had the same sort of theme.
Speaker 1: But there was one where there was an overall progressive
Speaker 1: storyline and as you participated, you would unlock more of
Speaker 1: the story. I got eaten. I couldn't get from I
Speaker 1: couldn't get from the train station to my house because
Speaker 1: there was really there was only one way you could
Speaker 1: go by foot, and it kept wanting me to cut
Speaker 1: through the woods. I kept wanting to not run into
Speaker 1: barbed wire fences that are hard to see. Look, if
Speaker 1: you don't bring your bolt cutters to the zombie apocalypse,
Speaker 1: then I don't think you're going to get very far.
Speaker 1: And I'm no longer allowed to bring my bolt cutters
Speaker 1: to work. That was the problem, right, because this was
Speaker 1: my commute back home, and so I already had that
Speaker 1: limitation set on me. I tell you, you make one
Speaker 1: silly mistake with a with an internet line and they
Speaker 1: just never let you forget it. It's crazy. We're very
Speaker 1: unforgiving here and how stuff works. But the game of
Speaker 1: vacation obviously plays a big part. Yeah, and you know
Speaker 1: it's it's the recommended target number of steps per day
Speaker 1: for for healthy human people is about ten thousand and
Speaker 1: um and that's that equals out to maybe about five
Speaker 1: miles and uh and and yeah, so anything that helps
Speaker 1: people get to that. And and in fact, Dina Bravada,
Speaker 1: the person I mentioned at the top of the podcast,
Speaker 1: who you know, she's she's a specialist in in health
Speaker 1: matters and has expressed some skeptic skepticism as to whether
Speaker 1: or not these activity trackers are really you know, a
Speaker 1: huge benefit. I mean, they helped the people who are
Speaker 1: already interested. But she did notice she did a study
Speaker 1: or she was part of the study where uh they
Speaker 1: gave pedometers to a group of participants, UH in a
Speaker 1: randomized trial where some some participants didn't get a podometer,
Speaker 1: some did, and they were all asked to uh kind
Speaker 1: of track their activities. And it turned out that the
Speaker 1: people who had the pedometers increased their physical activity by
Speaker 1: about two thousand three steps per day over the baseline.
Speaker 1: And uh and so that ended up being a twenty
Speaker 1: seven percent increase in physical activity. And that's provided said, well,
Speaker 1: that's significant. So if you have, if you're actually using
Speaker 1: one of these things and you're paying attention to it,
Speaker 1: then you are more likely to actually engage in more
Speaker 1: physical activity and thus exercise more and be have a
Speaker 1: healthier lifestyle. Um. And that's that's the chief argument for
Speaker 1: these activity trackers is the idea that with this information
Speaker 1: you can really be more mindful of what you are
Speaker 1: doing and how it's affecting you. A lot of these
Speaker 1: activity trackers come with software that also have as part
Speaker 1: of it a way of keeping a a food journal,
Speaker 1: which is also very important because you could be exercising,
Speaker 1: but if you're not eating well, then that's not gonna
Speaker 1: help you. You can be sabotaging yourself certainly. So for example,
Speaker 1: the body media fit device I had, uh part of
Speaker 1: the software that you would have once you had to
Speaker 1: subscribe to it. So you you'd have to buy the
Speaker 1: device and you had to subscribe to the service. But
Speaker 1: once you subscribe to the service, you could track your meals.
Speaker 1: And every meal you would track, it would tell you
Speaker 1: how many calories you've consumed. It would break it down
Speaker 1: by what type of calories they were, etcetera. And then
Speaker 1: the the information from the device would tell you how
Speaker 1: many calories you would burned. And so that would give
Speaker 1: you an idea like did I burn more reason I consumed?
Speaker 1: If I did, then I'm on the road to losing weight.
Speaker 1: I mean that's a that's a very basic way of
Speaker 1: figuring it out, calories out. But uh, it also meant
Speaker 1: that you were much more mindful when you started doing
Speaker 1: things like you sat down for a meal. You'd think, oh,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, you know, if I want to if
Speaker 1: I want to be on track and I don't want
Speaker 1: to have to go home and run five miles. I
Speaker 1: probably shouldn't pig out on that deep fried onion, even
Speaker 1: though it's super tasty. Now, there is a flip side
Speaker 1: to this coin, of course, we're talking all about keeping
Speaker 1: all this data and really looking at and making something meaningful. Uh,
Speaker 1: there can come a point where too much data is
Speaker 1: actually harmful, where you're just you're just overwhelmed by all
Speaker 1: the information and you can't really see a way of
Speaker 1: using it in a in a way that makes sense.
Speaker 1: That can happen. I don't know that most I think
Speaker 1: most activity trackers are pretty good where you're not going
Speaker 1: to get that much unless you're really digging down and
Speaker 1: you want to see. Oh, no, I want to I
Speaker 1: want this in pie chart form. No, I wanted in
Speaker 1: line graph form. But that is one of those things
Speaker 1: that we're going to be looking into later in a
Speaker 1: in a later episode of tech Stuff. We've already planned
Speaker 1: on recording this. We haven't recorded it yet, but we
Speaker 1: want to do an episode where we're talking about kind
Speaker 1: of that anxiety you get when you have so much
Speaker 1: information that you know, you start to think, is my
Speaker 1: life being boiled down to data points and charts? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and how much of that is healthy, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's yeah, whether whether or not it's okay that
Speaker 1: we know so much about ourselves at any given second. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've I know more about me than I'm comfortable with.
Speaker 1: But uh, and that's for a later episode. And I
Speaker 1: really do think that most of these physical activity trackers
Speaker 1: aren't quite at that level. It is a little interesting
Speaker 1: to you know, sit there and say, oh, look at
Speaker 1: my sleep patterns. What can I do to make these better? Uh,
Speaker 1: there's really only so much you can do. And you know,
Speaker 1: you can try and make sure that the environment you're
Speaker 1: in is conducive to sleep and rest, but there are
Speaker 1: a lot of little things that you can that you
Speaker 1: can work on that that a lot of people might
Speaker 1: not be completely aware of. Um. And and again a
Speaker 1: lot of this is just about awareness. And along those lines, um,
Speaker 1: you know, these these fitness trackers that we were talking
Speaker 1: about can run from fifty fifty dollars on the low end,
Speaker 1: I guess, you know, ten dollars for up to two
Speaker 1: for some of the super fancy ones, or or even
Speaker 1: more for the really high level performance triathlon kind of things.
Speaker 1: So there's a huge I mean or down to free
Speaker 1: apps that you can download for your smartphone right, which
Speaker 1: is mostly using GPS tracking to figure out how far
Speaker 1: you've gone exactly, keeping in mind that that's not necessarily
Speaker 1: going to translate into a very accurate measure of how
Speaker 1: much how many calories you burn, but you at least
Speaker 1: give you an idea of how far you went. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's It's definitely something that I've been interested
Speaker 1: in the past. And you know, we're about to do
Speaker 1: this exercise thing here at work where we all have pedometers,
Speaker 1: so I'm sure we're gonna I'm in a group with
Speaker 1: Holly Fry, who is a marathon runner, so I know
Speaker 1: my group is going to do really well. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: I don't plan on moving for most of July. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's the spirit. But but you know, it really depends
Speaker 1: on what you want the device for, how you're going
Speaker 1: to use it, and also, like we said, read reviews,
Speaker 1: because some of the ones that are really expensive may
Speaker 1: not have all the features you want and may not
Speaker 1: perform better than than less right, and they might just
Speaker 1: be you know, for a different subset of human person
Speaker 1: than than you happen to be and not yea, not
Speaker 1: all of these are for everybody. If I may make
Speaker 1: a personal recommendation. D C. Rainmaker has a blog that
Speaker 1: is brilliant. He's a triathlon runner, but um our triathlon
Speaker 1: athlete who who's just triathlete, Yes, that would be that
Speaker 1: would be the technical term for that. Who has just
Speaker 1: reviewed all of the devices, all of them, all of them,
Speaker 1: and and and he gets very highly technical, which I love,
Speaker 1: um and but but also tends to put his his
Speaker 1: kind of final thoughts in an extremely succinct package. Excellent, excellent,
Speaker 1: good recommendation. Yeah, uh, and you know again, take a look,
Speaker 1: find out what's going to work right, work well for you.
Speaker 1: You know, if if you have one that's going to
Speaker 1: sync up with a smartphone, make sure that it's compatible
Speaker 1: with which you with your smartphone. Make sure that your
Speaker 1: smartphone has the type of Bluetooth that the device wants
Speaker 1: to sync up with, because that can be very very messy. Right.
Speaker 1: You can say, well, it was supposed to work with
Speaker 1: an iOS device, and technically this iPhone three G is
Speaker 1: an iOS device, but you know, yeah, that's obviously something
Speaker 1: you want to make sure is all all working before
Speaker 1: you you dive in. But uh, yeah, I think these
Speaker 1: are really interesting devices. I've seen some great implementations. I've
Speaker 1: seen some gorgeous designs. The body media fit thing I
Speaker 1: had worked really well for me. Um, I haven't been
Speaker 1: using it for a while, but uh it's you know,
Speaker 1: it was definitely an interesting thing that that you wear
Speaker 1: it all the time except when you're going to get wet,
Speaker 1: and uh so that was kind of interesting the idea
Speaker 1: that this became a part of me for for several months.
Speaker 1: And I did lose weight because I was very my
Speaker 1: full about my activity and what I was eating, and um,
Speaker 1: you know, I should really get back into it. But uh,
Speaker 1: not that I've gained a lot of weight. But could
Speaker 1: you stand to lose a few more pounds anyone who's
Speaker 1: watched forward thinking we would do. But anyway, everyone everyone
Speaker 1: can stand to be a little bit more said. Probably
Speaker 1: probably so, Guys, if you have any suggestions for future
Speaker 1: episodes of tech Stuff. You've got some question about a
Speaker 1: type of device, or a company or a person in tech,
Speaker 1: or just a concept that you want to know more
Speaker 1: about that's technologically relevant, please let us know. You can
Speaker 1: get in touch with us by email our addresses tech
Speaker 1: Stuff at Discovery dot com, or drop us a line
Speaker 1: on Facebook or Twitter. You can find us there. We
Speaker 1: have to handle tech stuff. HS double and Lauren and
Speaker 1: I will talk to you again really soon for more
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