Speaker 1: Welcome to tex Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech. It's time for another
Speaker 1: classic episode. This one is titled tech Stuff Gets Fit.
Speaker 1: It's all about activity trackers. Back then, I think I
Speaker 1: was just starting to use them. And this episode originally
Speaker 1: published on May two thirt enjoy. We want to talk
Speaker 1: about what these devices are, what they do, how they
Speaker 1: do it, and whether or not they're actually effective if
Speaker 1: you want to do something like lose weight or get fit. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Just I mean, you know, not that that many people
Speaker 1: are interested in that kind of thing. Yeah, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's just like maybe two right, Okay, So the last
Speaker 1: few times I've gone to C E S I have
Speaker 1: noticed it really was I think it was two years
Speaker 1: ago where that it was dramatically apparent that fitness tracking
Speaker 1: and activity tracking is a real thing. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's huge, huge, booming industry. Yeah. Well, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: as as between circuitry getting smaller and uh sinking, technology
Speaker 1: improving and the software improving and just all of these
Speaker 1: things have been coming together to create these smaller, sleeker,
Speaker 1: you know, better devices that can really help people out
Speaker 1: things that are things like interoperability to where it can
Speaker 1: interact with computers or smartphones. Not not every device does that.
Speaker 1: Let's be clear about that. There are a lot of
Speaker 1: devices out there that have kind of a limited use
Speaker 1: like that. Maybe they just sink with a computer, or
Speaker 1: maybe it's just a standalone device, but a lot of
Speaker 1: them do sync up with more than one device. You
Speaker 1: can do it with a smartphone application or or a
Speaker 1: computer or other things as well, and they'll let you.
Speaker 1: They'll let you port port whatever data you record into
Speaker 1: different apps, so that if for example, you're into this
Speaker 1: kind of thing and you have a favorite app, you
Speaker 1: can you can use that one to crunch your numbers
Speaker 1: rather than whatever other proprietary thing they have created. Right, right,
Speaker 1: So this gives you a chance to, uh, to really
Speaker 1: keep a good look, you know, get a really good
Speaker 1: look at how much activity you are you have throughout
Speaker 1: a given amount of time, like a week or a day.
Speaker 1: So you might say, all right, I want to set
Speaker 1: a goal for myself and this device will help me
Speaker 1: measure up against that goal and decide, you know, am
Speaker 1: I am I meeting my goal. Do I need to
Speaker 1: uh to crank up the activity. Do I need to
Speaker 1: maybe you know, do a three mile jog in the
Speaker 1: morning in order to hit what my goals are? Do
Speaker 1: I need to um to scale back? Or for for
Speaker 1: for hardcore trainers, am I running my heart rate too hard? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: So it all depends on what device you have, whether
Speaker 1: or not you can actually do these things, because, like
Speaker 1: we said, not every device does everything. In fact, depending
Speaker 1: upon what you want, that's going to really guide your
Speaker 1: choices when it comes to picking an activity tracker. If
Speaker 1: you're interested in something like that, absolutely, and there's there's
Speaker 1: a lot of really terrific reviews out there on the internet.
Speaker 1: We'll mention 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 to 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 a magic device that
Speaker 1: automatic turns you into a fit pro athlete right now. Now.
Speaker 1: You have to you have to have your own a
Speaker 1: personal sense of motivation about exercising first. Probably obtaining a
Speaker 1: fitness tracker is going to be one of the steps
Speaker 1: that you're you know, carrying out in this motivation UM
Speaker 1: and and study studies have shown um that that that
Speaker 1: just mindfulness about this kind of thing can really help
Speaker 1: you out from lots lots of different corners of health
Speaker 1: and fitness. When when you are given the power to
Speaker 1: track your own data and to kind of take it
Speaker 1: into your own hands like that, maybe gamify at a
Speaker 1: tiny bit 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 are interested in them. She says
Speaker 1: that here's a quote. Often those kind of programs have
Speaker 1: been criticized because they attract people who are already physically active.
Speaker 1: In general, there are two categories of people who use
Speaker 1: these trackers, those who are told to wear them by
Speaker 1: a doctor because of an underlying health problem and those
Speaker 1: who are really active and just get a kick out
Speaker 1: of knowing their data. Now, none of that is a
Speaker 1: smack against these activity trackers and whether or not they
Speaker 1: are effective in what they do. She is simply saying
Speaker 1: that this is the person side of that equation, not
Speaker 1: the technology side of that equation. So let's assume that
Speaker 1: at least some of you guys out there listening are
Speaker 1: very much interested in this kind of stuff, and you
Speaker 1: are either interested in just knowing how they work in general,
Speaker 1: or you're actually thinking, hey, I would kind of like
Speaker 1: to look into one of these. How do they track activity?
Speaker 1: What exactly is being tracked? And what other features might
Speaker 1: I be interested in if I want to get one
Speaker 1: of these things myself. So I thought we'd talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about some of the basic technology cheese that
Speaker 1: you find inside some of these trackers, right, because these
Speaker 1: little these little bitty watch sized or bracelet sized or
Speaker 1: clips clips. You know, you have very very small devices
Speaker 1: these days. You can pack a lot of tracking devices
Speaker 1: into them. Yeah, the sensors that are available now really
Speaker 1: boggle the mind. And like we said, I don't think
Speaker 1: there is a device out there that has every single
Speaker 1: version of what we're about to talk about. But I
Speaker 1: have not seen one. Yeah, but many of them have several,
Speaker 1: some of them only have one or two some And
Speaker 1: it may be that the way that they're packaged is
Speaker 1: very attractive, but they but from a technological point of view,
Speaker 1: they are comparatively simple. But I think one very basic
Speaker 1: technology we can talk about that you can find, and
Speaker 1: in fact, some people will argue that this is really
Speaker 1: all you need if you just want to track some
Speaker 1: basic activity is a predometer, right, and these have been
Speaker 1: mechanical predometers. I believe it's been around since the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: and they hypothetically this is this is tenuous, tenuous reportage.
Speaker 1: But but some people say that the da Vinci or
Speaker 1: Thomas Jefferson came up with the idea many many moons ago. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a pretty big spread in years, if I know
Speaker 1: my history. But yeah, and I do. But yeah, a
Speaker 1: podometer today it takes a pretty basic form. Usually you
Speaker 1: have some sort of display that's going to tell you
Speaker 1: how many steps you have taken. That's what a podometer does.
Speaker 1: It's supposed to measure how many steps you take. So
Speaker 1: how does it do that. It's essentially counting the number
Speaker 1: of times your foot makes impact with the ground. And
Speaker 1: really 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 pathicularly 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,
Speaker 1: If you're not benefiting any one at that point, let's
Speaker 1: let's stop the cheating. Hey, Lauren, aren't you the team
Speaker 1: captain of our own departmental cheating. I was demonstrating to
Speaker 1: people how the device worked, and I was accused of
Speaker 1: using 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 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 across 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: chet 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. Right by the way, I
Speaker 1: said inches, and I would say miles because I live
Speaker 1: in America and that's what we do. But centimeters meters
Speaker 1: that kind of thing, right, it would It does the
Speaker 1: math depending on what scale you're using. The more advanced
Speaker 1: version of this sort of approach is the accelerometer. Right now,
Speaker 1: an accelerometer is different. It's not got a little switch
Speaker 1: that's just registering a change. Yeah, it's not just like
Speaker 1: that was 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 accelera 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 change 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: attitude of this phone has changed, not that you're giving
Speaker 1: off attitude necessarily. You might be texting I usually am
Speaker 1: this is fair, but rather the position in relative to
Speaker 1: the surface of the earth. So if you were to
Speaker 1: turn it into the landscape mode, the screen would would
Speaker 1: change to reflect that. That's why a stack accelerometer is useful.
Speaker 1: For dynamic accelerometers, they measure changes in motion of the
Speaker 1: accelerometer itself, so the accelerometer is part of the larger device.
Speaker 1: So this is to measure the changes in accel oration
Speaker 1: of that device, not in respect to the ground, but
Speaker 1: just within that device itself. So you might have both
Speaker 1: types in a fitness tracker. If the fitness tracker has
Speaker 1: some sort of screen that will rotate depending upon how
Speaker 1: you're holding your arm. Let's say it's a it's a
Speaker 1: screen that's on a wristband or something that's like a watch,
Speaker 1: and then it might have a stack accelerometer and a
Speaker 1: dynamic one. The dynamic one would be more useful for
Speaker 1: it to detect changes in velocity and thus translate that
Speaker 1: into motion that the user is moving around and that
Speaker 1: means that the user is burning calories and is there's
Speaker 1: there's activity going on, So that's part of the data
Speaker 1: that this device will gather and analyze to translate that
Speaker 1: into This is what your body is doing right right,
Speaker 1: and we should we should add at this point that
Speaker 1: that a lot of the actual output of data that
Speaker 1: these devices are giving you is not UM. Is not
Speaker 1: the actual data that these sensors are taking in a
Speaker 1: lot of it is UM really fancy algorithms. And and
Speaker 1: thank you to Peter on Facebook for writing in and
Speaker 1: telling me that I totally say that wrong sometimes because
Speaker 1: I do UM. You know, it's it's it's approximating more
Speaker 1: complex technology, or it's gathering together a bunch of these
Speaker 1: little tiny numbers and figuring out something useful that I
Speaker 1: can tell you in return, exactly taking this raw data
Speaker 1: and making it meaningful to us, because otherwise we really
Speaker 1: what an accelerometer would tell you is how much voltage
Speaker 1: it was generating, which doesn't help us at all. That
Speaker 1: doesn't that's not meaningful to at least it's not meaningful
Speaker 1: to me, and I suspect not to Lauren. Uh. Some
Speaker 1: of you electricians out there might say, no, I totally
Speaker 1: get it, but the rest of us are thinking, no,
Speaker 1: we need this translated into something that makes sense, like
Speaker 1: how many calories did I burn or how many steps
Speaker 1: did I take? Or how far did I go? So
Speaker 1: that's that's the basic uh two kinds of accelerometers. The
Speaker 1: the types underneath those are how they detect these changes
Speaker 1: in velocity. UH. And there's a lot there's there are
Speaker 1: capacitive ones, there's piece of electric, there's piezo resistive, there's
Speaker 1: magneto resistive, there's heat transfer. There's lots of different types.
Speaker 1: There's some that use light. But the one that I think,
Speaker 1: the type that's used the most in electronics as far
Speaker 1: as I can tell, is the capacity of type. And
Speaker 1: so you might wonder how does this work. You've got
Speaker 1: some micro structures within a chip, all right. One of
Speaker 1: them is you've got a housing which is mounted directly
Speaker 1: to whatever the devices on a substrate. So this housing
Speaker 1: will move in uh, the same way that the device
Speaker 1: itself moves. It's it's dependent upon that. Then you've got
Speaker 1: a little micro structure inside of it that can move freely,
Speaker 1: uh in respect to the housing. So if you were
Speaker 1: to shake the device, the micro structure would lag a
Speaker 1: little bit and then pick up that motion, just as
Speaker 1: if you had a spring with the ball on the
Speaker 1: end and you started moving the top of the spring
Speaker 1: and then the ball would start to move. It's this
Speaker 1: whole momentum thing that's coming up. You've also got these
Speaker 1: other little bitty structures, these micro structures inside this this
Speaker 1: tiny little chip, and I'm talking about teeny tiny. We're
Speaker 1: we're tug on the level of microns, right. These are
Speaker 1: all called a microelectro mechanical systems. Yeah, they're they're so
Speaker 1: small that you have to have an automated system to
Speaker 1: etch them onto chips because there's no human with the
Speaker 1: precision necessary to make these things so super tiny. But
Speaker 1: as the microstructure moves, it starts to move between these
Speaker 1: plates that have capacitance. That changes the capacities. It causes
Speaker 1: current to flow, and measuring the current tells you how
Speaker 1: much this device is moving. And by putting these chips
Speaker 1: in different arrangements within a device, you can track different
Speaker 1: types of movement because you can only detect movement along
Speaker 1: one axis with it with a very simple accelerometer. That
Speaker 1: means that you can detect movement along one line of
Speaker 1: one one vector. Really you can't anything beyond that. It
Speaker 1: wouldn't detect. So let's say left right versus up down.
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.
Speaker 1: Uh and it's you know, some of them. You hear
Speaker 1: about six axis, which is really just getting more specimilar,
Speaker 1: more precise. Um. Yeah, And so this will detect those
Speaker 1: changes in motion and be able to translate that into
Speaker 1: again meaningful data once you run those raw numbers through
Speaker 1: whatever software you've got. Uh. So those are your two
Speaker 1: basic ways of detecting motion from a purely like this
Speaker 1: device is moving kind of perspective. There are other things
Speaker 1: that will also detect motion, which we'll talk about as
Speaker 1: well in a little bit. Before I get to that, though,
Speaker 1: I do need to say there's a couple other things
Speaker 1: that are important about accelerometer. One is that sensitivity of
Speaker 1: an accelerometer is extremely important. The more sensitive and accelerometer is,
Speaker 1: then the more it will generate a larger charge in
Speaker 1: our larger change in signal rather for a given change
Speaker 1: and acceleration compared to a less sensitive chip. So these
Speaker 1: bigger changes are easier to measure, and that gives the
Speaker 1: device a better idea of the actual changes in acceleration. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, if you if you make it so
Speaker 1: that these changes are are huge, uh, it can really
Speaker 1: narrow down the parameters of what that change means, and
Speaker 1: it can be more precise in thinking this is more
Speaker 1: likely an actual step versus something just bump their knee
Speaker 1: on their desk and went out, Yeah, yeah, the technology
Speaker 1: is getting a lot better at um weeding out those
Speaker 1: false positives exactly. And then there are other things you've
Speaker 1: got to keep in mind, like what's the maximum swing
Speaker 1: of your accelerometer that's telling you how much force it
Speaker 1: can measure or how much of a change in acceleration
Speaker 1: it can measure. Uh. This is really more important if
Speaker 1: you are designing something that moves really really fast and
Speaker 1: comes to really fast stops, like a jet, not so
Speaker 1: much with a person, because while you feel you might
Speaker 1: be fast compared to other stuff, you're really slow less
Speaker 1: less fast in the jet. And then you have bandwidth,
Speaker 1: which is how many times a second you can take
Speaker 1: a reliable acceleration reading. Uh, and we don't need anything
Speaker 1: too precise for human activity because again, we're not moving
Speaker 1: that quickly. But these are things that are important in
Speaker 1: accelerometers in general. Guys, we gotta take a quick break
Speaker 1: from this classic episode so I can get some more
Speaker 1: steps in, but we'll be right back. All right, we're back. So,
Speaker 1: so we've talked about accelerometers and presometers, there is one
Speaker 1: other way the device can track whether or not you've
Speaker 1: moved around, right, Because accelerometers are really great. Fear for example,
Speaker 1: on a treadmill, Yeah, fantastic because it doesn't have to
Speaker 1: track your location. It just has to track what you
Speaker 1: are doing. But if you have a GPS receiver in
Speaker 1: your activity tracker, and some of them do with them,
Speaker 1: you can actually track where you are in relation to
Speaker 1: I don't know anything else on the planet. But these
Speaker 1: are not so useful if you're just running on a treadmill. No,
Speaker 1: but but they are very much more accurate for calculating
Speaker 1: the distance that you have gone. Right. Yeah, So GPS
Speaker 1: in general, this Global Positioning system, Uh, what what's going
Speaker 1: on is You've got the satellites that are beaming down
Speaker 1: information here to the planet and network of twenty four
Speaker 1: of them. Yeah, so your GPS receiver receives this these
Speaker 1: signals from the various satellites. Now, each satellite is sending
Speaker 1: its own unique signal down that has essentially a time
Speaker 1: stamp on it, right, and they're all synchronized, right, So
Speaker 1: you're getting these different signals all at the same time
Speaker 1: from at least usually at least three satellites. Four works best,
Speaker 1: four works best, and and so your device gets these
Speaker 1: different signals from these different satellites. And by measuring how
Speaker 1: long it took the signal from each satellite to get
Speaker 1: to that uh, that device it just compares that against
Speaker 1: its own its own little internal clock. It can tell
Speaker 1: you where you are in the surface of the Earth.
Speaker 1: Technically you could be in one of two places, but
Speaker 1: that second places inside the Earth. So we pretty much
Speaker 1: just say that's not yea, it cuts that right out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And this was originally military technology, I believe in the seventies,
Speaker 1: in the eighties and nineties. In fact, when when we
Speaker 1: first started getting consumer access to the Global Positioning System, Uh,
Speaker 1: the accuracy of that system for consumers was limited on purpose, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: They they put limitters into the devices to say like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we don't really want you to know this thing. We
Speaker 1: can say you are somewhere within feet here is here ish.
Speaker 1: But now they're very very accurate. It's eventually gotten to
Speaker 1: the point where, uh, you know, it's it's just the
Speaker 1: way technology works. It's kind of creepy accurate. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the GPS, for seever, will track where you are
Speaker 1: by by taking all this information from the satellites and
Speaker 1: running that through its own algorithm and then determining what
Speaker 1: your location is on the Earth. And that way you
Speaker 1: can do something like, uh, if you jog a specific
Speaker 1: path and you really liked it, you can plot it
Speaker 1: against a map and share it with other people. Or
Speaker 1: you can just, you know, see how far you went
Speaker 1: based upon some mapping program. It may be that you
Speaker 1: could compare how far you went based from the map
Speaker 1: compared to whatever the activity tracker says. Because some of
Speaker 1: these have multiple sensors in them, right, some of them
Speaker 1: might have a pedometer or some other um means of
Speaker 1: saying this is how many steps you took, and use
Speaker 1: these in conjunction too. Yeah, And it's funny because I've
Speaker 1: seen somewhere they do both. They have the GPS tracker
Speaker 1: and they have the podometer part where it tells you
Speaker 1: how far you went based upon how many steps you took,
Speaker 1: and you can compare the two to see how accurate
Speaker 1: the pedometer is, and in some cases it's not so accurate.
Speaker 1: That's why reading reviews is really important because you might
Speaker 1: you might I'd say, well, if I go by the predometer,
Speaker 1: it says I ran four point five miles, but when
Speaker 1: I look at the map it says two miles. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that is that has a large difference. Yeah, there there
Speaker 1: was actually a review I saw that specifically said that. Okay,
Speaker 1: so those are all the various kinds of sensors and
Speaker 1: technologies that might be an activity tracker to relate to
Speaker 1: motion you moving around, but there are other sensors to right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a whole bunch of them. And these these are
Speaker 1: all the physiological sensors that are going to track things
Speaker 1: like your sweat and your heart rate. And there's been
Speaker 1: a bunch of different things over the years that have
Speaker 1: that have contributed to this. The original heart rate monitor,
Speaker 1: of course, was the electro cardiogram a k A the
Speaker 1: e c G or e kg um, and that was
Speaker 1: using electrical pickups in an amplifier circuit that would detect
Speaker 1: the hearts electrical impulses through your skin. Um. And you
Speaker 1: know when when your heart beats, it the way that
Speaker 1: it does it is it generates these pulses. It sends
Speaker 1: a signal out over the nerve pathways on the surface
Speaker 1: of the heart that caused the muscle to contract during
Speaker 1: each heartbeat. And by picking up those electrical signals, you
Speaker 1: can you can track your heartbeat, which is really groovy
Speaker 1: for UM, for knowing how hard your body is working, right,
Speaker 1: because I mean, there's there are a lot of things
Speaker 1: that are important when you're exercising, right. It's not just
Speaker 1: how much activity you're doing, how many calories you're burning.
Speaker 1: If you want to have really good cardio workouts, if
Speaker 1: you want to have a good aerobic workout, then you
Speaker 1: need to get to have your heart beating and within
Speaker 1: a 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 e c G s
Speaker 1: are a little bit more clunky. UM. Usually they work
Speaker 1: with a chest strap that many runners, especially because they're
Speaker 1: they're they're bouncing around moving a lot, found very uncomfortable
Speaker 1: to wear. UM. And so a new technology that has
Speaker 1: come out and has become the standard in non invasive
Speaker 1: heart rate sensor sensory has been the photo platesmo graph
Speaker 1: a k a. The PPG WOW, which may or may
Speaker 1: not be called an optical heart sensor for people who
Speaker 1: don't even want to mess with that entire word, 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 E 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 heart beat,
Speaker 1: and so by tracking those pulses, a PPG tracks your
Speaker 1: heart rate at rest and during exercise. That's really cool.
Speaker 1: So this is the same sort of thing you get
Speaker 1: when you go into a doctor's office and they have
Speaker 1: like the little finger clamp thing that ends and it
Speaker 1: uses it shines a light onto your fingertip. That is
Speaker 1: exactly what that is. UM. And these these days they
Speaker 1: have become they're they're they're getting a little bit more
Speaker 1: sensitive and UH. And most of them will come in
Speaker 1: watch format and it will be right against the inside
Speaker 1: of your wrist. But you know there they can they
Speaker 1: can be thrown off by the movement of your skin
Speaker 1: and muscles UM, which happens during workouts pretty frequently. Be
Speaker 1: in light, I would imagine, can also cause problems. So
Speaker 1: some models are pairing a PPG with an accelerometer, sometimes
Speaker 1: a devoted accelerometer, in order to compensate for your body's movement.
Speaker 1: Cool and UH as also an interesting point, not entirely
Speaker 1: relevant fitness trackers, but I thought that this was so cool.
Speaker 1: PPG works differently with different wavelengths of light, and so
Speaker 1: in laboratory and hospital situations, infrared radiation can sometimes be
Speaker 1: used to assess blood volume in deep tissue, whereas light
Speaker 1: in the visible range is used in smaller, more commercial
Speaker 1: devices like these fitness trackers. Oh excellent, awesome, So what
Speaker 1: else Okay, so we've got we've got very ways of
Speaker 1: tracking the how hard or how quickly your heart is beating.
Speaker 1: We've got the idea of position. Are there other ones
Speaker 1: as well? Another great thing to figure out how much
Speaker 1: you're exerting yourself is the galvanic skin response sensor, which
Speaker 1: is a really fancy way of saying how much are
Speaker 1: you sweating right now? Um? It attracts your perspiration by
Speaker 1: measuring the conductivity of your skin. Um, because your skin
Speaker 1: is a pretty good conductor of of of electricity to
Speaker 1: begin with, but when it's wet a k A. When
Speaker 1: you're sweating, it's an even better conductor. So um. So yeah.
Speaker 1: The the the amount that you're perspiring relates to how
Speaker 1: much 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 the text
Speaker 1: ambient temperature as well. It's usually two pairent thermometers, one
Speaker 1: tracking your body temperature exactly one. Tracking the ambient temperature
Speaker 1: because you're 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 war it. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean these are these are the basic
Speaker 1: ways it 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
Speaker 1: data 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: they're very tiny onboard computers for doing that too, 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
Speaker 1: Bluetooth or you would sink it to your computer via
Speaker 1: a USB cable, and then you could make sense of
Speaker 1: what information had been collecting. But you couldn't even tell
Speaker 1: what it had been collecting until you did that. Right,
Speaker 1: There was no uh, screen indicators, so you couldn't read
Speaker 1: it at a moment's notice, unless you have to have
Speaker 1: your phone they're paired with it, in which case you
Speaker 1: could 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: I know that the fuel band is very popular. It's
Speaker 1: a gorgeous device, looks very year 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 on her iPhone so
Speaker 1: she can see what's going on. But it's doing everything
Speaker 1: in fuel points, and some people have said, some critics
Speaker 1: have said that that makes it less useful because you
Speaker 1: don't know what they mean necessarily, I I think, well,
Speaker 1: you know, and it always reminds me of Microsoft Points
Speaker 1: and how you're kind of sort of tricking the system
Speaker 1: in order to make it a little bit more of
Speaker 1: a game and less of a reality, which helps lots
Speaker 1: of people actually, because because a lot of people don't
Speaker 1: want to know how many steps they've taken, They're like, oh,
Speaker 1: that was a lot of I wasted so much time
Speaker 1: getting fit yesterday. Why did I do that? But if
Speaker 1: you get fuel points, then you get especially especially if
Speaker 1: it has a gamification element to it, where you are
Speaker 1: measuring your own activity versus the activity of other people.
Speaker 1: If you set your if you have a way of
Speaker 1: setting a specific goal using one of these trackers, and
Speaker 1: the tracker can keep track of that so that it
Speaker 1: will tell you, hey, you met your goal today. That's
Speaker 1: a reward system, right you you merely get that reward,
Speaker 1: that sense of satisfaction that you have met your goal
Speaker 1: for that day. Then you have the added satisfaction if
Speaker 1: there's a gamification level, they're beyond just just just getting
Speaker 1: the badge for yourself. If you can share that badge
Speaker 1: with your friends and say, hey, guys, check what I
Speaker 1: did Did you do it? You didn't do it? Suck
Speaker 1: up right? Yeah. So if you're all using like fitbits,
Speaker 1: for example, I know people who are using fitbits as
Speaker 1: a way of challenging each other to see how many
Speaker 1: steps they could take. Uh, and they would. You know,
Speaker 1: there'd be groups of friends who were trying to walk
Speaker 1: out walk each other, which is great. I mean, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: if that gives you the motivation to get exercise, that's great.
Speaker 1: You know, there's there's nothing wrong with using the desire
Speaker 1: to rub your friends faces and your achievements in order
Speaker 1: for you to get fit, as long as you, you know,
Speaker 1: practice some restraint a little bit hypetically, I can tell
Speaker 1: you that a punch to the face is not good
Speaker 1: for your physical fitness. You know, there's been a lot
Speaker 1: of activity on this podcast. I think it's time for
Speaker 1: us to take a quick break to thank our sponsors.
Speaker 1: There's some devices out there that have games built into
Speaker 1: the software of the device or on the computer that
Speaker 1: you play so that as you use the device, as
Speaker 1: you move around, you generate like online currency to play
Speaker 1: in a little online game. To Strive has that there's
Speaker 1: a little online game where you can as you walk around,
Speaker 1: you generate coins, and using those coins you can buy
Speaker 1: stuff in the game world of little bit like sonics,
Speaker 1: rings or something like that. Yeah, but it's using this
Speaker 1: you generate the currency just by moving around, so that's
Speaker 1: the incentive. Yeah. Or an office favorite for a while
Speaker 1: was a Zombie Run I think is the name of
Speaker 1: the app? Which which which? I think it's run Zombie
Speaker 1: Run something like that, something like that. Yes, that that
Speaker 1: gave you. It was hooked up to a GPS related
Speaker 1: system on your cell phone, and I would would give
Speaker 1: you these little like are you out running the zombies
Speaker 1: or are you totally dying? Right? Yeah? I used to
Speaker 1: have In fact, I had the beta version of that
Speaker 1: app back when it came out in the beta form
Speaker 1: for Android. And the way I don't know if it
Speaker 1: still works this way. I haven't used the app in
Speaker 1: a long time, but the way it originally worked was
Speaker 1: that you would be somewhere and you would tell it
Speaker 1: where you wanted to go. You would open up a
Speaker 1: map program and this zombie app and say, all right,
Speaker 1: here's you know, based on my GPS location, this is
Speaker 1: where I am, this is where I want to go.
Speaker 1: It would then generate these virtual zombies on the map
Speaker 1: that could actually move, so the little blips would start
Speaker 1: moving toward you, and your goal was to get to
Speaker 1: your destination without being intercepted by one of those little
Speaker 1: zombie blips. So you might have to find a different
Speaker 1: route than the one you had intended, and you may
Speaker 1: have to book it, and yea, yeah, you might have to.
Speaker 1: You might have to speed up and slow down, which
Speaker 1: in running terms is is actually really great for training.
Speaker 1: So and there were also, as I recall, there were
Speaker 1: story elements to that game as well that that were
Speaker 1: added in later. I had it where it was just
Speaker 1: the game mechanic, but I know and it may not
Speaker 1: even be that app and maybe a similar one, because
Speaker 1: there were a few that came out had the same
Speaker 1: sort of theme. But there was one where there was
Speaker 1: an overall progressive storyline and as you participated, you would
Speaker 1: unlock more of the story. I got eaten. I couldn't
Speaker 1: get from I couldn't get from the train station to
Speaker 1: my house because there was really there was only one
Speaker 1: way you could go by foot, and it kept wanting
Speaker 1: me to cut through the woods. I kept wanting to
Speaker 1: not run into barbed wire fences that are hard to see. Look,
Speaker 1: if you don't bring your bolt cutters to the zombie apocalypse,
Speaker 1: then I don't think you're gonna get very far. And
Speaker 1: I'm no longer allowed to bring my bolt cutters to work.
Speaker 1: That was the problem, right, because this was my commute
Speaker 1: back home, and so I already had that limitation set
Speaker 1: on me. I tell you, you you make one silly mistake
Speaker 1: with a with an internet line, and they just never
Speaker 1: let you forget it. It's crazy. We're very unforgiving here
Speaker 1: and how stuff works. But the game of vacation obviously
Speaker 1: plays a big part. Yeah, I mean, you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's the recommended target number of steps per day for
Speaker 1: for healthy human people. It's about ten thousand and um
Speaker 1: and that's that equals out to maybe about five miles
Speaker 1: and uh and and yeah, so so anything that helps
Speaker 1: people get to that. And and in fact, Dina Bravada,
Speaker 1: the person I mentioned that at the top of the podcast,
Speaker 1: who you know. She's she's a specialist in health matters
Speaker 1: and has expressed some skeptic skepticism as to whether or
Speaker 1: not these activity trackers are really you know, a huge benefit.
Speaker 1: I mean, they helped the people who are already interested.
Speaker 1: But she did notice. She did a study or she
Speaker 1: was part of the study where uh, they gave pedometers
Speaker 1: to a group of participants in a randomized trial where
Speaker 1: some some participants didn't get a pardometer, some did, and
Speaker 1: they were all asked to kind of track their activities.
Speaker 1: And it turned out that the people who had the
Speaker 1: pedometers increased their physical activity by about two thousand three
Speaker 1: steps per day over the baseline. And uh and so
Speaker 1: that ended up being a twenty seven percent increase in
Speaker 1: physical activity. And that's Bravaded said, well, that's significant. So
Speaker 1: if you have if you're actually using one of these
Speaker 1: things and you're paying attention to it, then you are
Speaker 1: more likely to actually engage in more physical activity and
Speaker 1: thus exercise more and be have a healthier lifestyle. Um.
Speaker 1: And that's that's the chief argument for these activity trackers
Speaker 1: is the idea that with this information you can really
Speaker 1: be more mindful of what you are doing and how
Speaker 1: it's affecting you. A lot of these activity trackers come
Speaker 1: with software that also have as part of it a
Speaker 1: way of keeping a a food journal, which is also
Speaker 1: very important because you could be exercising, but if you're
Speaker 1: not eating well, then that's not gonna help you can
Speaker 1: be sabotaging yourself certainly. So for example, the body media
Speaker 1: fit device, I had uh part of the software that
Speaker 1: you would have once you had to subscribe to it.
Speaker 1: So you you'd have to buy the device and you
Speaker 1: had to subscribe to the service. But once you subscribe
Speaker 1: to the service, you could track your meals. And every
Speaker 1: meal you would track, it would tell you how many
Speaker 1: calories you've consumed. It would break it down, I what
Speaker 1: type of calories they were, etcetera. And then the the
Speaker 1: information from the device would tell you how many calories
Speaker 1: you had burned. And so that would give you an
Speaker 1: idea like did I burn more calories than 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 it also meant that
Speaker 1: you were much more mindful when you started doing things
Speaker 1: 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 and really looking at and making
Speaker 1: something meaningful. Uh, there can come a point where too
Speaker 1: much data is actually harmful, where you're just you're just
Speaker 1: overwhelmed by all the information and you can't really see
Speaker 1: a way of using it in a in a way
Speaker 1: that makes sense. That can happen. I don't know that.
Speaker 1: I think most activity trackers are pretty good where you're
Speaker 1: not going to get that much unless you're really digging
Speaker 1: down and you want to see Oh, no, I want
Speaker 1: to I want this in pie chart form. No, I
Speaker 1: wanted in line graph form. But that is one of
Speaker 1: those things that we're going to be looking into later
Speaker 1: in a in a later episode of Tech Stuff. We've
Speaker 1: already planned on recording this. We haven't recorded it yet,
Speaker 1: but we want to do an episode where we're talking
Speaker 1: about kind of that anxiety you get when you have
Speaker 1: so much information that you know, you start to think,
Speaker 1: is my 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 a lot of people might not
Speaker 1: be completely aware of. Um. And and again a lot
Speaker 1: 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 the pimometer, up
Speaker 1: to two for some of the super fancy ones, or
Speaker 1: or even more for the really high level performance triathlon
Speaker 1: kind of things. So there's a huge I mean or
Speaker 1: down to free apps that you can download for your
Speaker 1: smartphone right which is mostly using GPS tracking to figure
Speaker 1: out how far you've gone exactly, keeping in mind that
Speaker 1: that's not necessarily going to translate into a very accurate
Speaker 1: measure of how much how many calories you burned, but
Speaker 1: you at least give you an idea of how far
Speaker 1: you went. Uh, you know, it's It's definitely something that
Speaker 1: I've been interested in the past. And you know, we're
Speaker 1: about to do this exercise thing here at work where
Speaker 1: we all have predometers, so I'm sure we're going to
Speaker 1: I'm in a group with Holly Fry who is a
Speaker 1: marathon runner, so I know my group is going to
Speaker 1: do really well. Yeah, so I don't plan on moving
Speaker 1: for most July. That's the spirit. But but you know,
Speaker 1: it really depends on what you want the device for,
Speaker 1: how you're going to use it, and also, like we said,
Speaker 1: read reviews, because some of the ones that are really
Speaker 1: expensive may not have all the features you want and
Speaker 1: may not perform better than than less it's right, and
Speaker 1: they might just be, you know, for a different subset
Speaker 1: of human person than than you happen to be. And
Speaker 1: not yet, not all of these are for everybody. If
Speaker 1: I may make a personal recommendation. D C. Rainmaker has
Speaker 1: a blog that is brilliant. He's a triathlon runner, but
Speaker 1: um or triathlon athlete who who's just triathlete, Yes, that
Speaker 1: would be that would be the technical term for that
Speaker 1: who has just reviewed all of the devices, all of them,
Speaker 1: get all of them, and he does and he gets
Speaker 1: very highly technical, which I'll love, um and but but
Speaker 1: also tends to put his his kind of final thoughts
Speaker 1: in an extremely succinct package. Excellent, excellent, good recommendation. Yeah uh,
Speaker 1: and you know again, take a look. Find out what's
Speaker 1: going to work, right, you know, 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're 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.
Speaker 1: Right you can say, well, it was supposed to work
Speaker 1: with an iOS device, and technically this iPhone three G
Speaker 1: is an iOS device, right you know, Yeah, that's obviously
Speaker 1: something you want to make sure is all all working
Speaker 1: before you you die in guys, That wraps up this
Speaker 1: classic episode of tech stuff. Hope you enjoyed it, and
Speaker 1: if you have any suggestions, for future tech stuff topics.
Speaker 1: Get in touch with me, let me know what you
Speaker 1: are thinking. Otherwise it's just gonna leave it up to
Speaker 1: a random chance, and that's those are not good odds.
Speaker 1: You can reach out on Twitter or on Facebook, and
Speaker 1: I use the same handle for both. It's text stuff
Speaker 1: H s W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Y.
Speaker 1: Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more
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