WEBVTT - The FitBit Story 0:00:04.160 --> 0:00:07.160 Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how 0:00:07.240 --> 0:00:15.000 stuff Works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. 0:00:15.040 --> 0:00:18.880 I am your host, senior writer Jonathan Strickland with how 0:00:18.960 --> 0:00:23.400 stuff Works dot Com and on many episodes of tech Stuff, 0:00:23.400 --> 0:00:26.439 I like to look at companies that are decades old, 0:00:26.560 --> 0:00:29.320 or even more than a century old in some cases. 0:00:29.720 --> 0:00:31.960 But this time I'm going to take a look at 0:00:31.960 --> 0:00:35.520 a company that just turned ten not too long ago, 0:00:36.120 --> 0:00:40.080 and I'm talking about Fitbit. And really I'm gonna focus 0:00:40.159 --> 0:00:43.280 both on the company itself and the technology it creates. 0:00:43.479 --> 0:00:46.120 So you're gonna get both kind of a history and 0:00:46.120 --> 0:00:48.960 evolution of the company, but also how does that technology 0:00:49.000 --> 0:00:52.000 actually work. It's kind of marrying two different styles of 0:00:52.000 --> 0:00:56.680 tech stuff in one delicious tech stuff package of goodness. 0:00:56.920 --> 0:01:01.920 So this story begins back in two thousand seven, and 0:01:02.040 --> 0:01:05.080 that is when two guys, one named James Park and 0:01:05.160 --> 0:01:08.039 one named Eric Friedman, decided that they were going to 0:01:08.440 --> 0:01:13.319 launch a company with the intent to produce fitness trackers, 0:01:13.520 --> 0:01:17.480 essentially a pedometer on steroids, something that could give lots 0:01:17.720 --> 0:01:22.840 of feedback to a person who was interested in getting fit. 0:01:23.920 --> 0:01:27.280 But to be fair, all stories really have more of 0:01:27.319 --> 0:01:29.920 a preamble than that, right, it's not just hey, today, 0:01:29.920 --> 0:01:31.880 we decided to make a company. You have to figure out, well, 0:01:31.959 --> 0:01:36.679 what led up to that? Well, James Park attended Harvard. 0:01:36.680 --> 0:01:39.840 He was studying computer science, but he dropped out. He 0:01:39.880 --> 0:01:43.759 didn't actually graduate from Harvard, he didn't earn a degree there. 0:01:44.319 --> 0:01:48.279 After dropping out, he worked for the company Morgan Stanley 0:01:48.480 --> 0:01:50.560 and he worked there for about a year. And then 0:01:50.680 --> 0:01:54.520 Eric Friedman, he was actually at Yale. He got a 0:01:54.600 --> 0:01:59.040 graduate and postgraduate degrees actually from Yale. He was studying 0:01:59.080 --> 0:02:01.760 computer science. They are, and the two of them co 0:02:02.000 --> 0:02:07.880 founded a company called Epis Technologies, and I'm guessing you 0:02:07.960 --> 0:02:10.400 probably never heard of it because it didn't last very long. 0:02:11.000 --> 0:02:14.799 Their focus was to create products to facilitate business to 0:02:15.040 --> 0:02:20.840 business transactions. So, in other words, um, your ordinary consumers 0:02:20.919 --> 0:02:23.400 or customers would never really come into contact with this 0:02:23.440 --> 0:02:28.120 particular company. It wasn't marketing stuff for the average consumer. 0:02:28.240 --> 0:02:31.280 This was for big companies and the transactions they make 0:02:31.320 --> 0:02:34.840 with each other. Very different world than just going to 0:02:35.120 --> 0:02:39.000 a store and buying a product. Right. Venture capitalists invested 0:02:39.040 --> 0:02:42.680 a couple of million dollars in this technology. However, the 0:02:42.760 --> 0:02:47.560 company just never found its footing. It eventually failed and 0:02:47.680 --> 0:02:51.440 Parks said that he felt that his inexperience in large 0:02:51.480 --> 0:02:56.079 part contributed to that failure, but that the failure itself 0:02:56.200 --> 0:02:59.480 served as a very valuable learning experience for him and 0:02:59.520 --> 0:03:02.440 for Freedom, and that they were able to take that 0:03:02.720 --> 0:03:07.240 negative experience and learn from it and attempt something new. 0:03:08.800 --> 0:03:11.560 So there might have been some valuable but harsh lessons 0:03:11.680 --> 0:03:15.240 learned at that point. Anyway, the two of them and 0:03:15.280 --> 0:03:18.960 a couple of other alumni from a PSC Technologies decided 0:03:19.000 --> 0:03:22.720 to go on an entirely different direction with a brand 0:03:22.720 --> 0:03:27.720 new company. They created a new venture called wind Up Labs, 0:03:28.600 --> 0:03:32.160 and this time they were taking aim at online photo 0:03:32.360 --> 0:03:38.120 editing and sharing using peer to peer technology. So this 0:03:38.200 --> 0:03:42.440 happened around two thousand two. UH. They got to work 0:03:42.600 --> 0:03:46.280 developing the tools you would need to do editing work 0:03:46.600 --> 0:03:49.320 online and to use this peer to peer technology to 0:03:49.360 --> 0:03:53.240 facilitate it, and it was successful enough for larger companies 0:03:53.280 --> 0:03:55.000 to actually take notice of them. And one of those 0:03:55.080 --> 0:03:59.920 larger companies was c net. So you're probably familiar with SEEN. 0:04:00.120 --> 0:04:04.040 They have a lot of different UH branches. The one 0:04:04.080 --> 0:04:08.400 that I'm familiar with is their website with their reviews 0:04:08.640 --> 0:04:11.240 and their technology news. I know a couple of people 0:04:11.240 --> 0:04:14.760 who work there, but they also do other stuff as well, 0:04:15.400 --> 0:04:17.080 and one of the things they wanted to invest in 0:04:17.160 --> 0:04:21.239 was this photo editing suite, so they acquired wind Up Labs. 0:04:21.279 --> 0:04:23.840 They actually made a bid and then took ownership of 0:04:23.839 --> 0:04:26.800 the company, and both Park and Freedman went on to 0:04:27.040 --> 0:04:32.640 work for c net uh, becoming heads of various departments 0:04:32.640 --> 0:04:35.839 within c NEET, and they became further entrenched in the 0:04:35.839 --> 0:04:40.360 world of technology. Flash forward to two thousand and six, 0:04:41.880 --> 0:04:45.120 another big company released a brand new product that got 0:04:45.160 --> 0:04:48.080 both Park and Freedman kind of excited, something that they 0:04:48.120 --> 0:04:51.039 had not really seen before that they felt had a 0:04:51.040 --> 0:04:54.320 lot of value. That company was a little company called Nintendo, 0:04:54.960 --> 0:04:59.520 and the product was the Wei video game console. Really, 0:04:59.560 --> 0:05:02.680 they were very interested in the Wei controllers, the Wei 0:05:02.880 --> 0:05:06.560 motes because they had all these motion sensors in them. 0:05:06.640 --> 0:05:10.040 We were now entering into an era where these motion 0:05:10.080 --> 0:05:14.359 sensors were getting very small and relatively inexpensive, so you 0:05:14.360 --> 0:05:18.120 could incorporate them into totally new types of technology. You know, 0:05:18.200 --> 0:05:21.360 before they were larger, they were more expensive, they were 0:05:21.400 --> 0:05:23.119 limited in what you can do with them. But now 0:05:23.839 --> 0:05:27.640 because manufacturing processes had improved and you're looking at the 0:05:27.680 --> 0:05:31.560 economies of scale. They were suddenly a component that you 0:05:31.560 --> 0:05:34.920 could fit another stuff. And we started seeing this across 0:05:35.000 --> 0:05:38.840 all sorts of different products, including smartphones. We started seeing 0:05:38.839 --> 0:05:44.080 those kind of technologies incorporated there. Well. They thought that 0:05:44.160 --> 0:05:49.039 this we mote motion sensor technology was really revolutionary. But 0:05:49.160 --> 0:05:51.200 they thought, this is a home console. What if we 0:05:51.240 --> 0:05:54.760 could take this capability and put it into a more 0:05:54.839 --> 0:06:00.120 portable device, and maybe it has a different aim and 0:06:00.360 --> 0:06:04.200 video games. And that got them thinking, and eventually they 0:06:04.240 --> 0:06:07.760 came to this idea of a fitness tracker that now 0:06:07.800 --> 0:06:10.760 that you could get accelerometers and other types of sensors 0:06:10.800 --> 0:06:14.760 to a small enough form factor and make them cheap enough, 0:06:15.240 --> 0:06:18.400 you could pair them with some microprocessors and have a 0:06:18.440 --> 0:06:23.760 really robust activity tracker. So they decided that this would 0:06:23.800 --> 0:06:27.080 leave pedometers in the dust. It would set a new market, 0:06:27.520 --> 0:06:30.240 and they left c Net in two thousand seven to 0:06:30.320 --> 0:06:34.440 form a new company and they called it Fitbit. Now 0:06:34.440 --> 0:06:36.719 that when they made this company, they didn't have any 0:06:36.720 --> 0:06:39.680 products to show off yet. They had not built anything, 0:06:39.720 --> 0:06:43.160 they hadn't designed anything. They just had an idea. They 0:06:43.200 --> 0:06:46.080 invested their own money, and they also had friends and 0:06:46.160 --> 0:06:50.160 family and and former co workers and former clients also 0:06:50.200 --> 0:06:54.159 invested in their early start up, and they raised about 0:06:54.160 --> 0:06:57.280 four hundred thousand dollars, which originally they thought would be 0:06:57.440 --> 0:06:59.800 enough to get them to the point where they could 0:06:59.800 --> 0:07:04.680 bringing a product to market. Later fundraising efforts got them 0:07:04.720 --> 0:07:07.960 further once they realized that four thousand dollars was not 0:07:08.080 --> 0:07:10.080 going to be enough, But that was a little bit 0:07:10.120 --> 0:07:12.040 further down the line. They had a long way to 0:07:12.080 --> 0:07:14.560 go before they actually had a physical product they could 0:07:14.600 --> 0:07:19.080 show off. Their ideas. Sound sounded really good. They were 0:07:19.120 --> 0:07:23.920 really sound ideas, but neither co founder had any experience 0:07:24.280 --> 0:07:27.360 in the manufacturing world, so neither of them knew anything 0:07:27.400 --> 0:07:31.280 about product development or actually taking an idea and making 0:07:31.280 --> 0:07:33.800 a physical thing out of it, and as it turns out, 0:07:33.880 --> 0:07:38.560 that's really hard to do. They had to make a 0:07:38.560 --> 0:07:40.680 working prototype in order to show it off to some 0:07:40.720 --> 0:07:45.640 potential investors and also potential customers. So the original fitbit 0:07:45.680 --> 0:07:49.160 prototype didn't look very special. It was some circuitry in 0:07:49.200 --> 0:07:51.120 a little wooden box. I think it was even made 0:07:51.120 --> 0:07:55.400 of balsa would The idea seemed really special, though, and 0:07:55.480 --> 0:07:57.920 Park and Freedmen were determined to make it work, so 0:07:58.960 --> 0:08:02.120 they needed to develop the product that could be lightweight 0:08:02.520 --> 0:08:04.120 because you wanted to be able to wear it on 0:08:04.200 --> 0:08:08.040 your body. They wanted it to be very energy efficient 0:08:08.080 --> 0:08:10.440 because you don't want to have to recharge it constantly. 0:08:11.440 --> 0:08:13.600 They wanted to aim for a price point of around 0:08:15.080 --> 0:08:19.040 in the US dollars. That is, the original fitbit tracker 0:08:19.080 --> 0:08:22.120 that they eventually developed was a clip on device. You 0:08:22.120 --> 0:08:25.320 could clip it on pocket or a lot of the 0:08:25.400 --> 0:08:28.160 ladies would clip it on a bra strap or something 0:08:28.200 --> 0:08:31.680 along those lines. Um And it was kind of like 0:08:31.720 --> 0:08:36.199 a high tech clothes pin almost. So it had a 0:08:36.360 --> 0:08:42.360 very small, oh lead display, uh you know, organic led display, 0:08:42.640 --> 0:08:44.440 and that could show you how many steps you took. 0:08:44.760 --> 0:08:47.760 Give me a little indicator had little footprints on it too. 0:08:48.160 --> 0:08:50.480 I'm looking at the camera that I'm talking to. I'm 0:08:50.520 --> 0:08:54.600 live streaming this particular episode, and I'm acting like it's 0:08:54.600 --> 0:08:58.160 actually another person right there. So that's interesting. But at 0:08:58.160 --> 0:09:00.880 any rate, the this little screen and show you the 0:09:00.960 --> 0:09:03.640 number of steps you took. And it also had a 0:09:03.679 --> 0:09:08.120 Bluetooth low energy transmitter incorporated in the device in order 0:09:08.120 --> 0:09:12.199 to send information to a sinking station sinking as in synchronization, 0:09:12.320 --> 0:09:15.760 not as in sinking under the water, and you would 0:09:15.760 --> 0:09:19.400 plug that into a computer, so your device would sink 0:09:19.440 --> 0:09:23.080 whenever you got within a certain range uh and it 0:09:23.120 --> 0:09:25.920 would do so multiple times over the course of a day, 0:09:26.200 --> 0:09:29.240 so maybe every like fifteen to twenty minutes it would update, 0:09:30.360 --> 0:09:34.440 and then you could view stats on your computer screen. 0:09:34.880 --> 0:09:39.040 Later on, with smartphones became ubiquitous and a lot of 0:09:39.080 --> 0:09:42.439 apps were developed for the fitbit, you could offload that 0:09:42.559 --> 0:09:46.720 to a smartphone and just use a Bluetooth connection between 0:09:46.880 --> 0:09:50.640 a device and your smartphone to send that information. But 0:09:50.720 --> 0:09:54.560 either way, the point was you could then view more 0:09:54.840 --> 0:09:59.480 robust information on a dashboard, either on your computer or 0:09:59.559 --> 0:10:02.320 later on on your smartphone, and it would give you 0:10:02.400 --> 0:10:04.480 a little bit better of an idea of of what 0:10:04.600 --> 0:10:09.040 your activity actually meant. Because a predometer can tell you 0:10:09.320 --> 0:10:13.400 roughly how many steps you took, but fitbits value proposition 0:10:13.440 --> 0:10:18.840 was that it could do more than that. So while 0:10:18.880 --> 0:10:21.560 the fitbit tracker could estimate the number of steps you 0:10:21.679 --> 0:10:24.520 were taking, that one of the things that this dashboard 0:10:24.520 --> 0:10:27.880 could do is estimate how many calories you were burning 0:10:27.920 --> 0:10:31.560 based upon the nature and duration of the movement you 0:10:31.600 --> 0:10:35.000 were making, and it did this by collecting information from 0:10:35.040 --> 0:10:37.840 a three axis accelerometer and more on that in a 0:10:37.840 --> 0:10:43.240 little bit. I'll actually explain how three axes accelerometers work. Really, 0:10:43.240 --> 0:10:46.920 I should say just a three axis accelerometers work. And 0:10:47.720 --> 0:10:52.000 this was really what was compelling about their approach was 0:10:52.080 --> 0:10:56.000 that wasn't just a physical product that they were marketing. 0:10:56.280 --> 0:10:59.719 It was this whole marriage between software and hardware that 0:10:59.840 --> 0:11:04.280 together made it a product that people might want and 0:11:04.760 --> 0:11:10.600 would find compelling uses for. Like this whole uh new 0:11:10.720 --> 0:11:15.199 industry of activity tracking, quantifying your activity in a way 0:11:15.240 --> 0:11:18.360 that makes sense, so that you could perhaps set goals 0:11:18.360 --> 0:11:21.560 saying I want to hit a certain milestone today, or 0:11:21.679 --> 0:11:24.480 you could just see what trends were for a week 0:11:24.559 --> 0:11:26.480 and maybe there were things that you needed to adjust. 0:11:27.080 --> 0:11:30.320 It was a new idea really that you would be 0:11:30.360 --> 0:11:33.000 able to gather that much information and have it presented 0:11:33.040 --> 0:11:35.160 to you in a way that made sense, and that, 0:11:35.240 --> 0:11:39.280 I think, more than just the tracker itself, is what 0:11:39.520 --> 0:11:44.120 got people really interested. So let's talk about how this 0:11:44.200 --> 0:11:48.040 hardware works. Will begin with what is arguably the most 0:11:48.120 --> 0:11:55.040 important element in fitbit technology, which is the three axis accelerometer. Uh. 0:11:55.080 --> 0:11:58.040 There are of course a lot of other components inside fitbits, 0:11:58.040 --> 0:12:00.800 and it also depends upon which fit bit model you're 0:12:00.800 --> 0:12:05.200 talking about because Fitbit offers a ton of different products, 0:12:05.280 --> 0:12:08.040 and some of them are more simple, and some of 0:12:08.040 --> 0:12:12.360 them are have all the bells and whistles. Figuratively speaking, 0:12:12.360 --> 0:12:15.040 I don't think any of Fitbit's current products actually have 0:12:15.120 --> 0:12:19.480 physical bells or whistles, So I apologize if I got 0:12:19.520 --> 0:12:25.480 your hopes up. So, the three axis accelerometer is an 0:12:25.520 --> 0:12:32.240 interesting thing. Uh It It detects changes in motion. That's 0:12:32.280 --> 0:12:36.679 what accelerometers do. They detect changes in acceleration, and acceleration 0:12:36.920 --> 0:12:40.480 is a vector quantity, right, It has two components. It 0:12:40.520 --> 0:12:44.440 has a direction, and it has a magnitude. So an 0:12:44.440 --> 0:12:48.080 accelerometer can detect a change in the direction of motion 0:12:48.240 --> 0:12:51.320 or a change in the magnitude of motion, and a 0:12:51.440 --> 0:12:56.240 single axis accelerometer can only tell the difference in a 0:12:56.400 --> 0:13:00.679 change in direction along one axis. So upper down is 0:13:00.720 --> 0:13:04.280 an axis. If you have a single access accelerometer and 0:13:04.280 --> 0:13:07.560 it's oriented in the up down position, it can only 0:13:07.600 --> 0:13:12.000 detect changes in direction that that an impact up or down. 0:13:12.040 --> 0:13:16.840 It cannot detect left or right. So uh, three axis 0:13:16.880 --> 0:13:20.079 means that there are three axis of directions that you're 0:13:20.080 --> 0:13:23.160 talking about, essentially up, down, left, right, and forward backward. 0:13:23.640 --> 0:13:25.640 So you can detect changes in motion and all of 0:13:25.679 --> 0:13:30.720 these different axes. The accelerometers inside fitbits are specific types. 0:13:30.720 --> 0:13:34.680 They're called MEMS accelerometers m E m S, and that's 0:13:34.679 --> 0:13:38.959 actually an acronym. It stands for micro electro mechanical systems. 0:13:39.720 --> 0:13:42.000 And this is the fascinating thing to me. These are 0:13:42.120 --> 0:13:44.440 very very tiny. They're they're like, it looks like a 0:13:44.480 --> 0:13:48.280 regular little micro chip, like a microprocessor chip, but they 0:13:48.320 --> 0:13:52.120 actually have tiny moving parts inside of them. The accelerometers 0:13:52.160 --> 0:13:56.760 are actually based upon physical motion. Uh. And the name 0:13:56.800 --> 0:13:59.080 tells you all the basics you need to know. Micro 0:13:59.240 --> 0:14:03.880 means we're talking wicked small here. Um, that means they're tiny. 0:14:03.960 --> 0:14:06.040 If you're not from Boston, you don't know what wicked 0:14:06.080 --> 0:14:10.360 small means. It means tiny. Electro of course, means that 0:14:10.400 --> 0:14:13.480 you have some sort of electrical or electro magnetic component 0:14:13.559 --> 0:14:16.360 to it. And mechanical tells you that, yeah, we're talking 0:14:16.360 --> 0:14:19.880 about moving parts here. It's just not you know, not 0:14:19.960 --> 0:14:23.720 just electrons zipping around. They're actually tiny little movement moving 0:14:23.760 --> 0:14:28.040 elements to this thing. So let's start with a simple 0:14:28.080 --> 0:14:32.880 single access accelerometer. And again by access, we're talking about 0:14:32.920 --> 0:14:37.240 a specific set of directions. Um, this is all with 0:14:37.320 --> 0:14:41.000 respect to the accelerometers orientation. So let's say we've got 0:14:41.000 --> 0:14:45.440 a macro sized single access accelerometer sitting on the table. 0:14:45.480 --> 0:14:50.120 This is easier to envision. It can measure accelerator accelerative 0:14:50.160 --> 0:14:52.480 forces that are going up or down, but not left 0:14:52.560 --> 0:14:56.080 or right, or forward or backward, because it's again single access. 0:14:56.120 --> 0:14:59.800 But the way it works is that you've got a 0:14:59.840 --> 0:15:03.120 b ace, which in the micro scale we would call 0:15:03.160 --> 0:15:06.520 a substrate. We'll just say it's the surface of a 0:15:06.560 --> 0:15:10.680 table in this case. Then you would have a spring, 0:15:11.280 --> 0:15:14.200 a pretty stiff spring, not not like a slinky, but 0:15:14.240 --> 0:15:17.080 more like maybe something you would find in a shock absorber. 0:15:18.080 --> 0:15:21.480 Attached to the spring, you would have some sort of 0:15:21.960 --> 0:15:28.600 element that would have flat protrusions extending from the sides. 0:15:28.800 --> 0:15:32.960 So imagine like a cylinder, and along the length of 0:15:32.960 --> 0:15:36.600 the cylinder you've got these flat protrusions their plates, is 0:15:36.600 --> 0:15:39.440 what they're called. These are movable plates because they're on 0:15:39.480 --> 0:15:42.560 the cylinder, which itself is on a spring. So an 0:15:42.600 --> 0:15:45.520 emotion on the spring will make the cylinder go up 0:15:45.520 --> 0:15:47.880 and down, which means the plates, which are attached to 0:15:47.880 --> 0:15:53.000 the cylinder will also go up or down. Now, around 0:15:53.000 --> 0:15:57.440 this cylinder You've got some fixed plates mounted to a 0:15:57.560 --> 0:16:00.840 steady frame, so the frame does not move, the frame 0:16:00.920 --> 0:16:06.640 stays stable, but those plates sandwich the moving plates. So 0:16:06.680 --> 0:16:11.800 a moving plate would slide between two fixed plates, and 0:16:11.840 --> 0:16:16.520 then you apply of different voltages to each pair of 0:16:16.560 --> 0:16:20.720 fixed plates, so you've got a difference in voltage. They're 0:16:20.800 --> 0:16:24.080 essentially capacitors in this case, they're building up a voltage 0:16:24.080 --> 0:16:27.600 differential between two plates. You've got this moving plate that's 0:16:27.680 --> 0:16:31.560 in between the two. Any motion that you transfer to 0:16:31.600 --> 0:16:34.400 that spring will they be transferred to the cylinder, and 0:16:34.440 --> 0:16:37.560 thus the moving plates they'll move up and down. As 0:16:37.560 --> 0:16:39.680 they move up and down, that moving plate is going 0:16:39.720 --> 0:16:42.920 to get closer to the top plate, and then further 0:16:42.960 --> 0:16:45.760 away and closer to the bottom plate, and then further away. 0:16:45.800 --> 0:16:48.160 So as it moves up and down and gets closer 0:16:48.160 --> 0:16:52.440 and further away from these these fixed plates, it actually 0:16:52.480 --> 0:16:57.960 affects the capacitive value between the two. This difference in 0:16:58.000 --> 0:17:03.800 capacity value is is interpreted by the accelerometer as a 0:17:03.920 --> 0:17:08.280 change in acceleration. And I realized that this is kind 0:17:08.280 --> 0:17:12.160 of a difficult thing to to just imagine that. I'm 0:17:12.200 --> 0:17:15.160 explaining it as best I can, but without the element 0:17:15.320 --> 0:17:20.280 of visuals. It is pretty tricky. So maybe what I 0:17:20.320 --> 0:17:26.880 can do is, um, I'll explain it analogy. I love analogies. 0:17:27.040 --> 0:17:29.840 And uh, it was lunchtime not too long ago here 0:17:29.920 --> 0:17:33.440 in Atlanta, Georgia. So I'm going to talk about sandwich. 0:17:34.359 --> 0:17:38.360 Imagine a really delicious veggie burger, and they do exist. 0:17:39.280 --> 0:17:41.119 It's easy to find a bad one, but trust me, 0:17:41.160 --> 0:17:43.600 the good ones are out there too. Now, imagine you've 0:17:43.640 --> 0:17:48.760 got a bottom bun sitting on a table, hovering, as 0:17:48.800 --> 0:17:51.840 if by magic. About two inches above that bun is 0:17:51.880 --> 0:17:55.600 a veggie patty, and it is in fact delicious, but 0:17:55.680 --> 0:17:57.639 you can't eat it yet because I need it for 0:17:57.680 --> 0:18:02.359 this analogy. Hovering about two inches above that is the 0:18:02.400 --> 0:18:06.000 top bun. So you've got some space between the top bun, 0:18:06.359 --> 0:18:09.280 the veggie patty, and the bottom bun. Now, the two 0:18:09.280 --> 0:18:13.800 buns are fixed in space and time. Not even the 0:18:13.920 --> 0:18:18.760 Juggernaut himself could move the two buns. They are going 0:18:18.800 --> 0:18:22.920 to remain in the positions they are in until the 0:18:23.040 --> 0:18:29.840 universe itself burns out. But the veggie patty can move 0:18:30.000 --> 0:18:33.560 up and down. It has that freedom of movement. So 0:18:33.600 --> 0:18:36.880 any motion to the table is going to make that 0:18:36.960 --> 0:18:40.280 veggie Patty either get closer to the top bun or 0:18:40.359 --> 0:18:43.520 the bottom bun. And that's what I'm talking about. It's 0:18:43.600 --> 0:18:47.080 it's very similar with an accelerometer, except instead of veggie burger, 0:18:47.520 --> 0:18:51.520 you've got these moving plates and fixed plates, and instead 0:18:51.560 --> 0:18:54.960 of deliciousness, you have a capacitive value based upon a 0:18:55.040 --> 0:19:00.320 voltage differential between two plates. Simple right. Anyway, you have 0:19:00.400 --> 0:19:05.600 processors that can take that data, that change in the 0:19:05.680 --> 0:19:10.240 capacitive value and interpret it as acceleration, and based upon 0:19:10.400 --> 0:19:14.880 the speed of the change and the magnitude of the change, 0:19:15.000 --> 0:19:18.200 it can make some guesses as to how much accelerative 0:19:18.280 --> 0:19:23.800 force is being applied. So if you've ever used a 0:19:23.840 --> 0:19:26.800 fitness tracker that could tell the difference between when you 0:19:26.840 --> 0:19:29.720 were walking versus when you might be typing on a 0:19:29.800 --> 0:19:33.360 keyboard or when you're jogging down the street, it's because 0:19:33.440 --> 0:19:38.560 the accelerometer is able to interpret these differences and then 0:19:38.920 --> 0:19:41.800 present that information in a way that makes sense to you. 0:19:42.800 --> 0:19:45.320 And it's all about just looking at the math of 0:19:45.359 --> 0:19:48.119 the difference of that capacitive value, which to me is 0:19:48.800 --> 0:19:51.600 it's almost akin to magic. I'm about to go all 0:19:51.720 --> 0:19:57.480 Arthur C. Clark in here. So that's a basic single 0:19:57.560 --> 0:20:00.960 access accelerometer, and the same thing is happening inside the 0:20:01.000 --> 0:20:03.480 sensors on the fitbit, only we're talking about a much 0:20:03.600 --> 0:20:07.600 much much smaller accelerometer, right, We're talking micro level, not 0:20:07.920 --> 0:20:13.200 macro level. And again, they don't use single axis accelerometers 0:20:13.200 --> 0:20:16.119 because that would only detect a change in acceleration along 0:20:16.240 --> 0:20:20.240 one axis. They use three axis accelerometers. So how are 0:20:19.960 --> 0:20:23.280 those different, Well, they're not different. You just get three 0:20:23.320 --> 0:20:27.040 single axis accelerometers and then you orient them so that 0:20:27.119 --> 0:20:30.240 they have these ninety degree changes, so that you've got 0:20:30.680 --> 0:20:33.960 one that's aligned up and down, one that's the line 0:20:34.040 --> 0:20:37.000 left and right, and one that's aligned front to back, 0:20:37.480 --> 0:20:39.800 and they're all next to each other. And it doesn't 0:20:39.800 --> 0:20:42.040 you know, they're not always going to be. This is vertical, 0:20:42.080 --> 0:20:45.200 this is horizontal, and this is your your Z axis 0:20:45.760 --> 0:20:50.280 because it all depends upon the orientation of the fitbit itself. Right, 0:20:50.359 --> 0:20:52.280 Sometimes i might have my arm way up in the air, 0:20:52.440 --> 0:20:55.000 waving it around as if in fact I just did 0:20:55.040 --> 0:20:59.200 not care. But other times I'm gonna be just hauling 0:20:59.800 --> 0:21:02.399 as fast as I can down the highway while the 0:21:02.440 --> 0:21:06.000 T one thousand is chasing me down. And the important 0:21:06.000 --> 0:21:09.639 thing is these accelerometers have to uh, detect that motion 0:21:09.680 --> 0:21:12.640 no matter what orientation my arm might be in. That's 0:21:12.640 --> 0:21:14.520 why you go with the three axis. It's much more 0:21:14.560 --> 0:21:20.040 accurate than a single access accelerometer. And I love the 0:21:20.080 --> 0:21:23.560 fact that this technology is built on the basis of 0:21:23.600 --> 0:21:26.000 motion because it means that you yourself can go out 0:21:26.040 --> 0:21:29.080 and build an accelerometer if you want to. You can 0:21:29.080 --> 0:21:32.080 build a simple one which would really just give you 0:21:32.119 --> 0:21:35.400 an indication of changes to acceleration based upon the movement 0:21:35.680 --> 0:21:38.720 of a mass at the end of a spring. But 0:21:38.800 --> 0:21:41.480 that's technically kind of an accelerometer doesn't really give you 0:21:41.520 --> 0:21:44.160 any value, So I would argue that perhaps you can't 0:21:44.200 --> 0:21:46.880 really call an accelerometer. It's almost more of a seizmometer. 0:21:47.280 --> 0:21:50.240 But it's still kind of cool. Uh. But yeah, with 0:21:50.240 --> 0:21:52.400 with some springs and a few other pieces of equipment, 0:21:52.400 --> 0:21:55.520 you could make a macro sized accelerometer that works on 0:21:55.560 --> 0:21:58.960 the exact same principle as these very tiny ones that 0:21:59.040 --> 0:22:02.440 you find in fitbit, And then you can marvel and 0:22:02.520 --> 0:22:04.760 the fact that it still works at the micro scale. 0:22:06.320 --> 0:22:12.440 Go ahead, marvel. You can actually marvel all the way 0:22:12.480 --> 0:22:15.480 through the next bit because it's time to take a 0:22:15.560 --> 0:22:27.560 quick break to thank our sponsor. All right, so let's 0:22:27.560 --> 0:22:31.520 talk about other stuff with the fitbit. You know, other 0:22:31.600 --> 0:22:37.600 elements in UH in the fitbit handle actual processing of information. 0:22:37.880 --> 0:22:41.040 So you've got the sensor that's gathering information, the the 0:22:41.040 --> 0:22:44.919 three axis accelerometer. It's it's pulling info in, but that 0:22:44.960 --> 0:22:47.720 needs to be processed, right, It's just kind of raw data. 0:22:47.760 --> 0:22:51.439 It doesn't really have any meaning to it. So we 0:22:51.560 --> 0:22:54.520 then have the other processors to kind of turn that 0:22:54.600 --> 0:22:59.520 into more interesting information that has relevance to us as users. 0:23:00.359 --> 0:23:04.679 Then you've got the low energy Bluetooth transmitter, and that 0:23:04.840 --> 0:23:08.520 is what allows the the fitbit to communicate with other 0:23:08.560 --> 0:23:14.160 devices like smartphones and sinking stations again synchronization stations UH. 0:23:14.200 --> 0:23:18.120 And they use low energy bluetooth because as you would imagine, 0:23:18.200 --> 0:23:20.639 it doesn't require that much energy to operate. It's sending 0:23:20.800 --> 0:23:24.000 very small amounts of data, so it's not like it's 0:23:24.040 --> 0:23:27.919 having to transmit a constant stream of information. It's just 0:23:28.280 --> 0:23:31.400 little packets of information, so it doesn't take a whole 0:23:31.400 --> 0:23:33.840 lot of power to do it, and that means that 0:23:33.920 --> 0:23:36.240 it's less of a drain on battery life because that's 0:23:36.240 --> 0:23:39.280 really important with an activity tracker. You don't. You don't 0:23:39.320 --> 0:23:40.920 want to have to take it off at the end 0:23:40.920 --> 0:23:44.560 of every day and recharge it, especially one like the 0:23:44.560 --> 0:23:47.800 fitbit that's supposed to also track how well you sleep. 0:23:48.440 --> 0:23:51.080 If you're supposed to wear it essentially twenty four hours 0:23:51.200 --> 0:23:54.680 until you actually absolutely have to charge it, you want 0:23:54.680 --> 0:23:56.960 to maximize that battery life. So that was one way 0:23:57.000 --> 0:23:59.800 they could do it was using this low energy Bluetooth approach. 0:24:00.040 --> 0:24:02.280 And I've talked about low too, low energy Bluetooth and 0:24:02.400 --> 0:24:04.600 other podcasts, So if you want to go back to 0:24:05.240 --> 0:24:08.800 Tech Stuff archives, you can find me explaining that technology 0:24:08.800 --> 0:24:13.080 a little bit more. These days, Uh, you know, you're 0:24:13.160 --> 0:24:16.520 more likely to use a smartphone than a synchronize kind 0:24:16.520 --> 0:24:19.840 of station type device that plugs in via USB to 0:24:19.920 --> 0:24:23.199 your computer. You might still do that. I did that 0:24:23.240 --> 0:24:25.919 with my old fitbit, but these days now I just 0:24:26.040 --> 0:24:29.640 used my smartphone essentially is the computer in my pocket. 0:24:29.760 --> 0:24:34.960 So um. But when they first launched Fitbit, smartphones were 0:24:35.000 --> 0:24:37.840 not really a big thing yet. Remember they got together 0:24:37.920 --> 0:24:40.080 to work on Fitbit in two thousand seven. That's the 0:24:40.160 --> 0:24:44.600 same year that Apple debuted the iPhone. So to me, 0:24:44.800 --> 0:24:47.560 that is the beginning of the era of the smartphone age. 0:24:47.600 --> 0:24:50.480 Even though there were other phones that could technically be 0:24:50.520 --> 0:24:54.000 called smartphones before the iPhone, it was the iPhone that 0:24:54.080 --> 0:24:58.399 captured the public imagination so that people besides just the 0:24:58.400 --> 0:25:01.879 the tech geeks like my elf, sat up and said, Oh, 0:25:01.920 --> 0:25:05.320 that's pretty cool. I want one of those now. It 0:25:05.359 --> 0:25:08.359 was actually that that bluetooth transmitter that gave them some 0:25:08.480 --> 0:25:12.480