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Ask HN: What apps or tools do you use to track things about your daily life?

10 points by sdrothrock ↗ HN
I've been thinking about aprilzero.com for a while now and how I'd like to have something similar for myself.

What kind of hardware/software stack would you use to track metrics about yourself?

The ideal hardware/software would support simple scheduled export to CSV, XML, JSON, or some other format that can be read/processed.

Pedometer, Resting Heart Rate, Sleep Quality

I'm getting a Basis Carbon Steel for resting heart rate, pedometer, and sleep quality measurements. Basis does NOT offer export or an API, but there is a tool (https://github.com/btroia/basis-data-export) that works for getting your data, so it seems like a good start to me.

Calorie Tracker

MyFitnessPal is the calorie tracker everyone recommends, but does not support exporting data. https://www.designbyvh.com/myfitnesspal-export-data/#.U-L2XoCSxM0 helps you extract your data, but doesn't seem automatable.

I haven't been able to find a robust calorie tracker (for Android) that exports data.

Blood Pressure

I'm not too sure what to do about this -- ideally I'd take measurements several times a day, but it's hard to find something simple to use that I can take to work or wherever I am.

6 comments

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thomasmeagher
I use an iOS app called, Reporter (http://www.reporter-app.com/). It prompts you to answer a set of user defined questions throughout the day- Are you looking at a screen? Who are you with? Where are you? How many cups of coffee have you had?- through powerful surveys.

It also captures "background" data using the phones sensors: number of steps, temperature, volume, elevation, phone battery, etc.

Its great for lightweight tracking and all the data can be exported in CSV or JSON formats.

I wrote an article about the 500 reports I've captured over the last 107 days: https://medium.com/p/c4454b9d8456

rdudek
that app actually sounds very cool indeed! You don't happen to have a suggestion for an android version?

Lately, I too have been trying to track my daily habits. Pen and paper just doesn't cut it.

pizza
This is exactly the type of thing I've been thinking of making for a while... esp. random sampling
abengoam
I'm not on that level but I put manual both measurements and endomondo readouts in a csv file, in my dropbox account. I update it daily with aggregates from the last day and seems to be working ok so far.
gregcohn
For blood pressure (and iOS), the Withings blood pressure cuff works well. Mine has a 30-pin connector and i haven't actually checked to make sure it will work with Lightning yet, but it works fine on an gen2 iPad.