Access to raw activity data (activity counts)

Former Member over 2 years ago

Good evening,

for a research project in elderly patients I intend to track their activity status before and after a therapeutic intervention with the vivoactive 4. In research this is usually done by assessing raw activity counts (activity that exceeds a certain acceleration signal threshold is counted for a certain time period). The amount of activity counts per time period is then used to track the intensity of the activity and the time spent in at least moderate activity per day is the final variable I intend to investigate. However, this means access to the accelerometer data is needed. From what I have read on the Connect IQ platform the accelerometer sensors are accessible and their data are retrievable. However, I am quite unfamiliar with this process. How can I transfer raw accelerometer data from the watch into activity counts that I can use for analysis?

Has anyone done something similar before or is there an idea on how to do it?

Help is greatly appreciated. Thank you!

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flocsy🤠 over 2 years ago +1

If I understand what you plan to do is to "listen" for the accelerometer 24/7 and deduct when you count it as activity. I don't think you can do that and even if you could it would mean to run an app 24…

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0 flocsy🤠 over 2 years ago

If I understand what you plan to do is to "listen" for the accelerometer 24/7 and deduct when you count it as activity. I don't think you can do that and even if you could it would mean to run an app 24/7 so the watch would become useless. Try this instead: In Garmin Connect mobile app:
Device > Activity Tracing > Move IQ > enable

Try to use the watch like this for a day and see that it automatically detects activities like run/walk/etc. If this is good enough then you can download the activities (together with the manually started ones) from the api (the user will need to connect Garmin Connect to your app's api and then you'll be able to pull the activities of the user. Similar to how Strava does)

0 Former Member over 2 years ago in reply to flocsy🤠

Thank you, I appreciate the help! I'll try to do it like this, though I doubt it will work properly since I'm dealing with an elderly population with limited fitness. I'll report.

0 flocsy🤠 over 2 years ago in reply to Former Member

I though so as well, but it should pick up walks if they're long enough (in time) it should work, so if they do deliberate excersize it should be enough.