Hello!
For a longitudinal study of physical activity I am looking for a wearable accelerometer that can send data to a cloud in (near) real time. We want to then use the data to trigger interventions (JITAIs). The data should be uploaded in fixed intervalls without the paticipants having to do anything.
Something like this (but for 1/3rd the price):
http://www.shimmersensing.com/products/verisense-development-kit
Uploading data to the clould with its own SIM card would be nice, but the Accelerometer could also connect to participants smartphones and upload the data through an App on the phone like with Actigraphs CentrePoint Insight Watch. Unfortunately I am currently testing one of these watches and I am having issues getting it to upload passively in the background so we might have to settle for a different solution.
Does anyone know a device that would be suitable for this project?
I would suggest looking at the Garmin Health API:
https://developer.garmin.com/gc-developer-program/health-api/
and Apple's Healthkit:
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/healthkit
While by no means cheap, a good Garmin watch or an Apple Watch would be a third of the price of the product you mention above. You would also have benefit of a large community who uses these (provided you can get them to opt-in). I use the Garmin watch (Fenix 5) to track sleep and heart rate trends.
Jeff Sedayao Thank you for your input! I suppose they actually would be 1/3rd of the price of the device I linked, since that one is 1620 Euros ;)
Garmin is a good idea for sure! I was also considering Fitbit. I suppose there is no way to get the data to the cloud without installing the garmin or fitbit app on the smartphone though. The problem I see with that, is that those Apps (and the devices themselfes for that matter) provide interventions by themselfes which we can't control.
However maybe someone has an idea if there are some workarounds!
Pascal Küng: Since you will have to have users opt-in, you can have them turn off the interventions. The interventions really shouldn't get in your way very much, even if they are turned on. My Garmin only has one intervention, which is to alert when heart beat is elevated in even after becoming inactive. I leave it turned off. I believe that Apple has a similar intervention, along with fall detection, which can be disabled.
On more thing - have you checked out fitabase? They keep a de-identified database of data from Garmins and Fitbits designed for researchers to use. You can check them out here:
https://www.fitabase.com/how-it-works/faq/
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