Interesting day. I took a look at Actifit in the morning, mostly because I haven't moved from my desk for the last week after my trip to Rome. That's how it is when you're DevOps and after a week you find a project that you've been working on for months and from which you rested for only a week: breaks down.
An interesting surprise awaited me at ActiFit - ActiFit now integrates with Android Health Connect. Yay, finally!
AI Generated
Until now, ActiFit has been limited to integration with the FitBit ecosystem. If you didn't have a FitBit device, you were forced to use the internal sensors of your Android phone to measure the number of steps. This brought problems because most phones today have Power Management that very stubbornly turns off the sensors when the phone is locked. Switching an application to 'always awake' mode was not always easy, especially since Android has different manufacturers with different user interfaces. Plus, turning off power management even for just one application led to significantly higher battery consumption.
A couple of years ago I experimented a bit with a fake FitBit device that would sync with my Garmin device. Although everything was possible, it depended on a lot of 'screws' in the process and at least once every two weeks it happened that someone messed up. And since I long ago declared the whole Hive to be a fine experiment, it was all too much effort for little knowledge and even less benefit. I abandoned the concept and switched to the phone's accelerometer integrated with ActiFit.
Apart from battery consumption, this concept had another consequence - the phone had to be with me at all times during physical activity. Quite often while hiking or running, this required me to place the not-so-small 6.5" phone somewhere so that it wouldn't fall out, and so that it wouldn't distract me during exercise. I know, it sounds like a pearl shoe problem, but hey, that's the world we live in - we're not being chased down the streets by lions, so our biggest problems are related to pointless little things like this ;)
For years I have used a Garmin watch as my primary device for measuring all my activities. And for years I've had everything I need on my Garmin: maps, measurement of heart rate, number of steps, distance traveled... as well as music that Garmin easily delivers to wireless headphones when I want to break up the monotony. And even Garmin Pay so I don't even need the Google pay option of the phone... Realistically, during the activity, the phone is free to be turned off and somewhere in the backpack or car...
The next thing that is important to the whole picture is that every manufacturer has its own ecosystem. Polar, Suunto, Garmin, Samsung, Denver, Amazfit, Google... all integrate in some way with the phone. And then the phone has its own apps like Android Health, Fit... And then the phone manufacturers add their apps to it like for example Samsung Health... It's starting to look like that madness when every manufacturer had their own charger standard for the device so you had 10-20 chargers in your house and they all delivered 5V-1A?
When we add to that that amateurs and professionals like to monitor their training through serious platforms such as Strava and TP, we get a complete picture that looks like absolute chaos. Fortunately, many recognized this and android jumped in and said - let's at least try to bring some order to this: and introduced Android Health Connect!
Yes, yes, AI generated
Android Health Connect is a part of the android system that offers the possibility of synchronization between different health monitor systems. It offers an API that is relatively easy to connect to through Android apps. Any connection to Health Connect can send and receive data from the Health Connect API. Developers are left with the option to decide which data to send and which to download. The user can set which data and from which source he will consider valid, which synchronization he will allow and which one not. Excellent solution. Very few limits, lots of control options.
Bottom line: ActiFit now integrates with Health Connect on the Android platform, offering the ability to virtually sync data from any fitness device that has an Android app that supports Health Connect. You practically don't need to take your phone on a run anymore, smart watch is enough. The phone does not need to have power saving exceptions for ActiFit. The number of steps will be synchronized in the way Your health device (Garmin) -> Android Health Connect -> ActiFit. And it's completely automatic!
Well, if you're using an Apple Watch, you still don't have integration. First of all, thank Apple for that, as they continue to push the strict isolation of their ecosystem to make you dependent on their phones, chargers, computers, watches. As someone who has used an iPhone in combination with an AppleWatch for a while, I can tell you that there is absolutely no benefit to it... my humble opinion of course.
Congratulations to ActiFit on a successful integration!
This report was published via Actifit app (Android | iOS). Check out the original version here on actifit.io
