Last Updated on January 21, 2023 by pg@petergamma.org
If we are interested on the long-term in multi-sensor devices, we suppose that we will sooner or later have a setup which is based on InfluxDB. To start with, the instruction from Udo Berndt from smart-live.net is very helpful: It uses an Apple watch and a synchronization app:
But on the long-term, we reject solutions with apps and Apple watches. There is an easy instruction how to connect a temperature sensor to Home Assistant:
What is not easy, is to have data from a foot pod in a database synchronized with other physiological data. We had an instruction for a foot pod with WIFI in the BITalino forum. We can use the EmotiBit with an accelerometer and use foot pod algorithms for it. We can feed it into the AUX input of OpenBCI, or use LSL. Another problem is the cable connection from the EmotiBit foot pod to the OpenBCI module.
We can also replace in the above instruction with the ESP32 the temperature sensor by an accelerometer. The ESP32 has BLE and WIFI. This is better for a foot pod than a cable connection. But we are physiologists, and these instructions look like they’re going to take a lot of time. But it seems to be the easiest we currently know. We will realize those only if there is a DFROBOT instruction for it, a good paper or an instruction from How To Electronics in India on YouTube, or from someone who does it for fun and in it s spare, or as a student project.
A solution which is easier is to modify balenaHealth to support foot pods instead of heart rate. Next to the balenaHealth, there is a balena Home Assistant from which we can export our foot pod data to InlfuxDB.
- If the path from balenaHealth over the balena cloud to balena Home Assistant which is experimental is too complicated and to experimental, we can also modify the Adafruit Pyloton bike computer for foot pods (personal communication Adafruit support).
- To get to foot pod data is very complicated. It is as if we had to develop a second Stryd foot pod.