Last Updated on September 28, 2022 by pg@petergamma.org
Firstbeat contacted us today and asked us whether they can support us with information and insights. Hes, Fistbeat can support us regarding the following topic:
- Firstbeat Bodyguard
We where interested in the Firstbeat BodyGuard, which fits well to your projects, and the BodyGuard has a validation paper which shows that the device is highly accurate, which is great.
The Firstbeat support told us, that it is not possible to access sensor data in real-time for instance over MQTT, sensor data can only obtained as .txt files from the Bodyguard or over the Firstbeat software.
This is a pity. If we want to have data from several sensors in one database, it needs a lot of processing to do this. With MQTT or over a streaming service like Apple Health, this is much better. It is highly desirable, that Firstbeat updates this feature.
This path works now with Polar Sensors and the Polar Sensor Logger App and MQTT, or Apple watches as mentioned here in this blog. We can stream sensor data from Apple Watches into Home Assistant via an iPhone app, store it in InfluxDB and visualize and analyze it in Grafana.
2. Respiration Rate on Garmin Fenix Watches
Another product that doesn’t convince us from Firstbeat is the respiration rate on Garmin Fenix watches, which as far as I know comes from Firstbeat. It is helpful for our studies, but needs to be calibrated. To do this, we need access to the sensor data.
The respiration rate can be seen on Garmin watches, is stored in the .fit file on Garmin watches, and can be snyched to Garmin Connect.
Some parameters of Garmin watches can be streamed over Strava to Home Assistant, and from there stored and processed in the InfluxDB and visualized in Grafana.
Unfortunately, whe could not find any information about that the respiration rate can be streamed of Strava to Home Assistant. As far as we remember, the respiration rate is not supported by Strava. If Firstbeat would update this, this would be great. Without this feature, just looking at an uncalibrated respiration rate on a Garmin Fenix watch and in Garmin Connect, is for us personally not a satisfying solution to analyze data of breath meditation practice studies.