Basis Band – High-tech for your wrist

Posted by Florian Schumacher on 14. April 2013

Just like numerous other Quantified Self enthusiasts, I, too, have been excitedly awaiting the arrival of the Basis Band ever since its announcement in the summer of 2011: An activity monitor that, aside from recognizing movement intensity, can also register skin resistance, energy released by the body and the heart rate. The most fascinating aspect of it all is the optic heart rate monitor integrated into the bottom side of the watchcase, which can detect changes in skin pigment caused by the heartbeat. In the past weeks, I tested just how well this new technology works.

From an external glace, one can hardly see everything the Basis Band has to offer. It has a simple design and is not much larger than a regular digital watch – you can only tell the Basis Band is a health product by looking at the back. That’s where the electrodes are that measure the skin resistance and body temperature, along with the components for optic pulse measurement. Here, the skin’s surface is irradiated by the light of two green LEDs; their reflections on the skin’s surface are registered by a photocell and analyzed for systematic variations due to the heartbeat. It is especially this optic pulse measurement that distinguishes the Basis Band from all other currently available activity sensors.

Several weeks of testing showed that this optic method in Basis Band does indeed work, but it also has its limitations. When resting and during moderate movement, the measured heart rate is very close the values measured by other sensors. However, when running, working out at the gym or during many other physical activities, the accuracy of the optic measurement does not suffice to deliver precise values. Thus, the Basis Band is not suitable as a heart rate monitor for endurance athletes. When comparing the strength of the LEDs on the Basis Band with those on the Alpha, which are both based on the same principle, their two differing basic concepts become apparent. Whereas Mio’s optic sensor is strong enough to recognize the heart rate even during intense training and for that needs to be recharged after just 10 hours, the pulse monitor on the Basis Band only partially works for physical activities, in return for which the battery lifetime of 100 hours allows a good long-term observation. The true advantage of the Basis Band therefore lies in the combination of the various values it measures, which allows a more precise calculation, inter alia. Thus, Basis’ algorithms use the difference between the temperature on the top and the bottom of the casing to distinguish the temperature released by the body in order to be able to deliver a more accurate estimate of the number of calories consumed. The recognition of sleep patterns also profits from recording different values. Thus, by combining the measurements of physical activity and changes of the resting heart rate, the onset, length and end of sleep phases can automatically be detected. In contrast to other activity monitors, the Basis Band is a much more complex sensor that, with the capacities of algorithms growing beyond movement and sleep, could provide further health-related information.

You can have a look at your measurement values on the Basis Band’s display or after uploading the data to the Basis online portal; an Android app should be available in several weeks. Aside from the current time, the display can also directly show your current pulse, your number of burnt calories and your step-count. In Basis’ online portal, which is currently in the beta phase, information about activity and sleep are the dominating aspects, from which you can choose a number of different goals. Compared to other activity trackers, the goals offered in Basis’ portal are much more specific – whether you want to sleep more, always go to bed or get up at the same time or get into the habit of a morning run – your adherence to the desired habits are carefully monitored by the sensor and visualized in the portal. In the process, Basis tries to help users who weren’t quite as successful to get back on track with a cleverly devised point system. To this end, Basis uses various game mechanics such as points and levels to playfully motivate the users to achieve their goals.

It is also possible to delve even deeper into your own measurement values. Overall activity, heart rate, skin resistance and calorie consumption can be displayed graphically over the course of a week or compared on a daily basis. This offers a detailed insight into your own data that is not possible with any other currently available activity sensor – a download of the data is currently not provided.

In order to view your stats on the portal, the Basis Band must be connected to a computer; but because of the current beta phase, it can take several minutes for the uploaded information to become available. However, the Android app, announced for March, in conjunction with the Bluetooth synchronization, should be able to greatly improve the user’s experience. With its four days of battery lifetime, the Basis Band for the first time enables a simple and continuous tracking of various health parameters, although it cannot replace specialized heart rate monitors for athletic training. Instead, with the Basis Band you receive an innovative product that can help create new habits. Should they succeed in producing this high-tech sensor in larger numbers and in enabling better data access with a smartphone app, I see great potential for Basis’ approach. The Basis Band could become an interface to the body, supporting people in an active lifestyle and providing physicians information that can significantly improve medical treatment. With the Basis Band, the industry is at the beginning of the trend towards such an interface. Therefore, the further development of the Basis Band remains quite exciting.

Talking 20 – Take a Look Inside

Posted by Florian Schumacher on 4. March 2013

This is a guestpost from Winslow Strong, author of the blog Biohack Yourself. Winslow was one of the early backers of the crowdfunded startup Talking20 and describes the service and his experience of taking his blood sample.

Talking20 is a recently founded direct-to-consumer biomedical testing company. Their mission is to transform useful biomarker diagnostics into do-it-yourself at-home tests. As a biohacker, I love this idea. It allows me to get enormous amounts of useful data on how my self-experiments in diet, exercise, sleep, supplements, etc impact my biology. Plus, it saves me a moderate amount of time and a ton of money (I wouldn’t be able to afford it) compared to getting these tests done in a doctor’s office or lab. Furthermore, a doctor will probably only give you results on a printed sheet, and probably only upon request (after looking at you strangely). Talking20 will give you a web-accessible graphical presentation of your values over time, which is much more convenient, especially for those of us who tend to move around frequently.

T20 raised some initial crowdfunding via an Indiegogo campaign. What particularly caught my eye, and I ended up purchasing, was their Gold Card package of 36 cards, each of which will give you results for every single test in their catalog at the time when you use it. You can use each card whenever you want – e.g. use one weekly as you intentionally overtrain yourself, in order to get a signature for the hormonal changes that occur, so that you can ID them more easily in the future. Or use one once a year if nothing big is changing in your life, and you just want a nice complete blood panel done at a fraction of the price. It’s your choice, but you can take as long or short as you desire to use your Gold Cards.

What you get

My initial package contained 6 Gold Cards, (the other 30 will be sent as needed) 6 addressed envelopes for mailing them, instructions, 14 lancets (for pricking your finger), and a bunch of alcohol swabs and band-aids. They rushed these packages out to the Indiegogo campaign funders, so we have to wait a bit longer for the storage box that will help us keep all our supplies organized. This is fine with me, as everything needed to get started was in this initial shipment.

At the time of this writing (March 2, 2013), the tests that Talking20 offers in various packages are:

Heart biomarkers – Total, HDL & LDL cholesterol, homocysteine, CRP, & HgA1C
Hormones – Cortisol, estradiol (the most important of the estrogens), progesterone, testosterone, and Vit D3 (the 25-OH test)
Vitamins – A, B6, B9, B12, C, D3 (25-OH), E

They say on their website that they hope in the future to add:

All Hormones: including cholesterols, cortisol, testosterone, DHEA, estrogens and progesterone
All Vitamins and Minerals: including all fat and water soluble vitamins, and circulating minerals, amino acids, and electrolytes
All Disease Proteins: including current and future indicators of cancers, including colon prostate, breast, kidney, and lung cancers
All Organ Function related proteins: including current and future indications of organ function, including liver, kidney, pancreas, and autoimmunity problems
All future biomarkers discovered that we include in all new retail panels

Gold card holders will receive the new tests automatically as they become available.

Collecting the sample

The technology that T20 uses only requires drops of blood on the absorbant thick-paper cards they supply. There’s no need to stick a large needle into your arm, as often happens at the doctor’s office, so no worries there. They request 5 drops of blood to fill the 5 circles on each card. Their instructions are rather minimal, so let me provide you with some elaboration that I found helpful after some experimentation:

Middle finger – Talking20 advises either using the tip of your middle finger or the outside of your ring finger. Visually, my middle fingers look like they carry more blood, so I chose them.
LARGE drops of blood. The drop should be so large as to be about to fall off from your downward-facing finger. It was surprising to me how large a drop could become before it started to look unstable enough that it might fall. To facilitate this, it’s advisable that:
- After washing your hands thoroughly with soap, soak the collection hand (and wrist if you can fit it) in a large pot of very warm water. This will help dilate the capillaries of your finger with blood, and keep it coming as you squeeze it out.
- After drying your hand thoroughly, use an alcohol swab to disinfect and clean the collection finger.
- Prick your finger with the lancet, pressing firmly. The lancet is spring-loaded, so when you push your finger sufficiently into it, a spring releases, generating enough momentum for a prick. I found that I had a natural flinch instinct to overcome, because I knew I was pressing my finger into a spike. But the lancets are very well-calibrated, not particularly painful, and to get a deep enough prick, I found I really did need to press quite firmly into it.
- “Milk” the finger. Use firm but not ferocious pressure to squeeze your finger as you simultaneously slide down it from the base towards the tip. I found it better to not actually squeeze right around the prick site, as this mimics the “apply pressure” advice you hear for wounds to get them to stop bleeding. It worked best for me to apply pressure up until I approached the prick site closely, but was not quite bracketing it. Repeat this many times and your blood drop will grow in size.
As the blood drop starts to hang unstably from your finger, try to delicately let the center of it touch the center of one of the circles.
You may need multiple pricks. I only got two circles out of each prick, so I had three pricks in total.

Summary

If you haven’t taken your own blood before, then you might need some trial and experimentation at first to get it right. Hopefully, my advice above will prove useful. I would rate the difficulty of this procedure as moderate for first-time users, but that should change to easy by the second or third time as you get the hang of it. It’s not rocket science, nor is it very painful. Overall, I’m pleased with the blood sample collection process.

This product is currently one-of-a-kind and is more convenient and potentially much cheaper than a trip to the doctor’s office to get the same results, depending on your insurance coverage. I’m really looking forward to having a huge array of biomarkers available through Talking20 in the future. I’ll cover that part of the T20 service when the analysis is ready, projected to be in April.

Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with Talking20 at the time of this writing, March 2, 2013.

This is a guestpost from Winslow Strong, Entrepreneur, Biohacker and Organizer of the Zürich Quantified Self Meetup. For more information about Biohacking visit his blog Biohack Yourself.

Further information

Talking20 website

Facebook

Twitter: @Talking20tweets

Indiegogo (completed)

Philips Airfloss – The Revolution of Dental Care

Posted by Florian Schumacher on 21. February 2013

After an extremely negative experience with the Philips customer service, I promised myself several years ago never to buy another product from the Philips group. However, since Philips has meanwhile established itself as a manufacturer of highly innovative wellness products such as massage devices or phototherapy lamps, I quickly strayed from my initial intent. Philips Airfloss is the newest lifestyle innovation of the Dutch enterprise – and even if the device hardly contains digital components and does not collect data, I would still like to introduce this small revolution for the bathroom here.

Philips Airfloss is the revolution of dental care

Philips Airfloss is a device used to clean the spaces between your teeth and is thus perfect for all those who love gadgets and can’t be bothered with dental floss. The cleaning is administered by a stream of air and microscopic water droplets, which are shot through a nozzle into the spaces between your teeth. In this way, the Airfloss is similar to an electric toothbrush, except that it has a liquid tank and instead of a brush, there is the nozzle that ejects the cleaning jet. Just as with dental floss, cleaning the gaps between your teeth proceeds one space at a time – the Airfloss has to be repositioned each time and the shot-like jet of air and water needs to be triggered with a button.

In practice, this is a sensible and pleasant activity – using it is simple and it leaves a fabulous sensation in your mouth. Alternative to filling it with water, the Airfloss can also be used with mouthwash, so that the cleaning process can be combined with refreshing and disinfecting your mouth. The material, design and production quality are suitable for the price of $99, and the Airfloss battery can last several weeks, depending on how often it is used. The supply in the water tank is empty after one or two applications – a reasonable design decision, when you think about it, considering it keeps you from spraying stale water into your mouth.

Philips Airfloss is a successful bit of innovation

Personally, I am completely thrilled about Philip’s Airfloss. Before, I could never really motivate myself to regularly use dental floss, now I use it even several times a day sometimes and am enjoying dental hygiene at a totally new level. Compared to dental floss, Airfloss by far excels in user experience both regarding its handling as well the great sensation in your mouth, whereby Philips has reinvented the process of cleaning the spaces between your teeth. As a product, I therefore must absolutely and unconditionally recommend the Philips Airfloss. At the same time, I hope I will never again be in need of the Philips customer service, or that, just in case I do, it has improved in the meantime.

Fitbit Zip – A Pedometer for Beginners and Pros

Posted by Florian Schumacher on 21. February 2013

Over a year after updating its last pedometer, Fitbit presented two new products – the Zip and the One. The Zip is conceived as the beginners’ model with a more narrow scope of functions and yet it offers a decisive advantage – the device runs with a battery for half a year and does not require recharging. Aside from that, the Zip behaves similar to the previous model Fitbit Ultra, only that it doesn’t count floors and cannot be used to measure sleep patterns. As an additional function, Fitbit integrated data transfer to smartphones via the new Bluetooth 4.0 standard, which allows a more energy-efficient data synchronization currently on iphone 4S, 5 and a few Samsung smartphones.

The Fitbit Zip is a real Lifestyle Gadget

The Zip has an oval shape and comes in various colors. The design and the material have a classy appearance, which creates the impression of a real lifestyle gadget. In other aspects, the little sensor also make a sophisticated impression – depending on your personal likings, you can place the device in your pocket or attach it to your waistband, bra or necklace with the protective rubber cover that comes with it. By tapping on the casing, the Zip’s screen is activated and the display of the current step-count or time is opened. Further information can be obtained with the iphone app, where your current number of steps, amount of burned calories and personal activity can be compared with your friends. The app can also be used to record your nourishment in order to gain an overview of your calorie intake. The online profile offers even more detailed information, where aside from your step-count you can also review an activity index and an activity profile over the course of the day. On top of it all, this online profile also offers the ability to record various health values such as blood-pressure and blood-sugar levels in order to compile your own health file as needed.

The Fitbit Zip is a well-composed new development

Fitbit’s new tracker boasts a compact design, convenient data transfer with Bluetooth 4.0 and practical handling without having to recharge the device. The app and the online platform allow the extensive analysis and individual complementation of activity data. This spectrum of functions, the great design and the price of $ 59,90 earn the Zip a clear recommendation for beginning and advanced users alike. However, those who would like to be able to record their sleeping patterns as well should have a look at Fitbit One, on which I will also provide a short account soon.

Nike+ Kinect Training – Burn Fuel in the Living Room

Posted by Florian Schumacher on 21. February 2013

Nike+ Kinect Training is a fitness game for Microsoft’s XBOX. It uses the cameras of the Kinect game controller to monitor the correct execution of each exercise and to turn physical activity into an interactive game.

Nike’s newest product from the Nike series is a training game that uses a personal trainer and a clever game design to make athletic progress easy and comprehensible. At the beginning of the game, you can choose your personal target from the options of muscle building, toning or weight reduction. This is followed by an assessment that determines your current condition. During the corresponding exercises, you move in front of the screen, jump to various positions as quickly as possible, dodge obstacles or demonstrate your flexibility to eyes of the cameras.
After finishing the assessment, the personal trainer guides you through your training plan, which is developed with a level of difficulty that takes your personal constitution into consideration. For each activity you collect Nike+ Kinect Training fuel points, which complement your scorings of other Nike+ products such as Fuelband on your online profile. With this, Nike has developed a harmoniously interconnected ecosystem of Nike+ products. One new thing about the Kinect game is the distinction of fuel points between fitness fuel and athletic fuel points, which allows a more exact differentiation. The following trailer offers an introduction to how the new game works.

Augmented Human International Conference in Stuttgart, Germany

Posted by Florian Schumacher on 14. February 2013

The Augmented Human International Conference will be taking place in Stuttgart on March 7-8. At the AH’13 experts and scientists will meet for the 4th time in a row to discuss the extension of the human capabilities based on innovative technologies. The conference will cover topics like the augmentation of the human perception with optical and haptic interfaces, data recording with different sensor technologies as well as approaches for processing information in the areas architecture, industry, healthcare and education. I’ve been invited to this conference by the organizers of Augmented Human. I look forward to highly innovative, inspiring insights and will be covering the AH’13 on igrowdigital.com.

Quantified Self vs. Sedative Lifestyle

Posted by Florian Schumacher on 14. February 2013

Life is undoubtedly getting better in many ways thanks to technology and economic development. However, what we associate with “progress” often makes us more distracted and dependent. The trend is to select the default option, go with the flow and seek more convenience, e.g. the elevator apartment, getting food delivery, the new home entertainment system – all of which takes away from our ability to move, cook, learn, communicate or entertain ourselves (or be entertaining). It is a slow, invisible process of self-disablement that not only degrades essential life skills, but also reduces opportunities of self-expression and social interaction. When convenience is the goal, distraction is the result. We all feel it: there is this nagging emptiness that we can’t quite define. Personal Analytics helped me discover and get to the bottom of this after I recorded my personal habits, mood and objectives on a daily basis over an extended period of time (see also: Quantified Self). Quantifying my well-being helped me see invisible patterns in my life, most importantly I saw what worked for me and what didn’t – and I could prove it with numbers. I found that the key to doing better is to do less, re-introduce discipline, spend time with loved ones, seek an active lifestyle and remove distractions. That’s my personal formula – yours may be different. I truly believe that if we all had the tools to find out what really works for us (and what doesn’t) we’d have more empowered lives.

This is guest post from Stefan Heeke, founder of the unchained lifestyle movement. Stefan is a data analyst that applies his analytical skills to self improvement. I am always happy to meet Stefan at one of the Quantified Self events all over the world and highly recommend visiting his blog unchainyourlifestyle.

International Quantified Self Culture in Berlin

Posted by Florian Schumacher on 1. November 2012

Along with several co-organizers, I founded the English-speaking Berlin Quantified Self Meetup Group this October 17th. With this group, we want to organize meet-ups at the same level as other European metropolises in the future. The first meeting of our new Berlin group will take place on the 22nd of November. Amongst the speakers, there will be two well-known people from the Quantified Self scene. Steven Dean is a designer, a lecturer at the New York University and an entrepreneur in the digital health sector. In addition, Dean is a partner of the incubator PREHYPE and the organizer of the New York QS group. At the Berlin meet-up, Dean will give a keynote speech about the history and background of Quantified Self and will report how he used self-tracking to help prepare himself for an Iron Man competition.

Steven Dean at the Quantified Self Europe Conference 2011 (cc by Rain Rabbit)

Denis Harscoat is the founder of the start-up company DidThis and a co-organizer of the Paris and London QS groups. He is particularly interested in habits and the regular practice of the behavior necessary to achieve mastery in a certain field. At the Berlin meeting, Harscoat will be talking about self-tracking behavior, the “programmable self” and how self-tracking keeps him motivated to change his lifestyle. Aside from the international guest speakers, the Berlin scene will also get their chance to speak up. Peter Lewis is one of the co-organizers of the new Berlin Quantified-Self group und a developer of educational apps designed after the “spaced repetition” principle (SRS). This method takes account of the human memory retention, thus helping to optimize efficiency in learning new contents. At the new group’s meet-up, Lewis will be talking about various SRS algorithms, their potential for future applications and his personal experience in learning new things with this method. Next to these contributions, the developers of self-tracking applications will also present their position towards personal data, self-awareness and behavioral changing. After the presentations, there will be a demo-hour, in which the visitors will be able to collect information about Berlin start-ups from the QS-scene. All self-trackers, those interested to learn more about QS and press representatives are warmly welcomed to join us at the meet-up on November 22nd. You can find more information about the new group and about the event here. If you are planning a trip to Berlin and would like to present a Show&Tell at one of our future meetups, please contact us. We are looking forward to welcoming further international speakers.