Tracking My Activity

Periodically our regional Department Store Boscov's runs a promotion that gets me spending a little more than I ordinarily would.  They have a partnership with non-profits which enables a designated charity to receive 5% of sales.  On the most recent of these, I bought myself something useful, an iTouch activity tracker watch for $30 which is a whole lot less than the more popular fit-bit costs.  I assume it is not one of those brand fakes that funds terrorism in remote parts of the world.  I trust Boscov's.  Being hi-tech challenged, setting it up meant reading the instructions line by line, but now it functions, if not flawlessly, in a way that gives me useful information.

First step is the watch, three display faces.  It stays visually muted unless I request to see the time.  I can ask it to convey messages from my cell phone to which it coordinates.  FB is really a form of life clutter, so I don't want those notifications tempting me passively.  My text messages never justify interruption.  That module stays off.  It calculates my steps.  I know that is in error, since it resets automatically every midnight.  If I get up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, which is most nights, I will often return to bed having taken zero steps.  There are more steps recorded on my treadmill days, but since I hold the handrail while exercising, there's likely a lot of steps that do not record as the watch remains stationary while I walk.  Over the years I've been given a lot of promotional pedometers with organizational advertising.  Those clip to my belt so should be more reliable at counting steps.  Never did a comparison.  While some authorities regard number of steps taken as a marker of physical activity for which goals can be set, I find my current measuring devices inadequate for this, including my new iTouch.  Similarly calories and distance are calculations from that primary activity.  I know how far I've walked on a treadmill session.  The calculation on this sports watch rarely coincides.

What I find most intriguing is my sleep time, reported as total time on my wrist but subdivided into stages of sleep on the synched smart phone.  Typically it will record about eight hours but I don't know how it determines when I am actually asleep.  It could detect darkness as a surrogate, time when I am horizontal though probably not since I often recline during the day without receiving a sleep measurement from the watch.  It cannot measure sleep directly.  Maybe motionless time.  Doubt if something on a wrist will record breathing or eye movement. Most likely not terribly accurate but maybe a way to experiment with my sleep times.  Wake time has been very consistent, bed time very inconsistent but I still get very little variation in the cumulative sleep duration calculated by the device. And I never know from the clock when I actually fall asleep, as I am typically awake after lights out.

It will synch with my smart phone camera but I don't understand how to do this.

P and Oxygen saturation should be easy, but again, my heart rate on the iTouch does not accelerate much at the end of a treadmill session.  Oxygen saturation is supposed to be constant.  Mine has been.  

There are some sports modes and a stop watch.  What seems missing is a count down timer.  A lot of sports, including some pictured on the sports module, have their duration based on counting downward from a starting time.  I have been successful with my treadmill this year by setting a duration, then watching my cell phone count down instead of watching the timer on the treadmill count up.  I would have expected iTouch to include this option.

Worth $30?  Keeps me focused a bit more on my sleep and my relative level of activities on different days.  It's absolute accuracy remains questionable.