Getting steps from activity tracker into MFP

jarose79
jarose79 Posts: 10 Member
edited November 13 in Fitness and Exercise
I'm wondering if it is possible to get MFP to read in step data just from the health app, and not from just the iPhone as a device. My activity tracker is not one that is supported directly by MFP, it is called Chronos https://wearchronos.com. The app works with the apple Health app, and I can pipe steps from it into the step activity within the Health app so they show up. So I can finally stop carrying my phone absolutely everywhere, I can actually leave it on my desk to charge for a time and get up and walk around without losing steps. However in MFP, it still only just reads in the steps that the iPhone itself has taken, which now that I have this device is even fewer than before because I don't have the need to carry it when using a DIFFERENT tracker. My iPhone is no longer my activity tracker.

I am not seeing a way to have MFP just go off of the apple health app step count rather than the physical iPhone step count. This may be by design of course, and if that is the case, is there any chance of Chronos being added as a supported device in the future? I would love to integrate these services.

It is very new still so I am not surprised that it does not work directly with MFP, it just got out of the pre-order stage honestly. But I am a little surprised in that I cant just tell MFP to use health app data rather than ONLY the number embedded in the iPhone as a device itself. If you could use step count in the Health app, then ANY device that is compatible with Apple Health and can pipe data to it, would be compatible with MFP.

I'm not a programmer though, maybe this isn't possible for security reasons, or licensing or just Apple being Apple. Which then circles back to the question of, when can we get Chronos compatibility with MFP on the device level. HA!

Any insights or thoughts on adding or using third party trackers not directly associated with MFP currently would be appreciated!

Replies

  • jarose79
    jarose79 Posts: 10 Member
    edited November 2016
    Ive continued to tinker with this, and have set MFP to be able to read step data from the Health app, but it still will not get those steps into the app. Even completely turned off step tracking from the iPhone in hopes it would then pipe the steps that are listed in the Health app. No dice. It will ONLY sync actual steps from the iPhone itself, which again, doesn't have an accurate count now because it is not my pedometer. Has anyone had any success getting an unlisted device to import steps into myfitnesspal? Why is there no option under "Steps" in MFP to select "import whatever is in the health app"? There is an option in the health app to allow MFP to "read" the step data, so why can't it?
  • lorrpb
    lorrpb Posts: 11,463 Member
    I suggest that you contact MFP tech support since no one seems to be responding with the info you need. Good luck!
  • gremlinreb
    gremlinreb Posts: 152 Member
    I use a pebble watch and had to find another app to sync my steps to mfp. Health pulls the data from my pebble, jawbone up pulls the steps from health. And finally mfp pulls the steps from jawbone!

    I had to change the order in health so pebble was priority. The screen shot has my iPhone details cropped at the very bottom.

    The apps that I found for my workaround were the jawbone up (purple, not blue) and misfit. I didn't try misfit as I managed to get things syncing with jawbone

    I hope this might help you a little in figuring out a workaround!
  • jarose79
    jarose79 Posts: 10 Member
    edited November 2016
    Aha! I managed to get this working! Though it seems like it is giving me WAY more calories than it is supposed to for just the amount of steps i have taken. Right now for example i have 1500 steps piped into MFP, at this late in the day that MIGHT give me 10 calories. For some reason it is giving me 130 calories. Hmmm, I must have missed something. Man, they do not make this easy.

    Thank you, this is closer than i was before!
  • jarose79
    jarose79 Posts: 10 Member
    edited November 2016
    I think I found the culprit, since the Jawbone app supports negative calorie adjustments in MFP I had to turn that on. Before it wasn't supported just using the iPhone, and it was doing its own algorithm by simply not crediting me any unless i was ahead of the curve for the day. I think Jawbone, with negative adjustments turned off, was giving me calories based on me already having met an appropriate amount of steps for the day from 0. So for example, 1500 was 1500 ADDITIONAL steps and it credited me with a plethora of calories.

    Now with negative enabled, I start the day with a deficit of like 200 calories when I haven't had any steps yet, and I have to take what appears to be at least 1500 or 1600 or so to even get to 0. For example, now I have logged 1800 so far today and it is crediting me with just 13 calories. Which makes a lot more sense to me.

    Still seems a LITTLE bit inflated, like 1800 steps doesn't seem like 200 calories, I feel like maybe 2000 or even 3000 should be the break even point but I'll take what I can get, it is at least in the ballpark, and that is all these apps can do is keep you in the ballpark so you don't overeat. I do have a sedentary lifestyle and that is what MFP goes off of, so, we'll roll with what they say.

    Thank you again gremlinreb for the workaround. Until such times as Chronos hopefully gets a direct connect to MFP. It was a big help.

    Hopefully someone else can benefit from this thread later on.
  • gremlinreb
    gremlinreb Posts: 152 Member
    Glad my workaround helped you out!

    Jawbone occasionally pulls less steps from my pebble (sometimes up to 1,000 less over the course of a day) I've learned to just let that go and be thankful it's not crediting me with too many as I eat back most calories!
  • jarose79
    jarose79 Posts: 10 Member
    I guess I'm still just a little perplexed at how it works because its a VALUE. Its just a number. When you read a number in from one app to another it shouldn't change so wildly. Chronos says i have 2,152 steps as of now, Health app says 1,968, and Jawbone Up says 344. THREE HUNDRED AND FORTY FOUR? From TWO THOUSAND? HOW!?

    I'm thinking I may just turn this feature off completely,it really is starting to frustrate me.
  • jarose79
    jarose79 Posts: 10 Member
    After a little more tinkering and allowing other apps to read and write, now health and chronos are completely in sync, they have the exact same number. Jawbone pulled in more up to 905, but still not where it is supposed to be, I'm just so darn confused by this. Its a VALUE, the value should be the same, how can the app pick and choose which steps to count?
  • NCBWilliams673
    NCBWilliams673 Posts: 29 Member
    edited December 2016
    If you count out 500 steps what does each one read? Sometimes things can end up getting counted twice and arm movements may not be registering like leg movements. Maybe just to see also try wearing the jawbone on your ankle for 500 steps if it is low on your arm. It is also conceivable that the jawbone is not staying connected to the phone all the time so you may only be getting part of your steps transmitted.
  • jarose79
    jarose79 Posts: 10 Member
    I
    NCBWilliams673 wrote: »
    If you count out 500 steps what does each one read? Sometimes things can end up getting counted twice and arm movements may not be registering like leg movements. Maybe just to see also try wearing the jawbone on your ankle for 500 steps if it is low on your arm. It is also conceivable that the jawbone is not staying connected to the phone all the time so you may only be getting part of your steps transmitted.

    I am not using a Jawbone. Only the UP app. I wonder if you read the whole thread? The premise here is to try and pipe steps from a device and app not directly supported by MFP, into MFP.
  • jarose79
    jarose79 Posts: 10 Member
    After using this for a while longer, I'm still getting VASTLY different numbers from the Chronos app to the Jawbone app, but here is my theory:

    I feel like the step data that it is reading in is not a number value but more the actual STEP DATA, the accelerometer data is being passed to the jawbone app. The jawbone app is then interpreting that data on its own into what IT THINKS real steps are, and I think it has a much different and more meticulous algorithm for determining what a real step is. Thus it has a drastic reduction in step count. Cutting it in nearly half every time.

    A lot like what gremlinreb said, at least it is crediting something, and it makes motivation to get up and do some real arm swinging walks to get more calories back (with negative calories on I need quite a few just to stay at even 0).
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