Tony, I'll hope to cover your questions here, but, if I leave anything out do shout!
I should just say that I've only had my Flex a day now, as they are brand new out, and I'm still getting to grips with it. So, firstly let's talk about using FitBit when you are awake and come back to sleep later… You need to know that there are currently three FitBit Trackers on the market that you can buy; FitBit 1, FitBit Zip and FitBit Flex, the Ultra was an older model. Zip and 1 are similar, only real difference that I could see was that 1 could be worn at night and would count floors climbed whereas Zip would not do either of these. Zip is cheaper though so if you do not care about sleep and do not care about floors climbed then Zip is an option. The 1 is a good product, it does not have LED lights only a screen and single physical button. I obviously like you get no benefit from this! :) The way FitBit works is that you create an account with them, I did this using their iOS app, and the entire process was accessible and easy to follow. You tell the App basic things about you, age, height, weight etc and that creates your basic account. Now you can review this data on your iPHone, iPad or their web-site. if you make a change they are universally applied to your account and visible on all of these. When you sync a FitBit tracker this syncs to your iPhone, iPad or indeed your computer (PC/Mac) and the data is again universally synced to your account, meaning that you can see this anywhere you have logged in. I have principally stuck to using the iOS app, but, have on occasion logged into their site. iOS App: I can easily see how many steps, distance, floors climbed etc that I have done that day, I can access my weight, body fat and BMI easily… Note that your body fat and BMI only appear if you have bought the FitBit Aria scales. I can log activities such as cycling, running etc which you have to report to the app that you've done, how long for, how far etc. So far I've not found it difficult to log cycling etc and these do affect your calorie count in a meaningful manner. Sleep: Whilst I have been able to log sleep, the information is shown on a visual graph and is thus meaningless to us, although I have been in contact with FitBit and they are interested in looking at this area. I've had someone sighted look at the graph and its quite interesting, last night I apparently spent 8 hours or so in bed, 6 and a half hours asleep with 17% of that being light sleep. Not bad data for a tiny bit of plastic worn on the arm. The graph shows when this sleep was taking place and as such you can blimps important data, well that's the theory. I have a friend who used to have terrible sleep, he bought a FitBit, and two days into its use, he spotted something interesting in the sleep pattern. He was waking, or having interrupted sleep on the hour every hour… Transpired that he was being woken, albeit not completely, by his talking alarm clock announcing the hour every hour during the night. He now sleeps much better since stopping this… So it can be really helpful. There's also the silent alarm feature, I've taken to using this, and it really does work, now I set my alarm in the FitBit app, the alarm timer is synced to the device which I wear and at the designated time, the device vibrates and thus wakes me, not the misses. The Flex does have LED's rather than a screen, but, again you do not need to worry about these, you can access the app at any time and see how you are doing. More over, if you leave the app running gin the background, every so often if you are nearing a goal, you'll get a push notification alerting you to shift your but a little more to win a meaningless badge, or to meet your daily objective. Daily Objectives: These are something you cannot change in the App yourself, this is an accessibility issue, but, you can change them online and this is of course pushed to your iOS app when you use it. There are default goals which I have changed. The Aria scales are, to my mind, an essential part of the overall FitBit experience and very much worth the price. I myself am not using any other fitness app etc, just a little more portion control over how much I eat and I've shifted 1 stone in under a month, more importantly, my BMI has gone from 30% to 25.3%… Anyone knowing about these things will recognise that I've gone from being boarder line over weight to boarder line average. BMI is a critical measurement though of your overall fitness and its a great metric to have access to. Returning to sleep: The Flex is easy to slip into sleep mode, simply tap quickly the top for two seconds and you're done. The only issue is its the same thing to get it out of sleep mode. As such, a blind person is left rather uncertain which way round it is! As such, what I did last night is wear the Flex, and then in the App in the morning you can manually say, between this time and that time, I was sleeping. This then converts the data that it has about you during that time accordingly. Nice touch FitBit. Flex has the advantage of being the new device from FitBit, its water proof to 10 metres, which means you can swim with it, bath with it and shower etc. It doesn't claim to measure distance swam, but, it does mean that you never need to take it off. This means that despite Flex not counting floors climbed, I'm likely to keep it over my FitBit 1. Floors climbed is also whilst cool to know, is in fact only a measurement of each continuous incline of 10 feet per climb. Anything less is not a floor and is disc qualified, with your incline count being reset for the next set of steps you traverse. Anything over 10 feet, but, under 20 feet is only counted as 1 floor. Overall I'm really pleased with this solution and will likely keep my Flex and Aria… Please do let me know if you have further questions. Regards, Neil Barnfather Talks List Administrator Twitter @neilbarnfather TalkNav is a Nuance, Code Factory and Sendero dealer, as well as an Apple iOS, Macintosh and Android accessibility specialist. For all your accessible phone, PDA and GPS related enquiries visit www.talknav.com URL: - www.talknav.com e-mail: - serv...@talknav.com Phone: - +44 844 999 4199 On 4 Jun 2013, at 18:38, Blind Treasures <blindtreasu...@comcast.net> wrote: > Neil I read your very good review about the fitbit on the IPhone list and it > has peaked my interest. I'm kind of getting into the health kick. I have a > few questions if you don't mind answering them. > I've been reading up on the fitbit and watching a few YouTube videos but of > course this is from a sighted aspect, so I would like to hear it from a > blind person who is actually using it. > I'm curious how the fitbit actually works while you are a sleep and how the > results can help you? > Are you able to set a goal and how do you read the results? I saw on a video > that the fitbit shows led lights as you reach your goal which wouldn't help > us. > Does the fitbit flex still upload it's data to the web site and the iPhone > app or just one or the other? > Are you able to access all the data on the iPhone that a sighted person > would? > I also heard that the fitbit flex isn't as accurate as the original one > since it is worn on the wrist. Do you find this to be true since you have > both? > Did you have to charge the unit before using? > How did you go about the setup of the unit? > Are you using any other fitness app along with the fitbit? > Is it necessary to keep Bluetooth on all the time or do you just turn it on > when you want to sink the device? > Well, I think this is enough questions for now and I really appreciate you > telling us about this device and your help and time. > > Regards Tony > > Blind Treasures > Phone: (804)-726-8900 > Sales: sa...@blindtreasures.com > Skype: kingmeade > Web Page: http://www.blindtreasures.com > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the "VIPhone" Google Group. To search the VIPhone public archive, visit http://www.mail-archive.com/viphone@googlegroups.com/. To post to this group, send email to viphone@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to viphone+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. 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