I finally finished my JMP addin for BodyMedia FIT data import and posted it to the JMP File Exchange in the JMP User Community. The add-in supports import of Excel formatted activity files and text (saved from PDF) food log files as well as MFP food log import (saved as CSV files when exported via a free Chrome extension called My Fitness Pal Data Downloader). My add-in adds a custom set of menus under the JMP add-in menu and you specify a folder of files, which are then imported into a unified, formatted JMP data table. It was tested under JMP 11.2.
A blog covering the import of my Excel files from BodyMedia is here. I’ll follow it soon with a blog on importing the food log text files (saved from PDF files) exported from BodyMedia into JMP, then some blogs on data cleanup utilities in JMP and graphs I created from the data.
Thanks for featuring my last blog on this week’s reading list! 
Writing the data import part of this blog series has not made for the most thrilling writing, but the two blogs on importing my data into JMP detail the most critical part of the project. Without getting through and automating the import steps, I would never have been able to do any of the cool graphs of my diet and fitness data from the past 4 years.
I posted the second blog on importing BodyMedia food log files into JMP using regex pattern matching in JSL here. I know there are better ways of accessing detailed data from BodyMedia as an app or database developer, but I have not really explored those yet although I hope to in the future. This is definitely more of an end-user report import project, taking what BodyMedia surfaces to a typical user of their products and getting it into a format for longer-term analysis beyond the limited window (1-4 weeks) of reports I can export from their software.
Since I work for JMP (managing the CI/build/install group, system testing, doc and localization teams, while keeping a close eye on feature development and our release process), my main goal for this project was to get my data into JMP using JSL like many of our users would with their own data sets. The challenges I experienced in importing and combining multiple files are pretty common ones among our user base as they work to get their data out of sets of spreadsheets and perhaps even the kind of text files I saved from my BodyMedia reports. JMP has various other ways to access data but importing from spreadsheets is very prevalent among our user base.
Now that the import blogs are posted and my add-in is available to allow other JMP users to import BodyMedia activity summary and food log files or MFP food logs from the JMP File Exchange, I’ll be blogging more about how I cleaned up my food log data with JMP. I’ll then go on to how I created the different visualizations that appeared on my JMP Discovery poster using JMP’s Graph Builder with the help of Xan Gregg, JMP’s resident visualization expert.