One button tracking for iOS / Android

Quantified Self Apps & Tools
#1

I’m interested ways to easily track subjective events. For example I have small sporadic pain in a particular muscle. Some days I have no pain at all, and some days a twinge or two. I’ve had this for years, without it going away completely! My hope is that recording my pain events will allow me to figure out lifestyle changes that will fix the problem.

I am a mobile app developer. And I am considering developing an iOS and Android app that would record button presses on a wearable device. I don’t want to get my phone out each time I record an event. The Puck.js looks like a good candidate for the hardware.

Can anyone recommend an existing Android app that tracks hardware button presses?

Also, would you be interested in tracking events like this? If I knew other people were interested in using an app like this, it would increase my motivation to develop it.

#2

Definitely interested in an app that allows for tracking events with the press of a button. And to use a wearable device is a smart move IMO.

Being that you’re considering developing a mobile application, would you consider enriching each “button press” with metadata such as location, time and other variables that could help you pinpoint what the cause of any given problem is? It would also be useful if I could both export and share my data.

Thank you for the post and for potentially putting this all together. I know how much time can go into planning, building and maintaining a programming project.

#3

Thanks for the suggestion! Yes, if work on this, I’ll include whatever metadata turns out to be useful.

#4

The Puck.js is indeed quite interesting to use as a one-button tracker. I’ve made this small website which can be used to setup a Puck into a stand-alone one-button tracker that stores all observations on the device and can download the data. It completely works with client-side javascript, so all data stays private. @esenabre used it for one of his self-research projects.

Implementing an automated sync to a mobile app would be really cool though, as the internal memory of the Puck.js isn’t too large (which means my approach requires manual download of the data in regular intervals, generating CSV files).

#5

When I receive the Puck, first thing I’ll try out is your website!

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