An evaluation of wearable activity monitoring devices

This paper examines an increasingly relevant topic in the multimedia community of wearable devices that record the physical activity of a user throughout a day. While activity and other accelerometry-based data has been shown effective in various multimedia applications -- from context-aware music retrieval to approximating carbon footprint -- the most promising role of these target application for healthcare and personal fitness. Recently, several low-cost devices have become available to consumers. In this paper, we perform an evaluation on the most popular devices available on the market (in particular Fitbit and Nike+) and report our findings in terms of accuracy, type of data provided, available APIs, and user experience. This information is useful for researchers considering incorporating these activity-based data streams into their research and for getting a better idea of the reliability and accuracy for use in life-logging and other multimedia applications.