Better Pedometer - HELP NEEDED!

I might concentrate on heart rate, that is more in need right now I think

Definitely heart rate needs some help right now. Steps are probably good enough for now. 12 months ago steps were in the same position as HRM is in right now.

Hey there, the signal strength of the bluetooth connection between Bangle and phone is measurable, right? What came to my mind yesterday was, when I'm walking, there is a certain "distance pattern" between watch and phone most of the time. If a parameter like "only count steps if bluetooth signal strength shows pattern x" is added, could this prevent the step counting when not walking?
Of course it would only work when the watch is connected to your phone and that phone is kind of in a fixed position, so it wouldn't cover the problem in standalone mode.

@radswid it could work, but as you say it only works if the phone is present and connected. If you've always got a phone in your pocket, you could argue that you might as well just use that for step counting (in all but the biggest pockets fewer degrees of freedom and they pretty much all have an accelerometer). Personally my Bangle and phone are not connected unless I am uploading an app, and one of my reasons for getting a watch was to not need my phone to track run distance.

My Bangle's step counter seems generally inaccurate, how could I help contribute data to the current algorithm?

Is your firmware up to date?

There's a test harness at https://github.com/gfwilliams/step-count and I believe the README links to a forum post explaining how to get the data.

However on the whole the current system seems to work pretty well - I think yours is the first complaint since the new code went in a year or so ago - so I'd be a bit concerned that making big changes would make things worse for everyone else

It's the latest version. Of course it's hard to know what your feet are doing when you're doing complex activities with your hand, but sometimes I was able to get it to register like 5 steps by doing a... "reverse punch"? I put my hand so it faced upwards and brought it down quickly. Anyway I'll take a look at if I can gather any more data.

I was able to get it to register like
5 steps by doing a... "reverse punch"?

One reverse punch or multiple reverse punches?

They were vertical, and the watch (Bangle.JS 1, not 2) was facing me with the buttons facing away from my hand. Doing that motion usually registered at least 2.

Honestly, you might expect something a bit like that.

It's not magic, so it has to guess - and especially if you're trying to find ways to fool it you will. But the reality is that in normal use it'll be well within 10% of your actual step count, and for most people that's more than good enough as it's just to give you an idea of the amount of exercise you are getting

Understandable. Anyway how would I contribute training data exactly?

If you hold any smart watch in your hand and rock it backwards and forwards once per second you will fool it into counting steps. You can try this with a fitbit or AmazFit bip etc.

The step counter is not trained as such. It uses combination of filters, thresholds and finite state machine.

This entire thread will tell you how to make calibrated accelerometer recordings that can then be used. There are also posts that explain how the algorithm works.

I already saw that you can use an app to record a CSV file. My question is where do these CSV files get fed into? And is there a place where I can make a PR or something to update the algorithm?

I have written a detailed README file at:

https://github.com/hughbarney/bangle_bits/blob/master/step-count-docs/README.md

Thanks. I'll see how I can contribute.

I did mention above in http://forum.espruino.com/comments/16681689/ but https://github.com/gfwilliams/step-count links to a thread post that I think shows you all you need to do.