“Historiographer: An Efficient Long Term Recording of Real Time Data on Wearable Microcontrollers”
by Michael Brilka und Kristof van Laerhoven (both University of Siegen)
Gathering data in the wild with wearables made easy. Michael Brilka and Kristof van Laerhoven published their open source Historiographer application for the Bangle.js 2 Smartwatch at Ubicomp’24 in Melbourne, Australia. Interested?
Data collection is a core principle in the scientific and medical environment. To record study participants in daily life situations, wearables can be used. These should be small enough to not disrupt the lifestyle of the participants, while delivering sensor data in an accurate and efficient way. This ensures a long recording time for these battery-powered devices. Current purchasable wearable devices, would lend themselves well for wearable studies. Simpler devices have many drawbacks: Low sampling rate, for energy efficiency and little support are some drawbacks. More advanced devices have a high-frequent sampling rate of sensor data. These, however, have a higher price and a limited support time.
Our work introduces an open-source app for cost-effective, high-frequent, and long-term recording of sensor data. We based the development on the Bangle.js 2, which is a prevalent open-source smartwatch. The code has been optimized for efficiency, using sensor-specific properties to store sensor data in a compressed, loss-less, and time-stamped form to the local NAND-storage. We show in our experiments that we have the ability to record PPG-data at 50 Hertz for at least half a day. With other configurations, we can record multiple sensors with a high-frequent update interval for a full day.
Michael Brilka is a Research Associate in the project „P05 – Social Interaction in Semi-Automated Road Traffic“ at the Collaborative Research Centre 1187 –“Media of Cooperation”. Kristof van Laerhoven is professor for the Ubiquitous Computing at the University of Siegen and is principal investigator for the project „P05 – Social Interaction in Semi-Automated Road Traffic“ at the Collaborative Research Centre 1187 –“Media of Cooperation”.
Ubicomp is a premier venue for presenting research in the design, development, deployment, evaluation and understanding of ubiquitous computing systems. Ubicomp is an interdisciplinary field of research and development that utilizes and integrates pervasive, wireless, embedded, wearable and/or mobile technologies to bridge the gaps between the digital and physical worlds. Ubicomp will bring together top researchers and practitioners who are interested in both the technical and applied aspects of Ubiquitous Computing technologies, systems and applications. The Ubicomp program features keynotes, technical paper and notes sessions, specialized workshops, live demonstrations, posters, video presentations, and a Doctoral Colloquium.