Measure time standing in a day?

Archive
1

I now have a standup desk. I can move it up and down. But at 60 years old I can’t stand for a long time yet.

I want to measure how much time I spend standing in a day. I can track it and then work towards increasing the time gradually.

I will use a mBuino because, if I understand this right, I can record to the card like a file system? Is that correct?

If I use a force sensitve resistor and put it in my back pocket I’m thinking this will work. Overview | Force Sensitive Resistor (FSR) | Adafruit Learning System

What do you all think?

Is it as simple as it seems to me?

2

Why pocket and not the chair?

3

I could do the chair but I sit in multiple chairs during the day, in meetings and more so in my pocket would be a more holistic picture.

That is what I am thinking anyway.

4

Not sure if FSR in a back pocket would be reliable. Might give you a lot of false positives, unless you put it in some sort of flexible enough case.

5

I can write to the mBuino like a virtual drive though right?

6

Unfortunately local file system is not implemented on mBuino. You will need an external storage device for that (SPI SDcard, Serial EEPROM, etc.)

#define DEVICE_LOCALFILESYSTEM 0


/* mbed Microcontroller Library
 * Copyright (c) 2006-2013 ARM Limited
 *
 * Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
 * you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
 * You may obtain a copy of the License at
 *
 *     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 *
 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
 * limitations under the License.
 */
 #ifndef MBED_DEVICE_H
 #define MBED_DEVICE_H
 
 #define DEVICE_PORTIN           1
 #define DEVICE_PORTOUT          1
 #define DEVICE_PORTINOUT        1
 
 #define DEVICE_INTERRUPTIN      1
 
 #define DEVICE_ANALOGIN         1
 #define DEVICE_ANALOGOUT        0
 
 #define DEVICE_SERIAL           1
 
 #define DEVICE_I2C              1
 #define DEVICE_I2CSLAVE         1
 
 #define DEVICE_SPI              1
 #define DEVICE_SPISLAVE         1
 
 #define DEVICE_CAN              0
 
 #define DEVICE_RTC              0
 
 #define DEVICE_ETHERNET         0
 
 #define DEVICE_PWMOUT           1
 
 #define DEVICE_SEMIHOST         0
 #define DEVICE_LOCALFILESYSTEM  0
 #define DEVICE_ID_LENGTH       32
 #define DEVICE_MAC_OFFSET      20
 
 #define DEVICE_SLEEP            1
 
 #define DEVICE_DEBUG_AWARENESS  0
 
 #define DEVICE_STDIO_MESSAGES   1
 
 #define DEVICE_ERROR_PATTERN    1
 
 #include "objects.h"
 
 #endif
7

FSR’s require a hard sharp object to make a reliable measurement. If you sandwiched it in some sort of enclosure then it might work but I agree with Architect that it would be really hard to filter out the noise. Perhaps a flex sensor or gyro in your pocket to tell when you are bending at the waist?

8

Accelerometer to measure movement?

Isn’t that what many of the wearables are using for this?

9

How about measuring altitude of the butt.

10

Barometer?

11

two barometer, one in the shoe and one in your pocket, so you determine the height difference

12

Could you sense the tilt of your pelvis when sitting?

13

Sonar hat.

Measure the distance to the ceiling.

14

Thanks for all the suggestions. My stool is very high and so my distance to the ceiling is about the same.

If I just do this for the stool I can maybe put a RFID in the stool and measure strength of signal.

I’ll try something. Not sure yet what.

thanks again.

Eric

15

Or if your phone has NFC, you put an NFC tag on every seat (cheaper than RFID by far) that you usually use, and have the phone log the sitting via BT/BTLE, or other wireless protocol.