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Giving up on smart rings

notesbylex.com

121–130 of 191 posts

Re: Giving up on smart rings

#121
post #9

One word on rings: degloving

Totally not what you're talking about, but I've lost a ring while taking off wet gloves. Fortunately someone had explained to me this was a common way to lose a ring, and I checked the gloves before the ring dropped out.

Re: Giving up on smart rings

#122
post #111
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. It has been consistent enough that I can make a pretty accurate guess each morning based on how I feel. With a consistent scale, I can work on the components (timing, duration, and other factors like alcohol, etc.) and I've made big improvements over the year.

> I can make a pretty accurate guess each morning based on how I feel. So you don’t actually need the ring? :) This is actually a serious question: I would want to use a smart ring for the things I can’t tell by myself. But then I also can’t judge the accuracy and consistency of the corresponding measures.

I can estimate a portion of rice within about 5-10% without a scale, but I needed the scale to learn what the portion was in the first place.

same thing applies to the ring!

Re: Giving up on smart rings

#123
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people do not wear tungsten wedding rings. A wedding band can be resized and it's typical to have it resized several times during a long marriage. This is a legitimate downside of smart rings that is only shared with one niche-but-overrepresented-here option.

Odd, I was married for almost twenty years during which I think I took off my ring twice (maybe not even that much—if I recall correctly, I persuaded the surgical staff to tape my ring rather than have me remove it when I had surgery). Never had to resize it and it fit fine the whole time. I don’t know what lifestyle leads to a finger changing size dramatically during the lifespan of a smart ring.

Ever heard of arthritis?

Re: Giving up on smart rings

#124
I got the Garmin Lily 2 Active. It’s an attractive simple watch. For sleep and activity tracking without GPS it’s great. It also has GPS but I use my phone for tracking biking. The big thing is that after configuring it with the Garmin app you can tell Garmin they don’t have permission to store your data in the cloud, and then use iOS settings to block the app from even talking to the watch. Then I vibe coded an app for my Linux system that syncs over Bluetooth. Once per day I turn off Bluetooth on my phone and press the button in the web app and my Ubuntu desktop pulls all the files and displays them in my web ui. It’s really nice and my data is reasonably private (Claude can see it though I could fix that). I recommend the watch!

Re: Giving up on smart rings

#125

None of these 3 problems have anything to do with it being a smart ring. Same problems that regular rings have, yet people still wear them. 1. Adulting: buying rings that are the right size. eg My tungsten wedding ring cannot be resized either. 2. Most people don't even lift. Those that do, dont mind taking off jewelry. I can see how this would be a problem for someone who wants to wear a smart ring for lifting. Soun…

I think what we might be moving towards is the idea that rings are kinda dumb.

Rings make our fingers less mobile, harder to clean, get in the way of our delicate hand-tasks, scratch things our hands are manipulating, yada yada.

Earings make much more sense. Or bracelets. What about Torques?

Re: Giving up on smart rings

#126

None of these 3 problems have anything to do with it being a smart ring. Same problems that regular rings have, yet people still wear them. 1. Adulting: buying rings that are the right size. eg My tungsten wedding ring cannot be resized either. 2. Most people don't even lift. Those that do, dont mind taking off jewelry. I can see how this would be a problem for someone who wants to wear a smart ring for lifting. Soun…

People wear wedding rings but take them off for pull up bars and so on. But a fitness tracking device you need to take off to... Do some fitness exercises... Is not a smart idea in my book.

If you constrain the device to ‘fitness tracker” and not lifestyle/sleep/health/illness/fitness telemetry, sure.

I wear an Oura Ring for the complete suite of telemetry, not just for tracking workouts.

I also lift, I’ll take the ring off for heavy lifts, and keep it on for every other exercise (unless I feel there’s a risk that the ring could get caught on the equipment, in which case I’ll take it off for those reps too). Granted this is in my home gym, so there’s no inconvenience to me doing this.

I’ll rest between exercises and that’s when I make the call to keep the ring on or not [for the subsequent exercise].

I still get most of the insights and the Oura ring app lets me to tell it that I was doing strength training, which allows it to guesstimate calorie usage based on duration.

Of course that’s not perfect, but it’s good enough for people who are interested in health metrics without being obsessed with them (which is just probably a better idea unless you’re a pro athlete).

The workout tracking is kinda the least interesting aspect for me. It’s more about the long term trends of activity, sleep, heart rate, stress, etc.

Also, it’s worth saying, I went with a ring rather than a watch or a band because I like to wear a real watch.

Re: Giving up on smart rings

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A knock off smart ring is $50 on Amazon with no subscription. Personal security starts at $200k a year. You may want to investigate how much what you think of as luxury costs.

I wrote my post an hour ago, immediately edited it 1 minute after to put the following in "on edit: note this is my idea of what smart rings should do, don't know what the normal ones do, so my idea that it should be a luxury item may not track actual situation" you posted yours 44 minutes ago.

I hit add comment, went off to do the dishes while I thought about what I wanted to say and didn't refresh. Sorry!

Re: Giving up on smart rings

#128
Doesn't sound like a complaint against "smart" rings; more like a general complaint against rings.

Also sounds like the author has done a great deal of work to improve himself, physically, and I can respect (and hat tip) to it, but he would definitely see the same issue with a wedding ring (except that you can usually resize those).

I wear my wedding ring constantly; even in the shower. I'm old-fashioned, and haven't really changed that much, since I got married (besides getting grayer and wrinklier).

Re: Giving up on smart rings

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently (June) bought an Air too to replace my 5 or 6 year old Apple Watch. I'm enjoying it for the same reasons. Longer battery life. More comfortable when I'm sleeping since it has no buttons or weird bulky shape. I do wish Apple would make their own version of it with apple pay.

Too bad the Google Health app (which is required for FitBit devices since Google retired the FitBit app) is getting mostly 1 and 2 star (out of 5) reviews on the Google app store. The reviews were ~90% 1 & 2 star within the first month of the FitBit Air release. Three months later, the app has improved to ~80% 1 & 2 star reviews. At this pace, they'll be on v3 of the device when app reviews are decent... They force e…

Oh wow, the Cirqa is exactly what I've been looking for: a wrist sensor without subscription and without a screen.

I had a FitBit Charge 4 some years ago, but it stopped working after a couple years.

Then I got a RingConn 2 last year, but like TFA I've decided that I don't like the ring form factor.

Re: Giving up on smart rings

#130
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The advantage of my tungsten wedding ring is I have 5 of them, some in different sizes, and it cost me less than $100 for them.

Don't look up how they get removed from your finger at the ER

I looked it up and seems they just bash it with hammer? What are you eluding to?
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