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Oura Ring 4

ouraring.com

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Re: Oura Ring 4

#71

Post by walljm »

underyx wrote: post #57
ederamen wrote: post #44

My second Oura ring (3rd gen) is ~3 years old and is currently collecting dust in a drawer because the battery lasts I might be able to get it replaced if support decides to be generous, but dealing w/support is a pain, and the alternative is buying a $400 replacement every 2-3 years when the battery starts to fail. I don't have to pay the monthly subscription - they had a deal where you could buy a third gen ring (a…

I had the exact opposite experience with support, possibly the best one yet with any company. I opened the live chat on the battery life support page and the chatbot asked (paraphrased) "Is your battery bad? Put in your email address". I put my email in and the next automated message was "Seems like your battery is underperforming, where should we send a replacement ring?" I got my replacement a few days later.

I had the exact same pleasant experience. I had a Gen 2 ring with battery issues, and support was fast and painless with a new ring on its way in a couple of days.

Re: Oura Ring 4

#72

Post by karmakaze »

Was I supposed to know what this product does before reading this page?

I got halfway down where they start to talk about the sensors but then goes off into "The multiple sensors inside the ring form an 18-path multi-wavelength photoplethysmography (PPG) subsystem to provide highly accurate, continuous data throughout the day and night."

What does this thing do and how does that improve my health/life? Nvm I don't care at this point. I must not be the target demographic to wonder such things.

Re: Oura Ring 4

#73

Post by mthoms »

karmakaze wrote: post #72

Was I supposed to know what this product does before reading this page? I got halfway down where they start to talk about the sensors but then goes off into "The multiple sensors inside the ring form an 18-path multi-wavelength photoplethysmography (PPG) subsystem to provide highly accurate, continuous data throughout the day and night." What does this thing do and how does that improve my health/life? Nvm I don't ca…

Same here. I was vaguely interested in what the sensors do but the linked page didn't help at all. No thanks.

Re: Oura Ring 4

#74

Post by juliangoldsmith »

dotBen wrote: post #50
margalabargala wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That appears to be connecting to Oura's servers, collecting the data they choose to share. You are still at the whim of the company, who can turn off that data spigot any time it becomes expedient for them. There's no way to get the data off of the device and use it yourself, without the same data going to their servers. You pay hundreds of dollars for a device that doesn't let you use it, and rely on the kindness of…

Very few people want to interface with a wearable locally and store the data locally (esp via a mobile app given the use case here). I have spent my entire career messing around with APIs and platforms and I have no interest in doing this DIY. oAuth into Oura ring's servers, which is totally available to you, is just fine. If privacy is this much of a concern, why wear a trackable wearable in the first place?

Oura could provide their app, but also make it possible to talk to the ring directly via Bluetooth. Not only would this solve the privacy issues, but it would make third-party apps more reliable (due to no more round-trip).

The amount of work Oura would need to do would be trivial: they'd need to provide a basic description of the format of the packets the ring sends over Bluetooth (or just release protocol headers/internal client libraries). They'd also need to not put in work to deliberately prevent other apps from connecting (which some manufacturers do; not sure about Oura).

Re: Oura Ring 4

#75

Post by ErikBjare »

m463 wrote: post #60
dotBen wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very few people want to interface with a wearable locally and store the data locally (esp via a mobile app given the use case here). I have spent my entire career messing around with APIs and platforms and I have no interest in doing this DIY. oAuth into Oura ring's servers, which is totally available to you, is just fine. If privacy is this much of a concern, why wear a trackable wearable in the first place?

> Very few people want to interface with a wearable locally I think people WOULD like to keep their health data local, if given the option. But companies do things in their own self-interest, including carefully crafted product descriptions, privacy policies, apis, protocols and apps. I will mention Garmin watches don't require activation or to be "connected" to work.

I didn't know Garmin allowed this, are there apps for self-hosting/self-sync without Garmin servers?

Re: Oura Ring 4

#76

Post by ErikBjare »

underyx wrote: post #57
ederamen wrote: post #44

My second Oura ring (3rd gen) is ~3 years old and is currently collecting dust in a drawer because the battery lasts I might be able to get it replaced if support decides to be generous, but dealing w/support is a pain, and the alternative is buying a $400 replacement every 2-3 years when the battery starts to fail. I don't have to pay the monthly subscription - they had a deal where you could buy a third gen ring (a…

I had the exact opposite experience with support, possibly the best one yet with any company. I opened the live chat on the battery life support page and the chatbot asked (paraphrased) "Is your battery bad? Put in your email address". I put my email in and the next automated message was "Seems like your battery is underperforming, where should we send a replacement ring?" I got my replacement a few days later.

I have the same experience

Re: Oura Ring 4

#79

Post by krick »

m463 wrote: post #60
dotBen wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very few people want to interface with a wearable locally and store the data locally (esp via a mobile app given the use case here). I have spent my entire career messing around with APIs and platforms and I have no interest in doing this DIY. oAuth into Oura ring's servers, which is totally available to you, is just fine. If privacy is this much of a concern, why wear a trackable wearable in the first place?

> Very few people want to interface with a wearable locally I think people WOULD like to keep their health data local, if given the option. But companies do things in their own self-interest, including carefully crafted product descriptions, privacy policies, apis, protocols and apps. I will mention Garmin watches don't require activation or to be "connected" to work.

You seem to have some very peculiar definition of "work". To display time, maybe? I don't think I need to buy a $800 fitness watch for that. And you cannot export any data without "connecting". Hell, you cannot really do that after connecting too, except to download each gpx track manually via very unfriely interface, or, if you happen to be European, find a very well hidden GDPR-compliance form on a separate site to request export of your data, which you'll receive (in up to 3 days, they warn you) on your email in very user-unfriendly format, without any docs or APIs on how to process it. And you need to be their business-partner (like Strava, I suppose) to actually get access to any APIs.
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