gtFtr

Most of the trackers here are for specific exercises but some people like to track daily statistics. If you wear a pedometer and try to reach the 10000 Steps a Day goal then it would be nice to record process so we now have a Daily or Stats tracker

@gtFtr Stats Steps 9000 Cals 800 3.9 miles# walked to Bldg8 today

The parameters are as follows (as usual apart from the first which identifies what it is order isn't that important, but the space separators are)

• Stats (or Day or Daily) - this has to come first so the parser knows it's recording daily stats. 
• Steps 9000 – How many did you walk today. You can also use S or Step for short. 
• Cals 800 - how many did you burn (that's what it's all about after all)
• Dist 3.9 - how far did you go. I'm not sure if that's miles or km or some random arbitrary unit. You can enter it as "3.9 miles" or "3.9 km" if you know (either can have the Dist prefix as well) as long as you're consistent.

gtFtr is slowly growing. Feel free to use the comments on any post here, or contact us to make suggestions.

It’s not really a fitness tracker, but it might just help with motivation to get on a bike or walk to work. The latest tracker records fuel (gas for the Americans, petrol for the rest of the world, and of course diesel) and what it costs to cover those miles.. The message format follows a pretty standard format:

@gtFtr Fuel 15.173 gals price 50.51 Odo 13804 Type reg V Jeep # I'm probably going to get scared what the Jeep costs to run!

The parameters are as follows (as usual apart from the first which identifies what it is order isn't that important, but the space separators are, and unless specified they are all optional)

• Fuel- this has to come first so the parser knows what's it's dealing with. You can also use Gas, Petrol or Diesel instead
• Qty 15.173 gals – specify Qty, gals (gallons) or litres
• Cost 50.51 – or Price to record how much you paid
• Odo 13804 - What was your odometer reading. You can also use Miles or KMs.
• Type Reg – Which type of fuel – Regular, Unleaded, E10, E85, Flex, Diesel etc
• Vehicle Jeep – If you record a tracker for more than one vehicle this allows you to separate them

gtFtr is slowly growing. Feel free to use the comments on any post here, or contact us to make suggestions.

If you like to ride a bike (either pedal power or an iron horse) we now have a tracker for you. The message format follows our standard format:

@gtFtr Ride 6 miles 30 mins HR 141 Route Windy_Hill_Loop

The parameters are as follows (as usual apart from the first which identifies what it is order isn't that important, but the space separators are, and unless specified they are all optional)

• Ride - this has to come first so the parser knows what's it's dealing with. You can use Cycle or Bike as synonyms if you prefer.
• Time 30 Mins - Either Time or Mins should be entered to track how long you were on there for
• Dist 6 Miles - how far did you go. You can enter it as "6 miles" or "6 km" (either can have the Dist prefix as well).
• HR 141 - What was your average Heart Rate over the exercise.
• Route Windy_Hill_loop – Which route was this (if you have several, or you travel and like to see the difference between, say, riding in Cumbria or NYC). Note: Very important this – don’t use spaces to separate words in the route name. Use underscores or dots or dashes (the parser takes the space as a new parameter)

gtFtr is slowly growing. Feel free to use the comments on any post here, or contact us to make suggestions.

Just added a new tracker to help the runners (thanks Ken and Brad), joggers and walkers out there keep their stats as well as the more indoor exercisers. The message format follows a pretty standard format:

@gtFtr Run 6 miles 30 mins HR 141 Route Windy_Hill_Loop

The parameters are as follows (as usual apart from the first which identifies what it is order isn't that important, but the space separators are, and unless specified they are all optional)

• Run - this has to come first so the parser knows what's it's dealing with. You can also use Jog or Walk instead
• Time 30 Mins - Either Time or Mins should be entered to track how long you were on there for
• Dist 6 Miles - how far did you go. You can enter it as "6 miles" or "6 km" (either can have the Dist prefix as well). If you’re climbing stairs you can enter “ascents”, “steps” or “stairs” and measure distance that way (thanks Tai)
• HR 141 - What was your average Heart Rate over the exercise.
• Route Windy_Hill_loop – Which run was this (if you have several, or you travel and like to see the difference between, say, running in Cumbria or NYC). Note: Very important this – don’t use spaces to separate words in the route name. Use underscores or dots or dashes (the parser takes the space as a new parameter)

gtFtr is slowly growing. Feel free to use the comments on any post here, or contact us to make suggestions.

We added a new tracker into the system today for a LifeCycle (see, we do listen to requests). The message format follows a pretty standard format

@gtFtr LifeCycle Hill Level 12 Time 30 mins 315 cals Dist 12.9 HR 141

The parameters are as follows (as usual apart from the first which identified what it is order isn't that important, but the space separators are)

• LifeCycle (or LC) - this has to come first so the parser knows what's it's dealing with
• Hill or Random - this is the program you used. There are others, we just need to add them. If you use any of the programs just comment here and we'll add them to the matrix
• Level (can be shortened to Lvl) 12 - How hard were you trying (like the Nautilus equipment LiveFitness seem to use a 1-20 scale)
• Time 30 Mins - Either Time or Mins should be entered to track how long you were on there for
• 315 Cals - how many did you burn (that's what it's all about after all)
• Dist 12.9 - how far did you go. I'm not sure if that's miles or km or some random arbitrary unit. You can enter it as "12.9 miles" or "12.9 km" if you know (either can have the Dist prefix as well) as long as you're consistent.
• HR 141 - What was your average Heart Rate over the exercise.

gtFtr is slowly growing. Feel free to use the comments on any post here, or contact us to make suggestions.

Looking through the results after my workout I decided to add a couple more parameters to the Elliptical tracker. Luckily with the parser it's fairly simple.

You can now record average speed and watts for your workout.

Average speed can have a unit of either mph or kph (as always spaces between numbers and parameters)

It's good to have a goal of losing weight, or doing more reps on the bench press or situps, but if you're still eating more than your body needs to support the level of exercise then you're not going to fix things up.

To help with that goal gtFtr now lets you track calories as well. Simply send a message like this to Twitter

@gtFtr Calories 200 Snack # Naughty chocolate muffin

The value should be the calories consumed and you can optionally follow it with either Snack, BFast, Lunch or Dinner. You can use the comment (following the #) to justify the indulgence if you want to.

One of the goals of getting fitter for some is losing weight. Isn't it nice to watch that line go down over time (with the occasional leveling off around the holidays!)

gtFtr now tracks your weight as well. Simply send a message like this via Twitter

@gtFtr Weight 290.7 Lbs

the portion after the number can be Lbs or Kgs (sorry, no Stones yet). If using Lbs please use a decimal not ounces (if anyone has a scale that forces pounds and ounces let us know and we'll look at resolving that issue)

As I was curious about other programs on my Elliptical I tried the Calorie Burner this evening. Out it hurt! But it also meant I had to add a new option to the program parameter so as well as FB (for Fat Burner) you can now use CB (for Calorie Burner) and Heart (for Heart Zone Training)

The good thing was it showed it's working as planned to add new parameters. The bad thing is that I have to work out a couple more kinks in the parameter options because there are some other things I want to track that don't quite fit into the plan... more on the soon I hope ;)

Because Twitter always returns the time as UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) we try and align things better with the user by querying their profile and grabbing the offset that they've entered and adding (or subtracting) it to get the correct local time.

This means if you're away from home and exercising you might want to change your profile time-zone to correctly match where-ever you are.

If gtFtr also starts reporting things happening at the wrong time... check your time-zone setting.

Also be aware that if you restrict your profile/messages to only your friends, and you've not made gtFtr one of your friends then we won't be able to see your time-zone setting and will have to use UTC.

Of course, there has to be a better solution for those one-day trips or when you want to catch up and enter yesterdays workout...

If you prefix the workout information with the date and time (at the moment format is quite strict mm/dd/yy hh:mm:ss - the :ss are optional, sorry about the US format... it's on the list of things to look at) then it will record the exercise as having happened then as opposed to the timestamp on the Twitter message

@gtFtr 12/14/07 10:30 Situps 3 sets 12 reps # a nice mid-morning workout

as always spaces and formatting are important.