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NIKE FUELBAND OPERATION
The premise of the Nike FuelBand is to set a goal and to meet, or surpass, that daily. Although we would all like to jump right in and spend hours a day getting fit, that isn’t necessary. The algorithms set in the FuelBand are ingenious as they create Fuel Points for every movement, even if that means just getting off the couch (which in my case is not so far from the truth). It encourages you to do just a bit more, meet your goal and then increase your goals through time, even if a regular exercise regimen doesn’t suit your daily lifestyle.
The Nike FuelBand operates through a single button which cycles through the Time, Fuel, Steps and Calories, any notifications of which can be excluded through band customization at the Nike Fuel website.
The colored band (as seen under ‘2130’ of the right picture) increases as you build Nike Fuel points. Once you reach your goal, the LEDS will display a type of fireworks with the word ‘Goal’.
It is worthy of mentioning once again that the Nike FuelBand works through oxygen kinetics where each motion has been assigned a certain oxygen uptake through initial testing and algorithm creation. It does not track the exact number of steps, nor can it accurately identify the exact number of calories expended.
GLITCH IN THE MACHINE
I wanted to provide a visual display of how Nike monitors and keeps track of your progress and thought this might be the best time as there seems to be a ‘glitch in the machine’ as one might say. Take a look at this record of one of my first day’s progress:
So… as we can see, I traveled just over 25 kilometers on this date. I wish! The end result saw Nike sending me all kinds of awards and congratulations where, in reality, I never even had a chance to work out on this day. I did, however, go for a very lengthy motorcycle ride from 6am until about 2pm. This is where we learned that the Nike FuelBand provides a false negative while motorcycle riding and we have subsequently confirmed it with Karen who has experienced the exact same result on her motorcycle.
The end result is that the band needs to be removed and left at the point of departure when motorcycling, if you wish to keep an accurate record. The other side of this is that an accurate record really can’t be kept because the activity is no longer being monitored once you stop the motorcycle at your destination, unless of course it was round trip.
This is the weekly summary of that situation which also brings a very important point into effect. When you first setup your Nike FuelBand, do it at the start of your day and before activity or the same result as you see here occurs. On my official record, the first day was well below all goals simply because I was charging it up and never even wore the band, this at 10pm that day. It is very important to fully charge the band and ONLY then to set yourself up on the Nike Fuel website, before activities commence.