I’ve had a fitbit wifi bathroom scale for a while. Getting the data out got suddenly more difficult when Google bought them, and I didn’t love giving that data to google. It’s finally died, and I’m looking at replacement options.
In a perfect world, I could just go to a store and buy a “HomeAssistant Ready” scale. If I can’t have that, I’d like a scale that is on my local network and exposes the last x weigh-ins as an API on the device, then I could write something to poll it.
I haven’t seen anything like those, but have turned up:
- a project to decode the bluetooth transmissions of a number of scales (after you build an ESP32 device for it)
- the Withings cloud based scale, but with a well documented API
Any other good options?
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If you can find an old working Wii Fit Balance Board you can use it as a very accurate Bluetooth scale.
It’s interesting how old console tech comes back around to be useful for other stuff. I’ve used a couple Xbox Kinects to do 3D scanning and with an augmented reality sand box.
Did you do that?
If yes, could you share some info about it?Looks like a few folks have
https://github.com/schellingb/WiiBalanceScale
https://github.com/aelveborn/Wii-Scale
Going to have to try this out myself!
I did not. Foolishly I got rid of my balance board after some years of no use.
Wait what I thought this was satire at first
you can’t even poke fun at selfhosted people anymore because someone WILL 100% spend 48 hours straight 3d printing and programming a toothbrush
edit: you have to be kidding me https://kuenzi.dev/toothbrush/That would be a fun thread. What’s the most unnecessary self hosted thing you’ve seen someone host or host
I thought this one was dumb too https://lemm.ee/post/49060797
Lmao
I have a withings and I really like it. Their privacy policy made me feel better about allowing my info on the cloud. You can run it offline (it sends weight via Bluetooth to the app but won’t show 7-day trend an scale screen without wifi). I don’t mind that, so I leave it disconnected. I don’t use a home assistant though so I can’t speak to that part.
I have the withings watch also, so I use the app as my catch all health tracker which works well. it’s nice to have everything together. Can’t speak to any others but I’d recommend withings.
I can’t help, I wish I could, but I’m curious. Why a smart scale? Why not just any dumb scale from Bed Bath and Beyond?
I like data, I like tech, I like investing large amounts of time and energy to self-host things that muggles would not bother with.
I’d guess automatic history tracking. Step on it every morning and it’ll automatically save your weight to Home Assistant or whatever so you can see if you’re gaining/losing over time.
I suppose that makes sense, honestly I just go with “more/less than last time” lol. If I went more in depth with it I’d probably use a pen and paper.
I don’t keep track of my weight so I could be wrong here, but more/less than last time wouldn’t be very helpful as your weight can vary by the day. You need a trend over weeks to really see what’s going on. I definitely wouldn’t use pen/paper as it’s just too much data to organize and graph, but excel would be a reasonable alternative.
Sure a spreadsheet could work too, but yeah I also clearly don’t keep track lol.
Cumulatively pen and paper will add up to more effort. And I would person give up at some point. It would probably never enter my daily jabits. Realistically if on the scale everyday, the changes are so minute you won’t notice the monthly and longer duration trends.
It’s really surprising there isn’t a no bullshit option you could just buy
Body fat tracking etc
I think looking at openscale would be worthwhile:
https://github.com/oliexdev/openScale/wiki
Looks like it can push to mqtt? Huh, that’s new to me.
Also, if you want HA, there’s this:
https://github.com/lolouk44/hassio-addons/blob/master/mi-scale/DOCS.md
Good luck!
I use openscale and a Beuer BF700 (I think that’s the model #, it’s a model listed in the github wiki) and it works great, although I had to do the initial setup on their proprietary app to get the profiles to work right, and the scale had to be imported/was a bit hard to find. The wiki includes instructions for modifying a scale to add an arduino and the necessary bits to DIY one if you’re at all technically inclined.
I recommend it, but YMMV if you try to use a newer scale. If I ever have more time I would like to try to extend the drivers to support more scales, because openscale is very good software.
I don’t have any options for you but make sure you get one that doesn’t use battery when not in use. It’s really annoying replacing those little coin batteries all the time even though you only use it like .001% of the time
I’ve had a withings scale for like 5 or 6 years, use trendweight.com for a graph, I haven’t had any problems with it besides replacing the batteries every year or so
I’m using the Xiaomi “Mi Body competition 2” together with https://github.com/lolouk44/hassio-addons/tree/master/mi-scale and am reasonably satisfied with it.
I have a withings scale and it’s great so far.
Like you, I had a Fitbit one, and I find it sucked and was very unreliable.It’s worth noting that there is a withings home assistant integration
Where’s that meme about tech enthusiasts and tech employees with a printer gun, where does this guy fall
I have a Wyze scale, it’s well made and easy to export the data via email automatically.
