quant
An open-source Rails API for tracking quantified self data like weight, sleep, meals, and locations from various hardware devices.
What is quant?
Quant is an open-source Rails API that serves as a personal health tracker for quantified self data. It allows users to store metrics like weight, sleep, meals, and locations from devices like Withings scales and Fitbit trackers in their own database. The project aims to prevent data lock-in by hardware companies and give users full control over their personal health information.
Quantified self enthusiasts, health hackers, and developers who use devices like Withings, Fitbit, or Jawbone and want to centralize their data in a self-hosted system. It's also suitable for developers building health-tracking applications who need a backend API.
Quant offers a free, open-source alternative to proprietary health data platforms, ensuring users retain ownership and control of their data. Its RESTful API and planned Docker support make it easy to self-host and integrate with various hardware devices and services.
Overview
Quant is a prototype/experiment of a personal health tracker. Rails drives the operation.
Use Cases
Best For
- Self-hosting personal health data from multiple devices
- Building a custom quantified self dashboard
- Integrating Withings scale data with other health metrics
- Creating a centralized health data API for developers
- Avoiding vendor lock-in for Fitbit or Jawbone data
- Experimenting with quantified self tracking in a Rails environment
Not Ideal For
- Projects needing immediate, full integration with all listed health services like Fitbit and Jawbone
- Teams without Rails expertise seeking a plug-and-play health data solution
- Applications requiring a modern, actively maintained API with regular updates
Pros & Cons
Pros
Quant emphasizes user ownership of personal health data, preventing vendor lock-in by companies like Withings and Fitbit, as highlighted in its philosophy.
Provides structured endpoints for CRUD operations on weights, sleeps, meals, and journal entries, enabling easy integration with custom applications.
Supports data from various quantified self devices like Withings scales and Foursquare for places, though some integrations are marked as future.
The roadmap includes webhook support for automatic data updates, reducing manual syncing efforts from integrated services.
Cons
The project's roadmap is from 2014, with key features like Fitbit integrations still listed as future, indicating it may be abandoned or unsupported.
Many service integrations, such as Jawbone for weights and sleeps, are not yet implemented, limiting real-world usability for multi-device users.
Requires Rails and Postgres expertise for deployment, with no simplified installation beyond Docker plans, making it inaccessible for non-developers.
Frequently Asked Questions
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