BodyBugg Hacks

My wife and I got on a health kick a while back. Several months ago, one of her co-workers showed her this amazing device that supposedly captured the calories that you were burning real time. She ordered one (on eBay) and began using it. It worked well for her. Like many people, I’ve struggled with my weight for a long time and I could not resist a gadget that gave so much detail, so I hinted that it would be really nice if I just so happened to get one for my birthday. I got one and I was REALLY satisfied for what it did for me. The general concepts of the BodyBugg’s program are not new (In short, burn more calories than you consume) and it really showed me how much laziness would impact me on a day to day basis. I’ve used it off and on for several months and now, I have become disciplined enough to know what to eat and the activity that I need to do in order to continue to lose weight or maintain my current weight (I’ve lost 50 pounds so far and continue to drop). I still would like to keep my BodyBugg to see how changes in certain routines impact my calories expenditure. I don’t need to spend a monthly fee to occasionally see this. As a software developer, I just can’t resist trying to get my raw data from this device and convert it to calories.

I just want a comma delimited list in a text file that has [timestamp, calories, steps] without paying an arm and a leg. Is that too much to ask?

Maybe I will succeed and maybe I will fail. I’m sure there are a ton of geeks out there who have insight on how to do this and need the same info that I do. Let’s figure out how this thing works.