Wearable Android: Android Wear and Google FIT App Development

Chapter 8Google Fit Platform

8.1 Google Fit Platform Overview

The base Android platform SDK has had since some time the capabilities for accessing built-in sensors and connecting with peripherals including fitness sensors via mechanisms including Bluetooth, Bluetooth LE, and more; these were covered in Chapter 5. Fitness-tracking Apps for Android have preceded the release of the Google Fit platform. The Google Fit platform takes fitness-tracking Apps to a more sophisticated level—it addresses the domain from end to end for application developers.

Google Fit is a platform and open ecosystem for fitness and wellness tracking. A multitude of sports & apparel companies, hardware vendors, and prominent App developers have partnered with Google to collaborate and participate in the Google Fit platform. At the time of writing, the Google Fit partners include companies such as Nike, HTC, LG, Withings, Motorola, Noom, Polar, Runstatic, and RunKeeper. Google Fit helps developers in building sophisticated fitness Apps while giving users complete control over their data.

Google Fit is user centric and hardware and application vendor independent—such that fitness readings from diverse sensors can be acquired, categorized, stored, shared, and analyzed in a collaborative and secure manner. The consumer has complete control over the sharing of their data; they can also delete the data at any time. The cloud-based Google Fit API supports Android via the Fit API while also supporting Web ...