I want to get a smart body scale for thr bathroom.
My basic requirements are:
Must be purchasable in Germany.
It should function fully locally. No cloud conndction.
It should at least measure weight and body fat (i.e. using electrodes on either feet). The body fat values should be consistent - I don’t expect that the values are super accurate in absolute terms (I have read that these scale struggle with absolute precision).
Some tinkering is acceptable to set it up.
I saw that there are Xiaomi / Mi models that run with bluetooth and require ESPHome to run. This would be OK for me.
EDIT:
I plan to use InfluxDB and Grafana to graph/track the data. (I am already using these for other things/sensors.)
You know that the weight can’t really measure the body fat. It is just a pseudo guess.
What the weight does is measure the conductivity from one foot to the other.
It use that value to put into a formula to get the normal values for fat, water and muscles for a “representative” group of humans. It does change the values whether you are obese or anorexic.
Some weights have a setting for Athletic, but that is just YOU telling the weight that you have more muscles and then it will change the formula slightly.
At the same time the measurement is only done through the feet and legs, so if you weight lifting and doing more of your upper body than your legs, then it will be off and likewise if you are a bicyclist or horseback riding.
It has been working great for the past few months. Sometimes the value of the bodyfat measurement is not recorded by Home Assistant, but weight is transmitted reliably. (I don’t know why; but it also does not bother me enough to investigate, so I did not submit a bug report to the Github repo.)
I am monitoring the results with Grafana and it has certainly helped motivate me to lose weight. This is the data since I started using it (also sharing this 'cause I am a little proud of myself ):
It will still just be a guesstimate.
The scale are sending a small electric current through the body and from that one measurement the scale guess your body fat, your bone weight and your blood amount.
The body consist of more, but those are the 3 big ones and then the weight is used also of course.
The problem is “measuring” an objects consistence of 3 different things by only measuring one thing.
It is simply not possible.
Hey man, thanks so much for your comment
Bought the exact same scale, and besides some trouble figuring out the mac adress of it, it was a piece of cake to setup!
(my nRF connect app, didnt see it while scanning normally. But when i had it scanning and i connected the VitaPlus app, and tried to sync it with that. the nRF app detected the connection and told me the macadress from that !
):
