In this week’s Quantified Self collection, we’ll be featuring the story of how one creator has visualized quantified data by incorporating fashion, along with a gadget that keeps track of your furry friend’s fitness, and an app that ties in all other fitness and quantified self apps.

Visualizing Physiological Data

Rain Ashford is highly invested in wearable technology, but it’s not your usual wearable tech, as Ashford puts her own flare into these gadgets so people can make better sense of them.  At the Quantified Self Europe 2013 held earlier this year, Ashford showcased a number of devices that has been primped up to be worthy of a truly geeked-out catwalk.

Some of her projects are: ‘You Make My <3 Flutter’ a device that combines the technology of the Heart Spark with Ashford’s components, resulting in a proximity-detecting, heart rate-sensing ‘techlace;’ ‘Yr In Mah Face’ is a temperature and mood sensing shirt that uses the Celsius temperature data from a sensor, averages it, then visualizes the results via LEDs on the shirt; Baroesque Barometric Skirt which has pressure, altitude, environment temperature, and temperature for the wearer sensors which displays environment and physiological data vie LEDs; and a bunch of other things that aims to change how people see the data gathered by tech gadgets.

FitBark

FitBark, a tiny wireless activity tracker for dogs, recently relaunched in the hopes of providing more meaningful data to dog owners.  FitBark relaunched on Kickstarter and has now exceeded its funding goal with 20 more days to go.

This little gadget would allow pet owners to track daily activity progress of their dogs, check on how your dog is doing from anywhere, identify long term energy trends, and even know when your dog is not feeling well, all with the use of a companion app that helps you log your dog’s activities and better understand the data gathered.

FitBark comes in 5 colors: blue, green, dark grey, pink, and red.  It has stretchable bands to make it comfortable for your dog to wear, a lithium rechargeable battery that lasts up to 10 days, is compatible with iOS and Android devices via Bluetooth 4.0, water resistant, works any where in the world and has a 3-axis accelerometer.

The great thing about FitBark is that it can monitor your progress as well, so you can start becoming more fit alongside little Sparky.

FitBark is expected to start shipping by December 2013.

Argus

If you’re a fitness enthusiasts, you probably have a lot of fitness and quantified self apps installed on your smartphone, right?  You have a number of them running that it’s often quite daunting to see your progress in all of those apps so you probably just check one or two of those for updates.  The problem with this is that some apps offer features that can’t be found in other apps, but you can’t just rely on it because it’s missing some features you find useful in other apps.  Now, you no longer have to worry about keeping track of your health tracking apps and gadgets as a new iOS app aims to take all the pressure off from you.

Meet Argus, an iOS app that acquires data from a variety of connected fitness device such as the Withings scale, from health and fitness apps like the MapMyFitness app, as well as other iOS apps from Azumio and others, then displays all the data n a timeline of activity.

It uses the iPhone’s sensors to record a user’s walking, running and biking pace and distance on a map.  The best feature of this app, probably, is that it allows users to take a photo of the food, tag the food groups represented, and Argus will tell the users data about their eating habits without having to input portion size or specific ingredients.

Azumio, maker of Argus, claims that even if the app runs 24/7 in the background, it is designed to consume less power, though the use of GPS may drain the battery of your iPhone faster.

Another app that collects data from multiple self-quantified services is Saga, recently updated with security-friendly sharing features.

Make sure you check out our collection of Smart Devices and Smart Gadgets on Springpad!