ACTman: Automatic Event marker to Sleep log Functionality

Expanding ACTman's possibilities

Hi guys, I am excited to present to you here, our newest update for our ACTman package!

As you might know, we introduced the ACTman software for R as a useful tool for both preprocessing as well as analysis of actigraphy data. Hopefully ACTman will facilitate easier, quicker, and better reproducible actigraphy analyses.

A new piece of functionality we just added – and which I am very enthousiastic about – is the possibility to read in event marker files and automatically convert them to sleep logs within mere seconds!

This is an especially handy tool for those researchers who use the marker button to estimate the times of going to bed and getting out of bed. Instead of manually writting these times down, participants can just simply press the event marker.

And instead of having to manually transcribe the event marker times to a generic sleeplog, you can now have ACTman do it for you in a quick and reproducible manner!

And the best part is that you don’t have to do anything special for it. 

If you are using the MotionWatch 8, and ACTman detects no sleeplog in your working directory but does detect a marker file, it will automatically transform it to a sleeplog for you.

You also get user control over some decisions. For example, if marker buttons are missing, ACTman offers you the choice to fill them in yourself, fill in the missing value with a mean value, or to abort the analysis.

Furthermore, ACTman automatically removes any other marker between the first and lst mrker press of that day. Multiple false presses are thus no problem for ACTman.

Interested? Check ACTman out for yourself by clicking here!

Review of the Wearables in Practice Symposium – April 6th 2018

An exciting and informative Symposium!

Friday 6th of April, finally we were heading to Soesterberg with a nice group from the University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG) to visit the “Wearables in Practice” symposium, which was organised by the Human Factors department of TNO (the Dutch Organisation for Applied Natural Scientific Research). The theme of the Symposium, Wearables in Practice, covered many of the new, smart, devices we increasingly see on the market. From smartwatch to accelerometer, and even smart alcohol meters which could help addicts, all facets of smart, wearable devices were represented here.

The day itself was organised very well, with an interesting program, and it was a lot of fun to take a look at what is happening at TNO. Also the diverse backgrounds of guests, from bussinesses to universities, and even the Royal Dutch Airforce, made it an interesting, diverse, and especially informative day. As cherry on top, I was invited to give a presentation about ACTman, a new piece of software developed by me in cooperation with scientists from the UMCG and the University of Groningen. ACTman finally allows researchers to automatically process and analyse physical activity data within mere seconds! This is especially impressive given the far longer times it took prevously to process and analyse such data, and that it cuts out a lot of the manual labour involved. As such, ACTman facillitates researchers and people interested in physical activity data in analysing large amount of activity data quickly and accurately.