TE
TechEcho
Home24h TopNewestBestAskShowJobs
GitHubTwitter
Home

TechEcho

A tech news platform built with Next.js, providing global tech news and discussions.

GitHubTwitter

Home

HomeNewestBestAskShowJobs

Resources

HackerNews APIOriginal HackerNewsNext.js

© 2025 TechEcho. All rights reserved.

Launch HN: Terra (YC W21) – API to easily connect wearables to apps

75 pointsby kyriakoselover 3 years ago

26 comments

kyriakoselover 3 years ago
Hi HN, we are Kyriakos and Raouf, founders of Terra (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tryterra.co" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tryterra.co</a>). We make it easy for health and fitness apps to safely and easily access data from wearable devices.<p>If you have a health app, there are so many wearables and sensors to connect to. Worse, every company has different tech (web-sockets, HTTP etc) and different data formats, even for the same kinds of data. Creating so many integrations with APIs, SDKs etc is resource draining, then you have to normalise data, and of course constantly do updates. And the documentation in this space is really bad.<p>I got hooked on wearables 10 years ago while serving in the Special Forces, when I needed to perform at my best, under the worst conditions. I wanted to use the old Polar HRM (heart rate monitor) to improve my performance. The data I was getting was so insightful, I started buying every wearable that came out over the coming years: Garmin, Polar, Suunto, Apple - you name it. I then became a fitness geek, and started learning more about nutrition, physiology etc. While discussing one day with my soon-to-be cofounder, who was also a gold medalist swimmer, we were asking ourselves - why can we not connect our data with an app like Spotify? Couldn’t song recommendations be better if they used your heart rate? Or Netflix movie recommendations, and so on? That&#x27;s how it started.<p><pre><code> We built an API, and a widget. Once you start speaking to our API, you can enable your users to connect Garmin, Fitbit, Oura, Peloton, Zwift, Withings, Training Peaks, Suunto, Apple, Polar and Wahoo to you. Then, you receive normalised data in your callback url whenever it is available. If you prefer, you can install our widget in your front end (https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.tryterra.co&#x2F;widget), and it enables users to connect their wearables, without you building any additional layers. </code></pre> Regarding the backend: We establish a PUSH connection with you, and whenever the data is generated, we send it to the callback url. It can be sleep data, activity data, body composition, and others (you can check the docs <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.tryterra.co" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.tryterra.co</a>). On your end, all you see is websockets. On our end, we deal with the providers&#x27; standards.<p>Our customers built apps that improve your sleep, VR apps that offer gym experiences, even apps that generate music based on your heart rate. There are health dashboards that show your health data from different providers, apps that pay you to train, apps that use wearable data to improve training recovery, and apps that help corporations provide offerings for employees to work out.<p>We charge based on API usage, and we never store any of the health information that passes through. We’re both HIPAA and GDPR compliant. If you want to try it out, you can sign up here <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tryterra.co" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tryterra.co</a>, receive keys, and access both the widget and the API.<p>Thanks a lot for reading this! Would love to hear your ideas on what you’d like to see from the API, and some interesting app ideas that can be built by using Terra !
clukicover 3 years ago
This is a great idea, and a welcome addition to the space. Fitness data standards are exceptionally poor and there&#x27;s very little alignment between the major data collectors. This has resulted in the creation of a small army of syncing apps, developed to move data around between the most popular platforms, but as far as I know no ones attempted anything like this.<p>Having spent nearly a decade trying to extract data from the various walled gardens in the fitness space, I think something like this has really only been possible in the last few years as some of those walls have come down just a bit. That said, there are still some enormous hurdles to overcome. From the documentation it&#x27;s not clear how OAuth is implemented. The authentication standards for many of these platforms are very diverse and often unfriendly in terms of the API agreements, rate limits, and various OAuth standards.<p>I&#x27;m assuming since it would be a violation of most API terms to pass data to a 3rd party, that the consumer of Terra must first acquire their own API key and then Terra uses that on their behalf? Although, if that&#x27;s the case, OAuth implementations must be very tricky, especially for APIs like Garmin&#x27;s which uses OAuth1a.<p>Nevertheless this can only be good news for the cause of open data. If it&#x27;s successful, hopefully it&#x27;ll create some pressure for these companies to expand their capabilities and relax their terms of service.
评论 #29120340 未加载
monoscover 3 years ago
I&#x27;ve been in the health tech space for a while and my main questions are:<p>- how&#x27;s Terra&#x27;s proposition different from Human API? (they started exactly the same as you do)<p>- are you compliant with any regulations related to storing&#x2F;processing health records (i.e. HIPAA, etc.)? Asking as couldn&#x27;t find anything mentioned about it on the website.
melaniestrongover 3 years ago
Some day my Oura ring and my Apple watch will naturally integrate what they measure about my health and activity with my Strava, Headspace and maybe even electronic health records. Looking forward to seeing how you think about the integration of consumer wellness and clinical medical data into one seamless experience.
评论 #29119150 未加载
评论 #29119709 未加载
评论 #29118916 未加载
评论 #29120185 未加载
LeifCarrotsonover 3 years ago
&gt; Garmin, Polar, Suunto, Apple - you name it.<p>I&#x27;m not a web health app developer, I&#x27;m a wearable developer: I name &quot;Open Smartwatch GPS&quot; [1] (currently in development).<p>There&#x27;s not a lot of data yet, but how could I (or, more importantly, future users of Open Smartwatch, or future users of phone and apps that would want to serve health and movement data) connect to your service? Can an end user upload&#x2F;push raw data as JSON, CSV, or as MQTT messages, and access it from an arbitrary health app that uses your service?<p>&gt; On our end, we deal with the providers&#x27; standards.<p>Ha! Wearable hardware &quot;standards&quot;. Good joke! Do you integrate with GPSBabel [2] on the backend? But a commendable effort; there&#x27;s a lot of wonky hardware out there, so thanks for unifying the multitude of providers.<p>Also, how does your service compare to Tapirik?<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;open-smartwatch.github.io&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;open-smartwatch.github.io&#x2F;</a><p>[2]: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gpsbabel.org&#x2F;htmldoc-1.7.0&#x2F;The_Formats.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gpsbabel.org&#x2F;htmldoc-1.7.0&#x2F;The_Formats.html</a><p>[3]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tapiriik.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tapiriik.com&#x2F;</a>
评论 #29122776 未加载
dillondoyleover 3 years ago
There is a whoop strap logo on the homepage but nothing listed under integrations?<p>I stopped paying the monthly fee for whoop (which also big gripe just let me buy the device) because I didn&#x27;t think their app did a good responding&#x2F;recording data (nor super accurate, especially in reaction time for HR). Though maybe it&#x27;s just the watch&#x27;s underlying data.<p>Either way getting data out of whoop would be awesome.
评论 #29126459 未加载
mcintyre1994over 3 years ago
This looks really interesting, nice! As a heads up your home page doesn&#x27;t mention Apple Health at all and if I hadn&#x27;t seen your comment here first I&#x27;d have assumed it wasn&#x27;t supported and been a lot less interested.<p>At a very high level, how do I get data from a device to you? Does that require eg. an iOS app specific to my service?
评论 #29123021 未加载
评论 #29123033 未加载
awbover 3 years ago
Great idea! Are you focusing on corporate clients? It sounds like you charge for the product but I couldn’t find your pricing.
评论 #29120200 未加载
guzikover 3 years ago
Awesome idea! Our startup would be very interested in working with you, as our goal is only to provide data through our wearables. Would like to leave everything else to 3rd parties (like your company).<p>What&#x27;s your business model? Couldn&#x27;t find on your website.<p>EDIT: now I see that you charge per requests. Consider building &quot;pricing&quot; subpage.
评论 #29119136 未加载
评论 #29119127 未加载
rithvik_seelaover 3 years ago
Super cool! I&#x27;ve had quite a few wearables myself so I&#x27;m a huge fan of what you are doing.<p>What does the onboarding time look like? And also curious if Terra works with Webhooks or http?
评论 #29124126 未加载
jpascasioover 3 years ago
Terra is facilitating data interoperability within fitness, wellness and health. Cheers to this great team that will enable a healthier future centered around personalization!
评论 #29164504 未加载
FrankLiceaover 3 years ago
This is great! I used to maintain connections to all kinds of social media APIs; lots of on going maintenance. neat to see a service dedicated to this. What are the SLAs like?
评论 #29118860 未加载
mdrznover 3 years ago
Can&#x27;t wait to have my MiBand and MiScale connected to Google Fit, sync&#x27;d with some online dashboard to have all the data in one point.
评论 #29119541 未加载
评论 #29120572 未加载
endisneighover 3 years ago
I wish you luck. Fitness apps are getting decimated and people are going back to gyms in droves. Peloton is down 35%.
评论 #29118817 未加载
andiaresoover 3 years ago
Can&#x27;t wait for this to be bought some day and all the data handed over to my insurance...
评论 #29120051 未加载
ian_coover 3 years ago
Why no integration with Strava?
评论 #29122631 未加载
constaover 3 years ago
I also signed up a couple of hours ago, eagerly awaiting a response :)
评论 #29164494 未加载
thomm-oover 3 years ago
Wow terra looks really cool - surprised no one had thought of this yet!
评论 #29118798 未加载
peter_retiefover 3 years ago
I have registered, keen to see what you are providing?
评论 #29119167 未加载
eyphkaover 3 years ago
Congrats on the launch, is Apple Health supported?
评论 #29123010 未加载
Ali_Jiwaniover 3 years ago
Keep crushing it Kyriakos and Raouf!
mam4over 3 years ago
Not bothered its a leading cryptocurrency name ?
评论 #29118643 未加载
评论 #29129585 未加载
评论 #29119184 未加载
tdfirthover 3 years ago
Hope this is not off-topic but I just want to say that Kyriakos (the OP) is a great guy. He gave up some of his time earlier this week to help me and my co-founder prep for our YC interview.<p>We didn&#x27;t know him before this so I can only conclude it was a genuinely kind act from someone looking to give back to the community.<p>All the best and good luck with Terra!
评论 #29119715 未加载
eisonomic5over 3 years ago
Terra allows for engineers to be creative. Their offering reduces technical debt as well as time to market when feature sets are of concern. Even if you&#x27;re not active or have a personal utility for biometric data, it&#x27;s undeniable there is an enormous amount of siloed data that ought to be normalized and managed. Great project here.
0xff78d4a5over 3 years ago
Not to be confused with Terra (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;terra.bio" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;terra.bio</a>) I suppose.
评论 #29119018 未加载
alexmvp2021over 3 years ago
This is brilliant. Great work, Kyriakos and Raouf!
评论 #29122528 未加载