Tidbyt Strava App

to

Tidbyt Strava App is a homage to our favorite fitness app that lets you relish in your progress — rides, runs, swims, and milestones all rendered on a retro LED display in your living room (the Tidbyt).

The app pulls data from the Strava API and renders charming lo-fi stats on the 64x32 LED matrix using Starlark, a Python-like configuration language that often leaves you yearning for the standard library but does minimize the mental effort to get started.

Due to API rate limits, the official app is configured to update every 18 hours — if you’re a Tidbyt owner please be patient if your latest activity doesn’t arrive right away! Similarly, if the app goes down for a day it could very well be a surge in the number of devices connected; the Tidbyt team has an eye on this and will adjust the refresh or the ceiling as needed.

Origin

In 2022, I bought a Tidbyt and got into cycling. These two decisions turned out to be the perfect recipe for a nerdy side project.

The Tidbyt is great because it delivers information without you needing to go looking for it; essentiall in an era where we’re all looking for ways to cut back on screen time. Whatever you want to stay on top of is waiting for you in the corner of the room. The forward-thinking founders delivered a great SDK and launched a bustling community of developers on Discord who have since contributed a wide array of passion projects: news, sports, weather, various clocks, favorite quotes, your calendar, and many applets focused on personal statistics.

My first use case was meant to help motivate me to continue my new active hobby. Like many people who sign up for Strava, I quickly became as addicted to the exercise of analyzing data as the exercise itself. Each workout was followed by a good 15-minute session studying my performance, relishing in my improvement and justifying any reason I fell short of my expectations. Displaying this on the Tidbyt was the perfect way to help keep me excited about my personal commitment, and as an app with a high number of device installs it turns out a lot of people felt the same way. Tidbyt has even included the app in a handful of its social media advertisements (for which I’ve been targeted myself, go figure).

Highlights

  • Live activity display: See your most recent ride or run with a pixel-imprecise route map. Sorry, best we could do.
  • Monthly stats: Auto-generated bar charts for each sport
  • Multisport support: Cycling, running, swimming

Stack

  • Starlark: Like Python, but without imports, classes, or joy
  • Strava API: There’s a fairly punitive rate limit on Strava’s API, for which Tidbyt’s team has negotiated a better ceiling. For testing, please acquire your own API key from your Strava profile settings.
  • GitHub Actions: For CI and scheduled rebuilds
  • Tidbyt SDK: pixlet render

GitHub

For issues, official support and PRs, please refer to the broader community repo:

  tidbyt/community