OpenKen
A public dashboard broadcasting my post-hospital vitals and location to the world in real time
A fully open personal monitoring service originally created so my family and others could keep tabs on my condition after I was discharged from the hospital. It collected real-time GPS coordinates, heart rate, and activity levels from my Fitbit and smartphone, displaying them on a web dashboard.
What Happened When I Opened It to the World
While initially designed for family use, I opened the URL to the public to see what would happen if I made my life completely "open" to the entire world.
- Live Spectators: Even weeks after launch, a few people were constantly watching, and viewer numbers spiked whenever I started exercising.
- The Watched-Pot Effect: Walking around while knowing roughly 20 people were constantly watching my activity in real time created a strong sensation of being observed, pushing me to walk more than usual.
- Safety: Despite publicly broadcasting my real-time location, nothing dangerous happened. It turns out the internet can be quite civil.
A social experiment that took a minimal IoT monitoring system built for family peace of mind and opened it completely to the public just to see what happened. Nothing too exciting apparently.