Google Fit estimated steps through REST API decrease in time with some users - google-fit

Question

We are using Googlefit REST API in a process with thousands of users, to get daily steps. With most of users, process is OK, although we are finding some users with this specific behaviour: users step increase during the day, but at some point, they decrease significantly.
We are finding a few issues related to this with Huawei health apps mainly (and some Xiaomi health apps).
We use this dataSourceId to get daily steps: derived:com.google.step_count.delta:com.google.android.gms:estimated_steps
An example of one of our requests to get data for 15th March (Spanish Times):
POST https://www.googleapis.com/fitness/v1/users/me/dataSources
Accept: application/json
Content-Type: application/json;encoding=utf-8
Authorization: Bearer XXXXXXX
{
"aggregateBy": [{
"dataTypeName": "com.google.step_count.delta",
"dataSourceId": "derived:com.google.step_count.delta:com.google.android.gms:estimated_steps"
}],
"bucketByTime": { "durationMillis": 86400000 },
"startTimeMillis": 1615244400000,
"endTimeMillis": 1615330800000
}
With most of users, this goes well (it gets the same data that shows up to the user in googlefit app), but with some users as described, numbers during day increase at first, and decrease later. Some users' data in the googlefit app is much greater (or significantly greater) than the one found through the REST API.
We have even traced this with a specific user during the day. Using buckets of 'durationMillis': 3600000, we have painted a histogram of hourly steps in one day (with a custom made process).
For the same day, in different moments of time (a couple of hours difference in this case), we get this for the EXACT SAME USER:
20210315-07 | ########################################################## | 1568
20210315-08 | ############################################################ | 1628
20210315-09 | ########################################################## | 1574
20210315-10 | ####################### | 636
20210315-11 | ################################################### | 1383
20210315-12 | ###################################################### | 1477
20210315-13 | ############################################### | 1284
20210315-14 | #################### | 552
vs. this, that was retrieved A COUPLE OF HOURS LATER:
20210315-08 | ################# | 430
20210315-09 | ######### | 229
20210315-10 | ################# | 410
20210315-11 | ###################################################### | 1337
20210315-12 | ############################################################ | 1477
20210315-13 | #################################################### | 1284
20210315-14 | ###################### | 552
("20210315-14" means 14.00 at 15th March of 2021)
This is the returning JSON in the first case:
[{"startTimeNanos":"1615763400000000000","endTimeNanos":"1615763460000000000","dataTypeName":"com.google.step_count.delta","originDataSourceId":"raw:com.google.step_count.delta:com.huawei.health:","value":[{"intVal":6,"mapVal":[]}]},
{"startTimeNanos":"1615788060000000000","endTimeNanos":"1615791600000000000","dataTypeName":"com.google.step_count.delta","originDataSourceId":"raw:com.google.step_count.delta:com.huawei.health:","value":[{"intVal":1568,"mapVal":[]}]},
{"startTimeNanos":"1615791600000000000","endTimeNanos":"1615795080000000000","dataTypeName":"com.google.step_count.delta","originDataSourceId":"raw:com.google.step_count.delta:com.huawei.health:","value":[{"intVal":1628,"mapVal":[]}]},
{"startTimeNanos":"1615795200000000000","endTimeNanos":"1615798500000000000","dataTypeName":"com.google.step_count.delta","originDataSourceId":"raw:com.google.step_count.delta:com.huawei.health:","value":[{"intVal":1574,"mapVal":[]}]},
{"startTimeNanos":"1615798860000000000","endTimeNanos":"1615802400000000000","dataTypeName":"com.google.step_count.delta","originDataSourceId":"raw:com.google.step_count.delta:com.huawei.health:","value":[{"intVal":636,"mapVal":[]}]},
{"startTimeNanos":"1615802400000000000","endTimeNanos":"1615806000000000000","dataTypeName":"com.google.step_count.delta","originDataSourceId":"raw:com.google.step_count.delta:com.huawei.health:","value":[{"intVal":1383,"mapVal":[]}]},
{"startTimeNanos":"1615806000000000000","endTimeNanos":"1615809480000000000","dataTypeName":"com.google.step_count.delta","originDataSourceId":"raw:com.google.step_count.delta:com.huawei.health:","value":[{"intVal":1477,"mapVal":[]}]},
{"startTimeNanos":"1615809660000000000","endTimeNanos":"1615813200000000000","dataTypeName":"com.google.step_count.delta","originDataSourceId":"raw:com.google.step_count.delta:com.huawei.health:","value":[{"intVal":1284,"mapVal":[]}]},
{"startTimeNanos":"1615813380000000000","endTimeNanos":"1615815420000000000","dataTypeName":"com.google.step_count.delta","originDataSourceId":"raw:com.google.step_count.delta:com.huawei.health:","value":[{"intVal":552,"mapVal":[]}]}]
This is the returning JSON in the latter case:
[{"startTimeNanos":"1615788300000000000","endTimeNanos":"1615791600000000000","dataTypeName":"com.google.step_count.delta","originDataSourceId":"raw:com.google.step_count.delta:com.huawei.health:","value":[{"intVal":517,"mapVal":[]}]},
{"startTimeNanos":"1615791600000000000","endTimeNanos":"1615794540000000000","dataTypeName":"com.google.step_count.delta","originDataSourceId":"raw:com.google.step_count.delta:com.huawei.health:","value":[{"intVal":430,"mapVal":[]}]},
{"startTimeNanos":"1615796400000000000","endTimeNanos":"1615798200000000000","dataTypeName":"com.google.step_count.delta","originDataSourceId":"raw:com.google.step_count.delta:com.huawei.health:","value":[{"intVal":229,"mapVal":[]}]},
{"startTimeNanos":"1615798980000000000","endTimeNanos":"1615802400000000000","dataTypeName":"com.google.step_count.delta","originDataSourceId":"raw:com.google.step_count.delta:com.huawei.health:","value":[{"intVal":410,"mapVal":[]}]},
{"startTimeNanos":"1615802400000000000","endTimeNanos":"1615806000000000000","dataTypeName":"com.google.step_count.delta","originDataSourceId":"raw:com.google.step_count.delta:com.huawei.health:","value":[{"intVal":1337,"mapVal":[]}]},
{"startTimeNanos":"1615806000000000000","endTimeNanos":"1615809480000000000","dataTypeName":"com.google.step_count.delta","originDataSourceId":"raw:com.google.step_count.delta:com.huawei.health:","value":[{"intVal":1477,"mapVal":[]}]},
{"startTimeNanos":"1615809660000000000","endTimeNanos":"1615813200000000000","dataTypeName":"com.google.step_count.delta","originDataSourceId":"raw:com.google.step_count.delta:com.huawei.health:","value":[{"intVal":1284,"mapVal":[]}]},
{"startTimeNanos":"1615813380000000000","endTimeNanos":"1615815420000000000","dataTypeName":"com.google.step_count.delta","originDataSourceId":"raw:com.google.step_count.delta:com.huawei.health:","value":[{"intVal":552,"mapVal":[]}]}]
AS you can see, all points always come from originDataSourceId: "raw:com.google.step_count.delta:com.huawei.health"
It looks like a process of Googlefit is doing some kind of adjustments, removing some steps or datapoints, although we cannot find a way to detect what and why, and we cannot explain to the user what is happening or what he or we can do to make his app data to be exactly like ours (or the other way around). His googlefit app shows a number that is not the same one as the one that the REST API shows.
User has already disabled the "googlefit app tracking activities" option.
I would love to know, or try to get some hints to know:
What can I do to debug even more?
Any hint about why is happening this?
Is there anyway, from a configuration point of view (for the user) to prevent this to happen?
Is there anyway, from a development point of view, to prevent this to happen?
Thanks and regards.
UPDATE AFTER Andy Turner's question (thanks for the comment!).
We were able to "catch" this during several hours: 18.58 (around 6K steps), 21.58 (around 25K steps), 22.58 (around 17K steps), 23.58 (around 26K steps). We exported datasets for those, and here is the result.
Another important info: Data is coming only from "raw:com.google.step_count.delta:com.huawei.health". We went through other datasets that might look suspicious, and all were empty (apart from derived and so on).
If we interpret this correctly, probably it's huawei which is sending sometimes a value, and next time, another thing; so it's probably some misconfiguration in the huawei part.
Here are the datasets exported:
https://gist.github.com/jmarti-theinit/8d98996873a9c499a14899a9b62162f3
Result of the GIST is:
Length of 18.58 points 165
Length of 21.58 points 503
Length of 22.58 points 294
Length of 23.58 points 537
How many points in 21.58 that exist in 18.58 => 165
How many points in 22.58 that exist in 18.58 => 57
How many points in 22.58 that exist in 21.58 => 294
How many points in 23.58 that exist in 18.58 => 165
How many points in 23.58 that exist in 21.58 => 503
How many points in 23.58 that exist in 22.58 => 294
So our bet is points are removed and added by devices behind huawei (for example only 57 are common in 18.58 - 22.58), and we cannot control anything more from googlefit's side. Is that correct? Anything else we could see?

Answer 1

We're having similar issues using the REST API.
Here you have what coincides with the case of Jordi:
we are also from Spain (and our users too), although we use servers in Spain and the US
we get the same daily steps value as the google fit app for some users, but not for other users
daily steps increases during the current day, but every next day we make the request, daily steps decrease sometimes
we are making the same request, from the start of day to the end of the day, with 86400000 as bucket time and same data type and data source id
We are in the final development phase, so we're testing with a few users only. Our users have Xiaomi mi band devices.
We think that the problem could be a desynchronization of the servers that we're hitting, because if we test with other apps like this one, they show the correct values. We've created another google cloud console oauth client credentials and new email accounts to test with a brand new users and oauth clients, but the results are the same.
This is the recommended way to get the daily steps andwe are using exactly the same request
https://developers.google.com/fit/scenarios/read-daily-step-total
and even with the "try it" option in the documentation the results are wrong.
What else can we do to help you resolve the issue?
Thank you very much!