Quantified Self & DIY Health Dashboards

For the homelab health-data hoarder: this is the canonical 2026 stack for pulling everything off the wearables / scales / CGMs / labs into a single SQL-or-time-series store you control, then dashboarding it. None of the consumer apps quite show what you can build yourself.

Sister sections: Apple Watch, Garmin, Wearable Aggregation, Diabetes & CGM Tools, Health Records & FHIR, Health Data Privacy, Home Assistant Add-ons, Prometheus Stack, Self-Hosted Personal Apps, Notes & Wiki.

The canonical 2026 pipeline

[Wearables / Scales / CGM / Labs]
            ↓
[Vendor app / Apple Health / Health Connect]
            ↓
[Exporter: Auto Export / GarminDB / xDrip+ / Theengs Gateway]
            ↓
[Storage: SQLite / Postgres / InfluxDB]
            ↓
[Dashboard: Grafana / Metabase / Streamlit / Notion]

Per-source exporters

Apple Health / Apple Watch

• ★ ★ Apple Health Auto Export — paid iOS; scheduled Health → CSV / JSON to iCloud Drive / Dropbox / REST endpoint; the iOS export workhorse.
  • https://www.healthexportapp.com/
• ★ HealthFit — paid; Apple Health → FIT / TCX / GPX → Strava / TrainingPeaks / Garmin Connect.
• Apple Health → ZIP export (Settings → Profile → Export) — manual but free; XML + workout GPX.
• QS Access (free) — bulk CSV exports.
• Apple Shortcuts — automate "log my mood" / "if HRV < X message me" workflows.

Garmin

• ★ ★ GarminDB (FOSS Python) — pulls every activity / step / sleep / HR / weight / body-battery into a local SQLite mirror.
  • https://github.com/tcgoetz/GarminDB
• garminconnect-python — unofficial API client.
• Garmin Connect → manual .fit export — per-activity.

Strava

• stravalib (Python) — official API client.
• Strava bulk export (Settings → My Account → Download Your Information) — manual.
• rStrava (R) — for the R-using QS crowd.

Oura / Whoop / Fitbit

• oura-python, whoop-python, python-fitbit — OAuth API clients; require active sub for full data.
• Health Connect (Android) → consolidated downstream exporter.

Withings / Renpho

• python-withings-api — Withings → CSV.
• Withings HA integration — pulls weight / BP / sleep into HA.
• See Smart Scales.

CGM (Dexcom / Libre)

• ★ xDrip+ + Nightscout — see Diabetes & CGM Tools.
• Nightscout REST API — all your BG / IOB / COB queryable.
• Tidepool API — pump + CGM unified.

Lab results

• Apple Health Records → Apple Health Auto Export → JSON.
• MyChart manual download → CSV → SQLite.
• See Health Records & FHIR.

Generic BLE sensors

• ★ Theengs Gateway + Theengs Decoder — see BLE & Bluetooth IoT; pull Govee / Xiaomi / Polar / Mi Flora data straight to MQTT.

Storage layer

• ★ ★ SQLite — single-file DB; perfect for personal scale; queryable with Datasette / DB Browser.
• ★ Postgres — for the long-term home lab; SQLAlchemy / Drizzle / Prisma.
• ★ InfluxDB / TimescaleDB — time-series; pairs with Grafana out of the box. See Time Series Databases.
• DuckDB — embedded analytical SQL; brilliant for "ad-hoc analyze 10 years of Garmin data."
• Parquet files in ~/health/ — for the data-lake-curious.

Dashboards / front-ends

• ★ ★ Grafana — the QS dashboard default; Prometheus / InfluxDB / Postgres / SQLite (via plugin) sources. See Prometheus Stack.
• ★ Metabase — paid + free OSS edition; better for SQL-first users.
• ★ Datasette — FOSS by Simon Willison; turns SQLite into a queryable, sharable web app; uniquely good for QS.
  • https://datasette.io/
• Streamlit / Dash — Python; for custom dashboards.
• Observable Notebooks / D3 — for the JS visualization crowd.
• Notion / Obsidian — for narrative + small charts; see Notes & Wiki.
• Apache Superset — OSS BI dashboard.

Home Assistant integration

• ★ Most QS data also makes sense in HA — HRV, sleep, weight, body battery, BG all support automations:
  • "Light goes red on the bed light if HRV is low this morning."
  • "Notify me if BG > 180 for > 30 min."
  • "Sunrise alarm pushes earlier if Whoop strain was high yesterday."
• See Home Assistant Add-ons and HA LLM Integrations.

Notable QS communities / writers

• ★ Marco Altini (HRV4Training) — newsletter; HRV science.
• Bob Troia (Quantified Bob) — long-running QS blog.
• Quantified Self meetup — global community since 2008.
• Mark Wilson's Health Data Lakehouse — mid-2020s QS-pipeline writeup.
• Felix Krause's "I record my entire life" — extreme-end QS.
• r/QuantifiedSelf — Reddit.

Privacy + ergonomics

• ★ Behind Tailscale — see VPN Mesh — your dashboards are accessible from your phone but not the public internet.
• Encrypt the SQLite at rest if it lives on a NAS.
• Backup the DBs — these are the most painful to lose. See Backup & DR.
• Don't expose Datasette publicly — even "anonymized" health data is identifiable.

Patterns to adopt

• ★ Pull only what you'll dashboard. Pulling every HK metric is fun, looking at none of them is the norm. Start with 5 metrics.
• Quarterly review — most QS dashboards are useful for 3 months and ignored for 9. Keep what's still answering questions.
• Correlate across sources — sleep × HRV × workouts × mood × BG is where insight lives. Single-source dashboards are less useful.
• One graph per question — "When did my RHR start drifting up?" → one trend line. Not a 12-panel hellscape.

Anti-patterns

• The 50-metric dashboard — looks impressive, helps no one. Pick 5.
• Daily "review" you skip — if the dashboard isn't open weekly, prune it.
• Self-host as the goal — pulling the data is 20% of value; acting on it is 80%.
• Trusting any single number — sleep stage / body fat / HRV - day 1 — all noisy.

Cost / license honesty

• Apple Health Auto Export, HealthFit, RunGap — paid one-time or low monthly.
• GarminDB, stravalib, oura-python, whoop-python — FOSS.
• Grafana, Datasette, Metabase OSS, InfluxDB — FOSS / community editions.
• All on a Pi 5 / mini-PC — minimal hardware cost.

Pick this if…

• iPhone + Apple Watch: Apple Health Auto Export → SQLite → Datasette + Grafana.
• Garmin + Strava: GarminDB → SQLite → intervals.icu (web hosted) or local Grafana.
• Diabetes: xDrip+ → Nightscout → Grafana.
• Want to share with your doctor: export PDFs from Bearable / Migraine Buddy / Function Health.
• Just want to stop being trapped in vendor apps: start with the on-device aggregator; export quarterly; defer the lake until you actually have queries.
• Already self-hosting Home Assistant: integrate Garmin / Withings / Oura HACS integrations + InfluxDB long-term retention.