The Pip: Review & Give Away!

Yes! Where all the Fitbit bracelets, Apple Watches and heart rate monitors focus on health & fitness, the Pip focuses solely on a very important aspect of our life we need to manage just as much…Stress.

Galvanic sent me a package with my very own Pip. And I got to unpack, marvel and test it out.

Fascinating little bugger.

Check it out.

BACKSTORY: The Pip is a mini bio-feedback device that uses electrodermal activity to assess your stress levels with neat stats with one phon app, as well as help you learn to regulate them with two other phone apps (available in the AppStore and the GooglePlay Store!).

This is what’s in the little box: mini-USB charger you use to charge your Pip, protective satchel, the Pip itself, and the User Guide.

The handy tear drop design, the golden plating and the little light make it a very cute gadget.

You turn it on by holding it between your thumb and index finger, like making the ok-signal when diving, for 3 seconds.

Holding it this way is also how you use the Pip for measuring your stress levels.

PIP STRESS TRACKER APP The first app, and the one I used most thus far, is the stress tracker.

What you do is sit still for a period between 2 and 20 minutes and let the Pip do its thing. Based on this biodata, you get to see what the Pip thinks of your stress levels.

(This tracker-device in itself you can use as a game too, by the way: Can you get more of the Green and the letters ‘Relaxed’ to increase in font size?) 

While using the tracker, this is what you see. The Pip measures your stress level in terms of ‘stress events’, ‘neutral events’ and ‘relaxed events.’

A ‘stress event’ is when the Pip detect a short term peak in your electrodermal activity (EDA), which is the data the Pip uses.

Author’s note: I found that by physically making a lot of movements (aka flailing around like an IDIOT), you can create a stress event yourself. Good to know, right?

A ‘relax event’ is when the EDA is decreased for a longer period of time.

A ‘steady event’ is when the EDA is  just stable activity without a peak or decrease. Most of the time I am in this range; usually around 70% of my data is steady events.

See? Most of it is steady, then relax, then stress.

MAIN STATS In the stats-section of the app you can find all the data your Pip records, in main stats and overviews.

The Pip score is your average performance while using the stress tracker, based on daily, weekly or monthly totals. To be honest, this score doesn’t tell me much, I think the events are way more interesting to look at it.

Above you see my weekly score on events, and my events on the days I used the tracker this week in the Daily Events overview.

I think the stress tracker is very interesting. I am going to keep collecting data for a while to see if there is any patterns (more relaxed in the morning? more relaxed as time goes on and I practice more? more steady as time goes on?).

RELAX AND RACE When I first started testing, I just used the stress tracker app, but this weekend I also started messing with the two relax-game apps related to the Pip.

Relax & Race is one the more game-type apps. You have a dragon (or a hot air balloon, but who would go for a hot air balloon when there’s dragons available) and the more relaxed you can be, the faster it flies.

Go dragon go!

..So much for being the Mother of Dragons.

I don’t know if this is just my Pip or the app, but I couldn’t save my data! Still fun, though.

THE LOOM Then there’s Loom. This is the app where you look at a landscape (a tree, a forest) and as you relax, it changes!

For example, changing this forest from night…

To day!

It would seem I might be better in the Loom app than with the stress tracker. I think it’s because it provides more stimulation: Imagery, relaxing music. That’s more my thing.

Next to the woods I magically turned from dusk to dawn in the Loom app, there’s also a mountain scenery and a wintery tree you defrost.

Fun little thing. Plus, there’s an Onyx Black version too if you’re into a more badass kind of look.

WANT ONE? Win one! As my blog reader, you can enter the contest here where you can win one of the 5 Pips they’re currently giving away!!

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3 comments

  1. Coool, gaming aaand relaxing! But the stats are mainly interesting. I d love to figure out my stress-points in my new job. Some of my colleagues are burned out at the moment and i would do anything to prevent that. This seems a good indicator so sign me up!