Oura Ring

Tool Infobox
Related topics	HRV (Heart Rate Variability), Activity tracking, Sleep tracking, Temperature tracking
Linked pages on this wiki	Projects (4), People (2)

The Oura Ring is a wearable that is worn on a finger as a ring which tracks sleep, activity and readiness. Since 2013 there have been three different versions of the ring, with the latest version (v3) being launched in November 2021. At the same time they changed their business model, requiring a monthly subscription for access to all metrics recorded.

While the sensor set of the rings have changed over the versions, generally they contain an accelerometer, a temperature sensor as well as an optical heart rate sensor. From these sensors the Oura calculates the following metrics:

A generation 3 Oura Ring, showing some of the sensors on the inside of the ring

Differences between models

Model	Sleep tracking	Activity tracking	Readiness tracking	Heart rate during sleep	Heart rate during day	Body temperature	Menstrual cycle tracking	Blood oxygen tracking
Generation 1 [citation needed]	✔	✔	✔	✔	❌	✔	❌	❌
Generation 2	✔	✔	✔	✔	❌	✔	❌	❌
Generation 3	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔

Metrics provided

• Heart rate related: Resting Heart Rate, Heart Rate Variability, Respiratory Rate
• Body Temperature (relative changes, not absolute)
• Sleep (total sleep, sleep phases throughout the night)
• Activity (calorie burn, steps, walking distance 'equivalent')

Exporting data

As for most wearables, there is unfortunately no (easy) way to access all raw data from the device. But Oura offers a way to download at least all of your calculated metrics from the Oura Cloud web interface. Beyond this, they also offer an API to automate access to Oura data in third party tools. An example implementation is the Oura integration into Open Humans, which automatically fetches the latest data at multiple times throughout the day.

In January 2022, Oura announced a version 2.0 of their API for exporting data. This new API is under development and so far only provides access to more detailed activity data (such as intra-day heart rate) but not to any readiness and sleep information and so far there is no timeline when these other metrics are added to the new API. Oura also announced that the old version 1.0 of the API will be around for at least a year before being shut down.

Project using Oura Ring

Given the different kinds of sensors used in the Oura Ring, a diverse set of projects have been done with it:

• Bastian Greshake Tzovaras has
  • used it alongside time-tracking data from RescueTime and geolocation-data from Overland to understand the impact of COVID-19 lockdowns on himself.
  • compared sleep data between the Oura Ring and Fitbit.
  • looked at how smoking impacts his (resting) heart rate as measured by Oura.
• Herman de Vries has explored the relationship between HRV, sleep and physical activity by using an Oura Ring
• Beni Kmoz used 800 days of Oura data, hierarchical clustering and principal component analysis to understand how menstrual cycle and physical activity explain the data.

Linked content on this wiki

(The content in the table below is automatically created. See Template:Tool Queries for details. If newly linked pages do not appear here, click on "More" and "Refresh".)

Projects that use this tool
A heuristic for feeling fine, Impact of work-related stress, Sleep recordings: Oura vs Fitbit, What does clustering tell us

Self researchers who used this tool
ErikBjare, Gedankenstuecke Gedankenstuecke, Gedankenstuecke, Gedankenstuecke, Gedankenstuecke