BatesPosture

A real-time posture monitoring application that uses computer vision to analyse your posture through your webcam. Integrated into the system tray, it provides instant visual feedback, configurable alerts, and session analytics to help maintain proper ergonomics while working.

Features

• Real-time posture scoring (0–100) with colour-coded tray icon
• System tray integration — always visible, never in your way
• Live dashboard with sparkline history and session statistics (avg, min, max, best streak)
• Persistent dashboard history — sparkline survives closing and reopening the window
• Configurable tracking intervals (continuous or scheduled) with break reminders
• Desktop notifications with cooldown throttling and focus-mode suppression
• Onboarding wizard with 6-second calibration to capture your personal baseline
• SQLite database logging with CSV export
• Rotating log files for persistent diagnostics (~/.batesposture_logs/app.log)
• Adaptive resolution — automatically drops to 640×480 on low-end hardware when enabled
• GPU acceleration toggle (forces MediaPipe complexity-2 model)
• All processing happens locally — no video or pose data leaves your machine

Technical Stack

• MediaPipe — pose landmark detection (33 body landmarks, configurable model complexity)
• OpenCV — frame capture, CLAHE enhancement, landmark visualisation
• PyQt6 — system tray, dashboard window, settings dialog, onboarding wizard
• NumPy — vectorised posture metric computation and rolling score buffer
• SQLite3 (WAL mode) — persistent storage for scores, landmarks, and dashboard history
• psutil — hardware detection for adaptive resolution
• Python threading.Lock — thread-safe score buffering between camera and UI threads
• logging.handlers.RotatingFileHandler — 5 MB / 3-backup rotating log files

Install

BatesPosture is distributed via PyPI — no unsigned binaries, no SmartScreen warnings.

pip install batesposture
batesposture

Or run without installing:

pip install batesposture
python -m batesposture

Requirements: Python 3.10+, a webcam, and Windows 10/11 or a modern Linux desktop (Ubuntu 20.04+, Fedora 35+, etc.).

Linux / GNOME: may need the AppIndicator extension for system-tray support.

Development Setup

This project uses uv for dependency management.

# Install all dependencies (including dev/test tools)
uv sync --all-groups

# Run the application
uv run python -m batesposture

# Run tests
uv run python -m pytest

Releasing a new version

1. Bump the version in pyproject.toml
2. Commit and push, then tag the commit:

   git tag v1.0.0
   git push origin v1.0.0

3. GitHub Actions runs tests, builds the wheel, and publishes to PyPI automatically.
4. A GitHub Release is created with install instructions.

PyPI setup: the first publish requires creating a trusted publisher on PyPI pointing to this repo with environment name pypi and workflow build.yml.

Usage

1. Launch the app — the tray icon appears (grey circle when idle)
2. Click the tray icon → Start Tracking (or Ctrl+Shift+T)
3. The icon updates in real time: red (poor) → amber (fair) → green (excellent)
4. Open the dashboard (Ctrl+Shift+D) to see live video, sparkline, and session stats
5. Configure alerts, intervals, and thresholds via Settings (Ctrl+,)
6. Export session data to CSV via Export Data as CSV…

Configuration via Environment Variables

All settings can be overridden at startup with the prefix POSTURE_<SECTION>_<FIELD>:

# Run at 15 FPS on a slower machine
POSTURE_RUNTIME_DEFAULT_FPS=15 batesposture

# Automatically drop to 640×480 on low-end hardware
POSTURE_RUNTIME_ADAPTIVE_RESOLUTION=true batesposture

# Enable GPU-optimised MediaPipe model
POSTURE_ML_ENABLE_GPU=true batesposture

# Silence notifications
POSTURE_RUNTIME_NOTIFICATIONS_ENABLED=false batesposture

# Use a different camera
POSTURE_RUNTIME_DEFAULT_CAMERA_ID=1 batesposture

See batesposture/services/settings_service.py → KEY_TO_SECTION_FIELD for a full list of available keys.

Default Tuning Values

Constant	Default	Description
POOR_POSTURE_THRESHOLD_DEFAULT	60	Score below which a notification fires
SCORE_THRESHOLD_DEFAULT	65	Score used to track good-posture streaks
DEFAULT_POSTURE_WEIGHTS	(0.2, 0.2, 0.15, 0.15, 0.15, 0.1, 0.05)	Per-metric contribution to overall score
BREAK_REMINDER_MINUTES	50	Minutes of continuous tracking before a break prompt
CALIBRATION_DURATION_SECONDS	6	Baseline sample length during onboarding
CALIBRATION_TIMEOUT_MARGIN_SECONDS	6	Extra seconds before the calibration thread is cancelled

Privacy

All video processing runs locally. Pose landmarks and scores are only written to the local SQLite database when database logging is explicitly enabled. No data is transmitted externally.

Troubleshooting

Camera not detected

• Try a different camera index: POSTURE_RUNTIME_DEFAULT_CAMERA_ID=1

Calibration fails during onboarding

• Ensure adequate lighting and that your head and shoulders are fully in frame
• Move closer to the camera and try again

Performance issues / lag

• Enable adaptive resolution: POSTURE_RUNTIME_ADAPTIVE_RESOLUTION=true
• Reduce frame rate: POSTURE_RUNTIME_DEFAULT_FPS=15
• Lower model complexity in Settings → Advanced → Model complexity (0 is fastest)

GPU acceleration not working

• The enable_gpu toggle forces MediaPipe complexity-2 and relies on the device's ONNX Runtime or CUDA support. Falls back to CPU silently if unavailable.

Log files

• ~/.batesposture_logs/app.log (rotates at 5 MB, keeps 3 backups)

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. Please open an issue or pull request on GitHub.