Prepare the kit, sensors and app

Your Etiscope kit is the case, five sensors, the charger, and the straps that hold each sensor in place: a head strap, an upper-back strap, two arm bands, and a waist strap for the lower back.

Each sensor sits in its strap's mesh pocket, and the sensors are labelled for their locations. Those labels help you a lot later — they make fitting faster and much harder to get wrong. The charger is a single block with five leads, one per sensor.

Charge the sensors before an assessment day. Plug each sensor into one of the charger's five leads and leave them to charge.

For longer storage: the batteries are lithium polymer, so avoid leaving them completely empty or completely full for months at a time. Day to day, you don't need to think about it — just charge them before you head out.

Open Etiscope Capture. Enter your email and choose Next, then enter your password to sign in.

If you'd rather not type a password on a tablet on a work site, choose Sign in with a link and the app emails you a sign-in link that signs you in automatically.

If you can't get in at all, Reset password is on the same screen. If the reset arrives and you still can't sign in, check with your administrator that your account is active — a deactivated account can't sign in.

Sensors are assigned to body locations, so the app knows which movement each one is measuring. Assignment belongs to the sensor rather than the assessment, so you do it once per kit, not once per capture.

On the Sensors tab, open the menu and choose Assign sensor locations. The app looks for sensors and tells you how many it found. Choose Continue.

It then asks for one location at a time, starting with the head. The app accepts any sensor for any location — it has no way to know which physical unit you're holding. That's why the labels matter: pick the sensor marked for the head and press its button, the grey circle on the front. The light turns green, and that sensor is assigned.

Repeat for upper back, lower back, left arm and right arm, matching each label as you go. Keeping the labels true takes no extra time now and makes fitting straightforward for everyone who picks up the kit afterwards. When all five are assigned, the app finishes setup and confirms Sensors assigned.

If the app says sensors need updating before they can connect, choose Update sensors and let the update finish. You can't use the sensors until it does, so leave yourself time rather than starting it just before a capture.

Fitting is where good assessments begin. A loose or twisted sensor measures movement that never happened, and nothing later on can tell the difference between that and a genuinely awkward task.

Fit each sensor with its strap, at its location, with the sensor sitting flat against the body.

Each sensor is labelled for its location — match the label to where you are fitting it, and the assignment you did in the app stays true.

Before you move on, give all five a quick check: secure, flat, and each in its own location.

The Sensors tab is also where you maintain the kit. There are three actions here, and you'll rarely need two of them.

Calibrate sensors checks each sensor's motion sensing and finishes when every location's accuracy reads high. Run it only when a sensor is giving obviously wrong data — the graphs don't match the movement you can see in front of you. You don't need it as a routine warm-up.

These two words are often mixed up, so it's worth being clear: calibration is sensor maintenance. Normalising is something you do with the worker before every capture. They're unrelated, they live in different places, and doing one doesn't do the other.

Update sensor firmware installs the latest sensor software. Once it starts it can't be cancelled, so run it when the sensors are charged and you have a few minutes to spare, rather than between two captures on a live site.

Reset sensors resets every connected sensor. Use it when a sensor is misbehaving.

Charged, assigned, fitted — and you know where to find maintenance when a sensor needs it. Your kit is ready; next you'll decide what's worth assessing.