Heart rate monitor

[JaapvanEkris]

Hi All,

I saw in the development roadmap you are looking to add BLE heart rate monitor. I did some homework for that already which I wanted to share.

• https://johannesbader.ch/blog/track-your-heartrate-on-raspberry-pi-with-ant/ allows all ANT+ heartrate monitors to be read in a stream (USB dongles are as cheap as 15 euro, see What USB ANT+ BLE dongles to use and where to buy? WouterJD/FortiusANT#61)
• https://learn.adafruit.com/pyloton has BLE heart rate monitoring working

[laberning]

Hi Jaap,

thanks for the info. I just got myself a simple heart rate chest belt that does BLE and ANT+ a few days ago.
I'll have to see when I find the time to add it to the project. So far Open Rowing Monitor only broadcasts some dummy heart rates via FTMS. My plan is to add it via BLE because that would not require any extra hardware on the Raspi.

I think https://github.com/abandonware/noble would make a nice match to the current system architecture, but still have to see if I can run BLE centrals and peripherals on the same device.

[JaapvanEkris]

BLE is indeed cheaper. Thing is that many sports watches are capable of ANT+, and not many are supporting BLE (at least that is the current status for Garmin). As I understood, ANT+ is pretty easy to set up (I will find out soon :)). I did read in Reddit that adding a ANT+ dongle will disable the internal BT card. So finding some common entry would be interesting. I'll report when I have my Raspberry fitted with the ANT+ dongle.

[JaapvanEkris]

Hi Lars,

As an experiment, I let the OpenRowMonitor run on your simulation data, and tried to connect to it using my Garmin Venu (either using BLE FTMS Rower or FTMS Bike, and connect it to ArduPower (see https://github.com/zpukr/ArduRower). It does not seem to connect. Could be an advertising issue, although the Concept2 ErgData app recognizes the OpenRowMonitor as a Concept2 rower :)

We'll see what happens when my real rower is connected (I see the basic data already as a great improvement on my current monitor).

[laberning]

That ArduRower project looks pretty interesting. I tried to run the ArduRower-IQ App in the IQ Connect Emulator (since I don't have a Garmin watch).
Unfortunately it looks like one would need the .prg-File (or the source) of the IQ Connect App for that.

The FTMS-Spec is flexible in a way - a device can specify via flags and characteristics what data it sends. So it's possible that the IQ Connect App expects some values that Open Rowing Monitor does not deliver yet. Also I've seen some implementations that are not using the discovery mechanisms that FTMS defines. Instead they search for a specific device name.

Validating the FTMS implementation with more training applications is on my list and I'll add Coxswain and Holofit to it (even though I'm skeptical that wearing a 'diving mask' on the head while doing a sweaty workout is a good idea 😄).

I've just finished a first version for the heart rate support (with BLE sensors). Most recent heart rate monitors support BLE (so they are compatible with smartphone apps) but I understand that there are cases where one still wants to use an ANT+ only device.

I think it should be possible to feed measurements from an ANT+ Device with an ANT-USB-Stick into the model. https://github.com/Loghorn/ant-plus could be an option. I still have an old USB2 ANT+ Stick lying around somewhere, I will try some time if that works but its not top of the list...

[JaapvanEkris]

I'll upgrade to the newest version and see if it picks up my Garmin watch. Otherwise I'll see what happens when I play around with the link you provided.

[laberning]

The latest version of Open Rowing Monitor now supports ANT+ heart rate monitors (requires an ANT+ USB stick). I'm curious if that works with your Garmin watch.

To enable it, update to the latest version and update the dependencies (or use the update script from the install folder).
Then, set heartrateMonitorANT: true in your config.js file.

I think it should work with Garmin USB or USB2 ANT+ devices (or an off-brand clone of it) and with the newer Garmin mini ANT+ stick.
I only own an older USB2 ANT+ clone, so that is the only one I've tested so far.