Allow Intensity Minutes to be manually added - continued missing IMs from Edge 1040

If you use Edge 1040, remove the watch from your wrist, and the IMs from Edge will be counted. Otherwise the watch takes the precedence, and since it does not record any activity, and does not use the chest strap, it processes completely different HR data. Another solution is pairing the chest strap with the watch too, and starting an activity on it concurrently too (may be discarded at the end in order to avoid the duplicate).

Thank you for the idea, but I never wear my watch when I ride my bike.  All HR data from the Garmin strap is fed unhindered directly to the Edge when I cycle.  As an aside, the watch (an FR955) is configured in Garmin Connect to be the primary device, but again, I never wear it while cycling.

I have been an Edge user since 2012 but only started using a Garmin watch in 2022.  In the past few years, I started experiencing Intensity minutes issues in recent months.   And, it is intermittent.  With no other changes, a cycling activity will show IMs perhaps four out of five rides.  And then, mysteriously to me, one activity will not have it, despite capturing HR and certainly riding in the HR zones that qualify for IMs.

Peter_Ricc said:

I have been an Edge user since 2012 but only started using a Garmin watch in 2022.

Well, no Edge before the current generation (540, 840, 1040, Explore 2) supported the feature of Intensity Minutes, so if you had no watch, the only remaining possibility for seeing some IMs is that they came from the HRM-Pro strap, otherwise you could not have any.

Peter_Ricc said:

And then, mysteriously to me, one activity will not have it, despite capturing HR and certainly riding in the HR zones that qualify for IMs.

Are you sure you use HR Zones for IMs? In the default configuration, they are based on 7 days avg. Resting HR, not on the HR Zones. 

Peter_Ricc said:

With no other changes, a cycling activity will show IMs perhaps four out of five rides. 

Please post screenshots of the all-day HR graph, the IMs graph for given day, and the IM configuration for a day when you did not get the expected IMs. And a link to the activity (not just a screenshot!) from the concerned day. It can give the clues why it happened.

trux said:

Well, no Edge before the current generation (540, 840, 1040, Explore 2) supported the feature of Intensity Minutes, so if you had no watch, the only remaining possibility for seeing some IMs is that they came from the HRM-Pro strap, otherwise you could not have any.

Poor communication on my part.  My intention was not to claim I got IMs from older units - In reality, I wasn't even aware of IMs until I started using my watch in July 2022.  By that point I was a month or two into the 1040 and, with the watch usage, became intrigued with using the IM glace as a motivator for weekly exercise. 

My point was only that the Edge 1040 captured IMs without issue for almost two years but seemed to have issues some time over the past few months.

trux said:

Are you sure you use HR Zones for IMs? In the default configuration, they are based on 7 days avg. Resting HR, not on the HR Zones. 

Again, poor communication. I meant that, while cycling, I was confident my heart rate reached elevated HR zones as defined in the USER HR zone setting (not the IM config HR zone settings), which should have triggered the IM count.

To answer your question, I did look more closely at the IM setting and discovered it is set to the default option of "letting Garmin determine" (or whatever it reads).  I have since changed it to use the Zone 2/Zone 3 manual option to see if that works.

Give me a day or so for the requested screenshots, but here are the activity links.

Here is the link to the cycling activity that did NOT capture Intensity Minutes.

Here is a cycling activity from two days prior (all the same sensors, settings, etc) where the Intensity Minutes were captured.

Notice that the Intensity Minutes section appears in the second activity but not the first.

trux said:

I also recommend reading carefully the document How Are Intensity Minutes Earned? | Garmin Customer Support in order to understand the conditions necessary for getting some IMs. 

Whoops, hang on.  Actually, buried in that link was this:

¹An HRM-Pro or HRM-Pro Plus heart rate strap must be paired to the Garmin Connect app on your phone to earn Intensity Minutes for select activities such as a ride when paired to an Edge computer.

This may be the cause.  Until I read that line, I forgot that I had recently removed the Garmin Connect pairing of the HR strap.  

I did this because I had another issue over the weekend where the 1040 would not sync with Garmin Connect at all.  Activities would not upload and courses would not download to the unit.  Researching that issue, I read a recommendation elsewhere in this forum to remove all pairing but the 1040 from Garmin Connect iOS.

Coincidentally or not, after I removed the HR pairing from Garmin Connect, the Edge immediately started synching with GC again.   But, I re-paired the HR strap and will see if both issues are resolved.

Peter_Ricc said:

Notice that the Intensity Minutes section appears in the second activity but not the first.

I see it at both of them: