HRM-TRI Heart Rate showing as 243-244 when not being worn (?)

Noticed an issue today. When for a bike ride and used my Edge 830 to track the event. Wore my F5+ without starting an activity to collect the intensity minutes. I normally do this. After the ride, I got changed hung my HRM TRI strap over the handlebars of my bike and sat down to check my stats. Everything on the Edge 830 was good. But I found the F5+ had not tracked my HR for the entire ride (wrist) and that currently it was showing a HR of 243 (note I was not wearing the belt).

I checked the sensor screen on my F5+ and found the watch was connect to the strap. Anyone else see this? I thought sensors did not connect to the watch when an activity was not started or requested. Kind of annoying that I lost the intensity minutes, but also annoying the HR data is missing too. And what's up with a HR of 243 if I'm not wearing the belt. Does the belt broadcast this as default, even when not in use?

Any thoughts would be great..

0 AllanOlesen67 over 5 years ago

After removing the chest strap, it will continue broadcasting for some time, always more than 200 BPM. It is very annoying and has been discussed a lot here.

As far as I can see, the watch will pick up on the false signal from the strap in these situations:

While the activity is still running (of course - just mentioning it for completeness)
After the activity has ended, if you stay in the activity screen of the watch.
Outside activities, if you open the HR widget.
When starting a new activity before the strap has stopped broadcasting.

I have bought a Polar OH1 now. It has an ON/OFF button! I use it almost exclusively instead of my HRM-RUN and HRM-TRI, partly because of this issue.

0 ic3cold over 5 years ago in reply to AllanOlesen67

Cool. The funny thing is I didn't run an activity on the F5+. I only ran it on the Edge 830. Hasn't happened before.

For now I've disabled the strap on my watch and will enable it when I either go for a run or do an indoor ride. PITA.

0 SAHO over 5 years ago in reply to ic3cold

ic3cold said:
The funny thing is I didn't run an activity on the F5+.

I’ve found that you don’t need to go to an activity to trigger the sensor search - it’s enough to go to the HR widget as Allan mentioned.

Once you go back to the watch face it should switch back to the OHR. (You can easily verify by checking if the green OHR LEDs are on or off).

0 ic3cold over 5 years ago in reply to SAHO

Still does not explain the large gap in HR. I’ll raise a ticket with Garmin and see if they can confirm what happened.

0 J117 over 5 years ago

I take mine off, dry the sensors with my towel, and place it where the sensors are not touching anything. For me I hang it on the coat hanger hook in the back seat of my truck. I haven't had any issues since I started doing this. HRM -TRI But if you get home and than throw it on the floor and the electrodes touch I've had that give weird readings too like 30 minutes later so continue being careful with for a long time after your activity.

0 ic3cold over 5 years ago in reply to J117

I typically hang from a clothes hanger. My main issue now is why did my f5+ HR cut out while I was riding. Somehow the optical sensor was disabled.

0 6616477 over 4 years ago

ic3cold did you ever get this resolved by Garmin? My HRM-Tri has just started to do exactly the same thing...