Life Fitness & Woodway

Former Member over 4 years ago

Is there anyway to link / pull the data from life fitness or woodway treadmills in to Garmin Watches or Garmin Connect. I see many treadmills at my gym allow Apple, Samsung or Fitbit watches but i dont see how to connect Garmin watches (fenix 6 for this example) . Any help or feedback appreciated!

Thank you!!

0 ericbfit over 4 years ago

I think those treadmills let you show the Hr on the display that is on your watch. You can do this with garmin by broadcasting on the watch and it will show up on compatible treadmills. Did this all the time at old work with the woodways.

To my knowledge it does not work the other way around unless you use zwift for example and connect it to the tread like a True Ps800 that broadcasts the speed.

0 Former Member over 4 years ago in reply to ericbfit

Thank you - Thats good to know, a bit disappointing especially when you see so many devices say connect to your apple or samsung watch, but Garmin which is a lot more expensive cannot.

0 kaz911 over 4 years ago

LifeFitness does Apple Watch and Samsung watches. And I agree - sadly not Garmin

I have no experience with Samsung as their products are banned on my network. :) (and other Google related products are on a separate secure VLAN)

But Apple Watch works well - when you scan a LF device - they start communicating. So watch gets data from LF and watch pushes pulse data etc to the LF device. It is done via NFC initiation - and continues via Bluetooth - and should be possible with a Garmin product.

But Garmin's attitude seems to be "We don't give a hoot" about interoperability - which is why 3rd party products can't WRITE complete steps/exercise data to Garmin Connect either.

It is only lately that Garmin has started taking baby-steps towards indoor sports - but we are still far from "good" and only integrations are with the "small" individual machines like rowers and indoor bikes. And most of the bike is probably due to purchase of Tacx.

I have portioned Apple to BLOCK companies writing to Apple Health - UNLESS they allow equivalent full write. There are no technical issues with exchanging data between exercise platforms apart from walled gardens that limits consumer choice like Garmin does.

But Garmin have always been "exclusive" in their approach. Once they have you as a client they will do everything possible to force you to stay - even if you are not "happy" but don't want to jump through hoops to get all your data to another platform.