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Use chest strap for tracking HR instead of wrist

Phil
over 3 years ago

Hi guys,

I just can't figure out how to force my fenix 6 to use the chest strap to track my heart rate WITHOUT starting an activity. I can't imagine this is not possible. I just bought a Garmin HRM Pro. Appreciate your help!

  • 0 over 3 years ago

    The watch should automatically detect the chest strap if you have it paired to your watch. Mine comes up with a message Ext HR detected. Just ensure it is paired to the watch and turned on in settings. If you are really concerned you could turn of the wrist HR before an activity, done via settings and select sensors and finally Wrist HR 

  • 0 over 3 years ago

    From the HRM-Pro manual....

    Activity Tracking
    Whenever you wear the HRM-Pro device, it monitors your daily
    activity metrics. The activity tracking feature records your step
    count, calories, intensity minutes, and all-day heart rate. To use
    this feature, you must pair your heart rate monitor and any other
    Garmin devices with your Garmin Connect account (Pairing the
    Heart Rate Monitor With the Garmin ConnectTm App, page 1).
    After it is paired, the heart rate monitor sends activity data to
    your Garmin Connect account whenever the monitor is awake
    and within range of your smartphone. If you wear only the HRM-
    Pro device during an activity, the TrueUpTm feature sends activity 
    tracking data to the daily summary section in Garmin Connect
    and to your compatible Garmin devices.
    TIP: Activity tracking works by syncing your data with other
    Garmin devices. You should turn on TrueUp in the Garmin
    Connect app to sync activities, history, and data between all
    your Garmin devices.

  • 0 over 3 years ago

    The HRM Pro will send data to the watch when it makes a connection. The watch only looks to make connections during an activity or when you go to the sensor list and tell it to pair. Even if you do this the watch will disconnect from the sensor after a bit if you dont start an activity.

    I am not sure why you would want to have them connect if you are not doing an activity unless you are wanting to use the chest strap for all day heart rate monitoring. If that is what you want to do then no can do

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to RobCuadro

    I mean I paid a lot of money for it and since it's more accurate I would like to use the chest strap for measuring. For example to measure my heart rate in the morning. 

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to Phil
    Phil said:
    For example to measure my heart rate in the morning.

    You still can, you just have to start an activity.  Think of the issues you'd have if it connected when an activity isn't was selected.  The watch would always have to be searching for external sensors to connect to needlessly draining your battery 24/7.  And every time you came within range of a pair sensor, it would connect even if you didn't want it to do so. 

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to Phil
    Phil said:
    I paid a lot of money for it

    Yep. I get it. But, for the price you paid for the HRM Pro, you get running dynamics, onboard memory, ant+ and Bluetooth, water proofing, and Garmin tax.

    The watch, however, is not designed to what you want unfortunately.

  • 0 over 3 years ago

    I find if I open the HR widget it will swap over to the strap, I don’t know if it will stay that way indefinitely, but it certainly connects to it. (If I pull the transmitter off the Garmin Dual strap, the HR field goes blank on the watch face for maybe 5 seconds until WHR picks up again)

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to eezytiger

    I have just put this to the test. At 10am this morning I turned off my watch, while continuing to wear my HRM-PRO after my run. The strap has been synching periodically with my phone for the past 95 minutes and my heart rate data is all present and correct on the phone and web. Interestingly my body battery and stress have not been kept up to date in this time, but heart rate has.

    Here you can see the strap synching with the phone while the watch is turned off. 

    Having turned the watch back on, my body battery and stress data is now just a guesstimate or absent. It has not been calculated from the strap alone. This seems a disappointing and needless shortcoming. The strap should have provided all the data necessary to calculate these things, with better accuracy. 

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to eezytiger
    eezytiger said:

    The strap should have provided all the data necessary to calculate these things, with better accuracy. 

    I'm pretty sure the strap is more than capable of providing the necessary data, but it comes down to licensing. I know Garmin owns FirstBeat now anyway, but I believe the Body Battery FirstBeat metric is tied to a device, not the Garmin ecosystem. So the Body Battery metric is calculated on the device, not in Connect. So, if you're not actually wearing your watch, you don't get Body Battery data.

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to mrscientist

    I'm sure you're right. I think it's about time the FirstBeat stuff was integrated across the ecosystem, not tied to individual devices with the inevitable conflicting analyses when using multiple devices. There is only one "me" and my training load, TE and VO2max etc should be the same regardless of which device (s) I use. Its ludicrous to have to choose a device in order to see certain data. Its my data, about me, not the device's data.