ANT+ Sensor data missing in activities

I have a HRM that I am trying to get to work with my Forerunner 265. It's a Coospo H9Z. On my last run I did the following:

  1. Put on HRM.
  2. Remove watch from wrist.
  3. On watch, go "settings > sensors & accessories" to verify that the sensor is "connected".
  4. Start the activity while still holding the watch making sure to keep my hand away from the optical sensor.
  5. After seeing the watch display valid HR data for a few steps I put the watch on my arm and finish the run.

In the end, the activity in the Garmin Connect app yet again does not show any sensors and the HR chart of my interval run doesn't look any different that any other day. From what I managed to find online, the way to tell if a sensor is used is by checking the activity in the app, and there should be a field showing the sensors that were used during the activity. This is not the case.

What could be the cause of my watch very obviously receiving data, but not storing that in the activity?

This sensor does support Bluetooth and I will probably try that next but it can't be that the watch doesn't give any feedback whatsoever on whether it's actually using a sensor or not.

  • AFAIK it only shows Garmin sensors.

    Normally when I start an activity with a paired HRM I get a short message saying HRM xxx connected. Again not sure it works with non Garmin devices.

    I was going to suggest switching Source Switching off but that is Garmin HRM specific

    support.garmin.com/.../

  • From what I managed to find online, the way to tell if a sensor is used is by checking the activity in the app, and there should be a field showing the sensors that were used during the activity.

    As others wrote, that's true only for Garmin's HRMs. In your case you either have to open the activity in GC Web, and then look up the sensors with the help of DevTools in the JSON data, or simpler and in more details - export the activity, and open the unzipped FIT file with FIT File Viewer. When you then click the Chart button at the top, among the chart options, you should have three HR options: "heart rate" (at the top), "wrist heart rate", and "external heart rate" (both of them near the bottom of the dropdown list for the y axis). If there is no "external heart rate", the HRM was not connected.

  • Thanks. I was kind of in doubt because I didn't notice much of a difference to the HR chart of a watch only run but with the exported FIT file I could verify that it was actually the data from the HRM.