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Record activity without watch but with HRM

Hi!

I'm doing a lot of indoor climbing which I would like to record as an activity (to get workout data, training effect, heartrate etc.). Obviously it's a bit too risky to wear the watch.

If I buy a HRM-TRI heartrate strap, can I wear that during the activity, and just leave the watch in my bag somewhere on the gym floor (within 25 meters or so)?

I know that the HRM-TRI has a cache and that the cache seems not only working for swimming but also for other activities but still I couldn't really find in any review saying explicitly whether such a scenario would work well.

Will that work like this?

Thanks!

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0 Former Member over 5 years ago in reply to 5724083

at the moment...forum is as good as dead

0 WillNorthYork over 5 years ago

My educated guess is no. When this came up in the forums before, someone complained that 230/235/630 had received a firmware update to support downloading stored HR from an HRM-TRI, but 645 lacked this feature. As the 645 is supposed to be an upgrade over the 630, they were naturally upset.

My educated guess at the time was:

Garmin added that feature to those watches because they don’t support swimming as a built-in activity
Garmin removed that feature from 645 because it does support swimming

The pattern I noticed is that no Garmin watch supports both stored HR and swimming except for tri/multisport watches, and with that in mind, it makes a certain kind of twisted sense that they actually removed a feature from the 645 that the 630 had. They added swimming to 645, so they sacrificed stored HR. By the same logic, the 245 would also not support stored HR, because it does support swimming, but it’s not a tri watch.

The next obvious question is “Why not just allow stored HR for non-swim activities on the 245/645?” My educated guess there is that limiting a feature in such an artificial way would probably lead to even more confusion and upset customers.

That’s just my educated guess, but you could always contact [email protected] to find out for sure.

Also, if you look at the “compatible devices” list for HRM-TRI on Garmin’s site, you’ll see that all the TRI watches are listed, as well as 630 (but not 230, or 235). So that list is sort of inconclusive. Unfortunately, Garmin’s own spec sheets are notorious for having errors and omissions....

Theres also this support article about downloading stored HR for non-swimming activities such as basketball, but the list of supported devices is out of date.

support.garmin.com/.../

0 jim_m_58 over 5 years ago in reply to Former Member

Nope. that's specifically a FW thing. In CIQ you can start/stop/save/discard activities, and that's as far as it goes. Noting different in CIQ 3.1.x

Using the batched data means that the FW needs to integrate the batched HR data with the fit that was previously recorded and closed/saved.

0 jim_m_58 over 5 years ago in reply to 5724083

That's right, it did get added to the 23x after they had been out for a while, but it was unclear why they did because the the lack of OWS.

0 Former Member over 5 years ago in reply to jim_m_58

thx

0 WillNorthYork over 5 years ago in reply to jim_m_58

One of the Garmin support articles specifically mentions using the HRM-TRI for a non-swimming sport like basketball. As I speculated before, I think stored HR was added to 230/235/630 because of lack of swimming capabilities, as a kind of bonus feature for that specific use case. Since the 245 and 645 support swimming, they took out stored HR, as I believe they want to restrict the combo of those two features to multisport watches.

https://support.garmin.com/en-PH/?faq=tyYOJ0X3dL6FpnL2fKY1U8

^ this article actually has a list of devices which support stored HR, but unfortunately it’s extremely out of date, as it doesn’t list 230, 235, 630 or any watch newer than 935.

0 Former Member over 5 years ago in reply to WillNorthYork

taken from firmware changelogs...

all can download stored hr from tri and swim bands

Forerunner 630
Ver. 4.10 - 02/23/2016
Added support to download stored heart rate data from compatible straps (HRM-Tri and HRM-Swim).

Forerunner 935
Ver. 9.10 - 06/04/2018
Fixed a possible crash that could occur when downloading stored heart rate data from a Garmin HRM-Tri or HRM-Swim.

Forerunner 235
Ver. 4.10 - 02/23/2016
Added support to download stored heart rate data from compatible straps (HRM-Tri and HRM-Swim).

Forerunner 230
Ver. 4.10 - 02/23/2016
Added support to download stored heart rate data from compatible straps (HRM-Tri and HRM-Swim).

D2 Bravo
Ver. 2.40 - 10/07/2015
Added support for HRM-Tri and HRM-Swim.

epix
Ver. 2.70 - 07/23/2015
Added support for HRM-Tri and HRM-Swim.

fenix Chronos

fenix 5x

fenix 5

fenix 5s

fenix 3hr

fenix 3/tactix Bravo/quatix 3

Forerunner 920XT

0 WillNorthYork over 5 years ago in reply to Former Member

Thanks, I understand that 230/235/630 and tri watches support stored HR. My point is that the “compatible devices” list provided by Garmin is incomplete and unreliable, so it won’t settle the question of 245 support either way. Anyway, for the reasons I already mentioned, I doubt the 245 supports stored HR.

0 5724083 over 5 years ago in reply to WillNorthYork

Thank you very much, that's incredibly helpful!

I have contacted [email protected] with regards to the 245, and also pointed them to the outdated list.

0 5724083 over 5 years ago in reply to WillNorthYork

> Since the 245 and 645 support swimming, they took out stored HR

Are you sure / how do you know that they took stored HR out of the 245? We can be sure about the 645 since it's been out for a while and people have tried, but how about the 245?

Edit: Ah okay - if I read your very last post here correctly, you are just guessing (a strong/good guess though...). Nobody seems to know yet. So let's hope Garmin support replies to my email.

Thank you very much!