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Fixing Intensity Minutes - my hack

DoctorCool

For the past many months I have been trying to figure out why my intensity minutes have fallen off a cliff.  My workload is the same, but the number of intensity minutes is way WAY down.  Then I realized why.  The optical heart rate is not working properly.  So while my chest HRM was recording a heart rate in the 150s, the watch was only in the 120s. And even with the FR265 supposed to be reading the chest HRM, it only did so if an activity on the watch was selected.

My fix has been to wear the chest HRM and then broadcast my heart rate from the 265.  This means the 265 is capturing the heart rate from the chest HRM and now my intensity minutes are properly captured.

Is this a pain in the butt?  Most definitely.  But is all I can think of to do until the optical heart rate is fixed.

Hope this helps those of you with the same issue.

  • 0

    But is all I can think of to do until the optical heart rate is fixed.

    You have more faith than I oh Cool one! When I bought the FR245 and Gramin rendered the optical HR useless (not physically broken) with an automatic firmware update with in a week, I lost a lot of faith. When I talked to support and couldn't get the firmware the watch had been running, I lost more faith. Support would have sent me a replacement watch but I likely would have gotten a refurb and forget that, my watch had less than a week on it, so I took it back got a replacement.

    I hoped and think I had every right to hope that the 265 with the new gen Optical HR would perform at least as well as the 245, but it never has; I've updated the firmware once and had hoped to do it again when a confirmed "fix" was released but that has never materialized. As we've both mentioned previously, in most aspects the 265 is a nice upgrade, great display, nice features. 

      Gee Garmin if you were big enough to admit (for the minimally released and unannouced .10) that a roll back for the sensor hub was needed, do you think you could roll on back to a version where the Optical HR didn't take 8-10 minutes of hard exercise before it jumps to a reasonably reading? That is at least as it is for the firmware I'm running. I'd update the 265 but every subsequent released version seems to have bugs worse than what I have now.  For the 245 11.6 is the version that I still have and the optical hr tracks pretty well compared to a chest strap. And BTW get off your high horse and support folks rolling firmware back. What the heck is the positive PR in forcing updates on people (if not disabled), making them unhappy and then denying the provision to allow them to return to what they had?

  • 0 in reply to gxgene1

    Thanks  .  All I can do at this point is hope that a) Garmin is listening and b) the mythical version 27.10 is true and will be released to fix all of these issues.  

  • 0 in reply to DoctorCool

    Update.  Well my hack is only partially successful,.  The 265 seems to drop connectivity back to the external HRM from time to time.  And getting the external HRM to be recognized by the 265 for broadcasting the heart rate is iffy at times.  What I mean by that is I will go into the heart rate section of the 265, and the external HRM will connect.  But when I go to broadcast my heart rate, the 265 reverts back to the optical heart rate.  Which is obviously wrong.

    This back an forth happens many many times until the 265 finally broadcasts my heart rate from the external HRM monitor.  And even then the 265 will drop the external HRM from time to time.

    Still.  Better than nothing and my intensity minutes seem to aligning more with what they were in the past.