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Broadcast heart rate question.

Pete1336
over 1 year ago

As a cyclist I normally wear a chest HRM...sadly it's recently gone kapput Rolling eyes.

I sometimes wear my FR 965 to record an indoor cycling workout and broadcast the HR via the option in the watch's indoor bike settings to my Wahoo Systm prog running on my laptop. When used to record an activity...the wrist based optical HRM of the 965 is accurate enough.

However..my question is this ' Must I use the watch to record an activity for the HR broadcast to give an accurate reading?'

In the controls section..there is an option to broadcast HR. If I activate that without using the watch to record the indoor ride, will the heart rate numbers broadcast be equally accurate?

Hope that makes sense.

Thanks, Pete

  • 0 over 1 year ago

    I had less issues with watch-based HR with an enabled activity than without. Some say it's because when you enable an activity the sensor works in higher power mode. I suspect there might also be some filtering involved based on the fact that an activity is enabled.

    What I experienced doing workouts without enabling an activity is that my watch was sometimes showing surprisingly low and very unlikely values, like 70-80 bpm over a long period during tempo cycling intervals. I suspect it was syncing to my cycling cadence or something like that. According to Garmin help pages, syncing to muscle contraction rate is a well known failure mode of optical HR sensors.

    Since I enable activities on my watch, I didn't experience such failures anymore. But maybe a coincidence, your mileage might vary :-)

  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 1 year ago in reply to Marcin
    [deleted]
  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to Former Member

    Why would holding a handle bar influence measured HR? Because of wrist motion? I didn't yet use the watch on some crazy downhill rides, but on road and gravel I didn't observe any issues whenever activity recording was on.

  • 0 over 1 year ago

    In my experience when using broadcast HR, the HR updates just as quickly as when an activity was going whether an activity was started or not. I use this feature to broadcast to my Edge 530 when cycling on road and MTB with no issues and with NO activity started on the watch. I just go to the controls, broadcast HR and click the start and confirm its broadcasting to my Edge 530. Best to give it a try and see what you think. You'll be able to tell from the broadcast HR screen if it is working as you want. Just make sure you actually start the broadcast HR function. Note, I have not used this with the 965 yet, but used it a lot with the 955.

    SA

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to georgiawx

    Thanks for your replies..I would have tested it today but my chest HRM decided to play ball today ThinkingShrug

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to Pete1336

    Here is a screenshot of one of my MTB rides where you can see the HR graph. I overlaid it with the Elevation to explain the ups and downs of the HR. This was with the Edge for the elevation and the 955 on broadcast HR for the HR. 


    SA

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to Marcin
    Marcin said:
    Why would holding a handle bar influence measured HR?

    because the handle bar will transmit all the road vibration and shaking into your hand - making it a lot more difficult to the OHR to function.