This discussion has been locked.

You can no longer post new replies to this discussion. If you have a question you can start a new discussion

Continuous HR monitoring with chest strap - non activity, is it possible?

Former Member over 7 years ago

I've had my vivoactive 3 for a few months after having issues with the Forerunner 235 and am loving it.

However, I am after continuous HR monitoring and am wondering if the chest strap would offer this function. I've installed my new garmin chest strap and synced it with my watch, however it seems I can only have it record HR data via the wrist monitoring when not in an activity.

Is there any way to have it use my chest strap for ordinary day to day, non-activity data? I've tried turning off the 'wrist HR" function but it won't pick up my chest strap data, unless I set it to an activity.

I exercise frequently however also use the device to keep an eye on my daily HR for health reasons which my cardiologist finds very useful.

Also, I read through some past threads and someone said that the vivoactive only records HR 4-5 times in an hour. This doesn't seem to make sense as when I look at my graphs it gives an average HR in a 2 minute period. Perhaps that thread was an older one and the watch has been updated to capture more HR data.

Cheers.

0 Former Member over 7 years ago

not sure on the non-activity...
but for the HR recording... there are 2 settings... smart and always on... or something similar.
smart records every 4 secs... need to check the manual again...
while the latter is self-explanatory.

0 Former Member over 7 years ago

not sure on the non-activity...
but for the HR recording... there are 2 settings... smart and always on... or something similar.
smart records every 4 secs... need to check the manual again...
while the latter is self-explanatory.

Do you mean the broadcast feature, as in If broadcast on it's continuous HR monitoring? I've tried having broadcast on but it still seems to capture HR data every 2 mins. Mind you I only discovered the broadcast feature today while searching these forums looking for an answer to the chest strap question, so maybe I'm not using it properly. I'd be keen to know how to get it to record every 4 seconds if possible, that'd be neat!

0 Former Member over 7 years ago

ah damn, was talking about the settings for the built-in hrm... so ya ignore wat i said earlier :P

0 Former Member over 7 years ago

Ha ha, all good! :) Hopefully someone may have an answer, at least with how to get the chest strap to work outside an activity like that the wrist monitor does.

0 NHvZ over 7 years ago

Maybe you can make a activity named "daily routine" switch off gps and I think you can record your chest strap heart rate.
and when you save it ons a regular base ,morning etc you can acces the data with garmin connect

maybe one of the specialist here nows or this wil work .

nico

0 sjfwhite over 7 years ago

I've had my vivoactive 3 for a few months after having issues with the Forerunner 235 and am loving it.

However, I am after continuous HR monitoring and am wondering if the chest strap would offer this function. I've installed my new garmin chest strap and synced it with my watch, however it seems I can only have it record HR data via the wrist monitoring when not in an activity.

Is there any way to have it use my chest strap for ordinary day to day, non-activity data? I've tried turning off the 'wrist HR" function but it won't pick up my chest strap data, unless I set it to an activity.

I exercise frequently however also use the device to keep an eye on my daily HR for health reasons which my cardiologist finds very useful.

Also, I read through some past threads and someone said that the vivoactive only records HR 4-5 times in an hour. This doesn't seem to make sense as when I look at my graphs it gives an average HR in a 2 minute period. Perhaps that thread was an older one and the watch has been updated to capture more HR data.

Cheers.

Just out of curiousity, if you take your watch off while paired with the chest HRM does the watch still report a HR?

0 Former Member over 7 years ago

Maybe you can make a activity named "daily routine" switch off gps and I think you can record your chest strap heart rate.
and when you save it ons a regular base ,morning etc you can acces the data with garmin connect

maybe one of the specialist here nows or this wil work .

nico

Yes I did something similar, set it to treadmill activity. Daily routine would be better as it wouldn't have a pre-set idea that I'm meant to be walking all the time. I didn't know you could turn off GPS, I'll look into how to do it. Thanks.

0 Former Member over 7 years ago

Just out of curiousity, if you take your watch off while paired with the chest HRM does the watch still report a HR?

No I tried this, if not set to an activity, and paired with the chest HRM it defaults to wrist HR. When you take it off it cuts out. I tried jumping up and down on the spot with the watch off just to make sure and it slowed down until it cut out all together. Did the same when I turned off wrist HR too.

0 Ramvivoactivehr over 7 years ago

You could use the default Cardio app.. it has gps turned off by default. You could reduce the data fields to choose only time, so that there is minimal battery loss. You can swipe it to the right & you will be back at watch face, use it as normal through rest of the day. I have seen the chest strap continue to track the heart rate monitor even without the watch on as long as chest strap is connected.

0 Garmin-Blake over 7 years ago

The vivoactive 3 is not designed to record 24/7 heart rate with an external sensor and will always use the optical sensor as long as it is turned on. The only workaround would be as other users have suggested, to record an activity with the GPS turned off to help extend the battery life.