Activity tracker for the active cyclst

[TTX1]

What's held me up from getting it is I'm mildly concerned that wifi and bluetooth are the new secondhand smoke so not sure I want that on my body all day. Anyway to turn that signal off?

Withings doesn't continually broadcast - that would kill battery life. It's a momentary sync when you open the app.

[Andrevich4]

I emailed Withings tech guys and here's what they said:

The Steel HR uses Bluetooth Low Energy technology to connect to your smartphone or tablet. The watch itself will attempt to initiate communication to sync with your mobile device under the conditions previously described: if you have walked 1,000 steps since the last sync, if you have reached your daily goal, or if the watch has not synced in the past 6 hours. There are no other conditions under which the watch would initiate Bluetooth communication without you using your phone to access it.

Since the Steel HR attempts to sync in the background if it has been 6 hours since the last sync, this could occur while you are sleeping. However, this is only a momentary communication, and if the background sync is not successful, the watch won't keep trying to communicate with your phone. All other communications would be initiated by your phone.

I'll see if my wife is good with but sounds good to me.

[Andrevich4]

Withings can thank their support of RSCX, the folks at Vsalon, and knowledgable tech folks for the order I just put in. Steel HR and a Body Cardio will be en route once they're in stock.

[Too Tall]

I've been following, these devices look pretty solid. Very tempting.

[Powerfibers]

Withings can thank their support of RSCX, the folks at Vsalon, and knowledgable tech folks for the order I just put in. Steel HR and a Body Cardio will be en route once they're in stock.

I am very happy with the Steel (albeit the non-HR model) and Body Cardio scale. Love seeing the metrics feed into my Training Peaks calendar every day as well!

[defspace]

I am very happy with the Steel (albeit the non-HR model) and Body Cardio scale. Love seeing the metrics feed into my Training Peaks calendar every day as well!

I've got one of the scales, but I'm a Golden Cheetah guy. Does anyone know how to get it to sync? I see it's possible but I haven't been able to figure it out yet.

[Powerfibers]

I've got one of the scales, but I'm a Golden Cheetah guy. Does anyone know how to get it to sync? I see it's possible but I haven't been able to figure it out yet.

I had to use FitnessSyncer joins your health and fitness clouds into one Dashboard and Stream. Supporting over 4 health and fitness providers, including Fitbit, MapMyFitness, Microsoft HealthVault™, RunKeeper, Withings, and more! to get it into TP, so I am unsure.

[Powerfibers]

^^Sorry that link posted weird....

[marley]

I was checking back as I have an interest in the watch and scale but this is just ridiculous - maybe they can get an endorsement from the President-elect

Hair Coach

what's next a tootbrush, hand washing device - tech like this is going to see the human race evolve into Barbapapas

[dashDustin]

Charged my Withings Steel HR Friday night. Put it on Saturday and haven't taken it off. Battery is still at 100% and that includes a 2.5hr ride today.

This thing is awesome. Love it.

[Andrevich4]

I'm a fan. It does everything I want, doesn't look like a small computer, and I haven't had to charge it in the 7 days I've had it. Seems it has lots more capability than I'm currently using -- I got a calendar alert on it today, didn't know that was a thing -- but I haven't taken it off except to shower and really like it.

[defspace]

This is a bit of a cross post from a topic I started in the main forum, but I thought you data guys might find it interesting.

Check out Personal Gold on Netflix. It's about the 2012 USA Women's Team Pursuit team. They used a ton (at least compared to me) of number crunching to optimize their performance with the resources they had available to them.

Here's a 2015 article about it: Forbes Welcome

It looks like they're in the works to develop a turnkey app/system for the rest of us to use: OAthlete The last blog post was 9/2015, so I hope things haven't stalled.

Interesting stuff.

[EightySixer]

I am able to chime in a bit here.

I have both the Body Cardio Scale as well as the Steel HR watch.

I hold each of these gadgets in high regard, so much so that I bought my girlfriend an Activite Pop which she will not take off and unless we move in together very shortly here she will be getting a Body Cardio also as she has strong armed mine so I am only able to check in with it now a few days a week when I am over her apartment.

Both fantastic products. I am getting a grip now on what to do with all the data, it took me a few months of regular use to develop a baseline and really see changes over periods with lighter and heavier training. My HR has dropped into the 40's and 50's in the past 2 months with consistent training and base building for an upcoming half marathon as well as my body fat percentage staying about the same but my overall weight increasing a bit due in part to supplementary calisthenics work.

I couldn't imagine now after having these in regular use ever going back to just shooting from the hip.

hooray technology.

[defspace]

I am getting a grip now on what to do with all the data...

This is what keeps me from jumping in. What does it all mean!? The idea of something that can run statistics on all of your data is interesting.

[EightySixer]

At first I was a bit overwhelmed.

BMI
Body fat %
Water %
Muscle Mass %
Bone Density
Let alone the "Pulse Wave" heart health technology

Now that I have settled in and figured out the baseline of where I was at through December and January I am starting to make some sense of it all. It took time and some lifestyle changes to see any progress in the areas I wanted to see. At my fittest point pre data I was 163lbs with 3.8% body fat, of course I was well over that when I started using the scale. i am seeing a drop in my BF % now that I've gotten a grip on my diet as well as heart health with quitting chewing tobacco again a month ago. My HR was consistently in the low 70's while awake and not doing anything of effort, now diet coupled with getting back on track with kicking the tobacco use (yet again) it is regularly about 52-56 bpm and not infrequently as low as 44-48 bpm. (edit- Also I have been running 6 days a week approx. 25-30ish mpw and building)

This all lines up pretty accurately with my Garmin HR as well as the regular blood pressure checks I've been doing the proper way with a portable machine.

I must say, if nothing else it's a cool way to really confirm that despite not exactly "feeling" every single second that my health is improving.. The data suggests I am on the right path. I'm liking it all. Not for nothing the Steel HR is pretty much the most badass watch I've ever owned and garnishes compliments at the gym and the office. I am sold.

[joosttx]

Whoop. I am a fan.

[TTX1]

Whoop. I am a fan.

Houston, can you comment on the HRV feature? Do you use it, if so how?

[joosttx]

Sure. Simply put what whoop does is it tells you how hard you stressed and how much recovery which is basically sleep you need to go at it again.

Whoop has a metric called strain. It a calculation of stress on the body, phyiscally and mentally. Strain is based on HRV and stress activity and rest. HRV tells you recovery or impact of stress. In the morning whoop tells you how much you recovered. This morning I was 80% recovered with a HVR at 85. Which means my strain was set a 14. (if you do nothing strain is like 4.5). So, I did a nice 3 hour ride today and my strain for today is 13.6. This means I did not over train. Before I go to sleep whoop will tell me how many hours I need to sleep. Between 7-9 hours probably. So, basically you get a number of how hard you should train without over training or under training.

Whoop is great because you never take it off. It has a wireless battery charger to clicks onto the device. So you never have to take it off.

Whoop is not realtime like PM / HR decoupling. I think if you are training with a PM then Whoop is a novelty. WHat I notice is that I can train a little hard than what the standard decouple metric wants and recovery fine with enough sleep according to Whoop.

I think it is best for a person who plays team sports where measuring exertion is harder to do than cycling.

The impact of travel on me is amazing in a bad way. I knew travel ran me down but I did not realize the actual impact.

[MarkC]

Anyone with experience using ear bud HRM's ?

[TTX1]

Anyone with experience using ear bud HRM's ?

Sure, what do you want to know?

I launched an early app-based optical HR sensor for the ear called Vitality - designed to work with an iPhone worn in an armband.

This was circa 2010 with a 30-pin connector. You can still find them on eBay from time to time, super cheap.

FWIW, ear based sensors are about as effective as wrist based sensors. Chest strap is the best / easiest to implement. Accuracy typically varies based on algorithms and other implementation aspects, rather than sensor type - as the majority of the products on the market today use the same or similar sensors from just a few vendors.

Summary: If you really like riding or exercising with something in your ear, Bragi (etc) might be the way to go. Personally, I don't ride or workout with music and I don't need a constant phone connection for calls. I prefer to hear traffic, the bike, the wind... So I generally go for a wrist-based or chest-based solution.