Jul 22, 2010 7:14:56 AM UTCmodified on Jul 22, 2010 7:34:16 AM UTC
HTC HD2 with Zephyr HxM, select device
Hi Admin; I could not follow a conversation in German.
HD2 calls the BT device whenever you connect; when you connect the cardio you need to select the device screen as attachments. I tried pairing trusted but not a good solution.
This is not a problem, but if the battery of HxM will discharge, appears the device window selection and rungps crashes. This is a problem :-)
HXM is not the best heartrate in tehe world, some times the connection is lost, but this is not a serious problem after a few seconds to reconnect. Zephyr should work better on the quality of the belt, is too fragile
Yes, it is a bit disappointing that it does not work as well as the 'true' commercial products like my friend's Garmin or my 15 year old Polar. Not sure what it is, maybe Zephyr re-invented the belt and made mistakes, saved money, could not afford more research, etc. Having said that I am glad that I have something that is integrated with RunGPS and in general it seems to work OK.
With a device that has such potential as the Hxm HRM it's sad to say these problems are still the most nigling thing I've found with the device. Always having the thought in the back of your mind during training (Is my HR being read accurately) tends to take your focus away from training and when you find it isn't lateral adjustments, tightening and rewetting the contacts cause much frustration at the best of times.
Only today ( http://www.gps-sport.net/trainings/running_242831 ) I noticed at the 8 min mark walking the dog's after a ride home that my HR wasn't reading accurately. I tried repositioning and saw a short spike returning to a more accurate reading only to see it fall off again, as you mentioned tightening the strap did help somewhat as thats what I did from about 10 mins onwards with good results till the end of triaining.
Sorry to say that most people do have problems with this device as noted on many different posts and you would think that maybe a solution would be presented from Zephyr albeit RunGPS who promote this device on their site, obviously all the time knowing the problems in relation to it's accuracy (More poeple though may help with a solution in the long run).
To give credit where credit is due the latest build did fix the screen lock issue and my battery endurance is thankful for it!
Still haven't updated the devices ROM image so the bluetooth selection screen still remains, though auto turn on which is selectable through rungps configuration screen would be an awesome feature that could be implemented if the challenge is not to hard for the developers (As every milliamp still counts).
I can also confirm that the bluetooth port needs to be seleted every time the heartrate monitor is connected. Annoying, but not avoidable as far as I can see.
I wrote somewhere how I got best use out of the HxM with its belt and I made one more observation today. I think the belt is highly sensitive to the tension itself. If it is too tight or too loose the readings become complete wrong, so one has to 'play' around with what works best. I myself feel that it is slightly too loose, but it seems to give the best readings and for some time it even worked in the center of the chest, but then I had to go back to my workaround of moving it to the left by about 5-10cm.
Here is my training from today where you can see the problems with the readings from about 18min to 22min. At that point I loosened the belt and moved it to the left which made readings work well until the end of the training.
I can't understand the below comments but I'm assuming they are discussing the things I've noticed are the most annoying with this device.
1. The unreliability of the data being supplied from the zephyr Hxm device (large sections where my he drops by 100bpm) whilst still training at the same intensity. - This can apparently be resolved by wetting the band or using a gel and placing the sensor more to the left side of the chest.
2. As mentioned below having to select the device every time on startup. - This is apparently a HD2 problem and hopefully they will fix in a firmware release.
3. The fact that it won't turn on Bluetooth when started like some other programs do (Tom Tom) when using the Hxm. - Leaving Bluetooth on
may be a fix on a device that has a huge battery capacity but the HD2 is reknowned for a battery that is lucky to last a day of use so every milliamp counts.
4. The screen unlocks itself in your pocket and on a touch device the screen unlock padlock is too small to accurately hit. Putting the device into standby by pressing the main pwr button turns off the screen and when turned back on brings up the standard HTC screen slide unlock.
This would be great for power saving but unfortunately the gps doesn't run in standby. - A fix for this has been noted in the functionality section by admin and an upcoming release will provide a lock button to turn off the screen after 15sec and pressing the pwr will turn the screen back on. Yet to see how functional this is but any fix he a step in the right direction, plus now they obviouly have a HD2 to test on helps us users immensely.
I hope this helps group some errors and fixes together to provide info for other like users that just want a functional program to train with.
But why don't you leave the Bluetooth turned on? Compared to GPS it doesn't need that much energy ... And why do you have to select the HxM device? If it's paired and a "outgoing COM port" is set up it should not be required to select it.
I don't have the HD2 here for testing, but I do have a HTC Touch HD.
Dec 8, 2009 8:14:39 AM UTCmodified on Feb 8, 2010 12:27:30 AM UTC
Almost everything you could ask for.
I have a HTC HD2 with a Zephyr HxM Heart rate monitor and although it was a huge upgrade from a HP 3715 I was determined not to get an iphone. My persistance has paid off with the HTC HD2 and it goes well minus a few teething problems which should be fixed in an update once this device becomes more popular with rungps users.
The one downside is at every startup you have to turn Bluetooth on and select the HxM device, This could hopefully be resolved in a later patch. Additionally if the screen could rotate with the device automatically it would also be an added benefit.
