downloadable heart rate monitors

On Tue, 21 Oct 2003 23:19:00 +0000, Jason Spaceman wrote:

About the IR sensors on Polar heart rate monitors; do you have to
purchase Polar's own IR interface to use with your computer's
serial/USB port? Or will any old IR interface work with the IR sensor
on the HRM? Because I have an old IBM laptop that has a built-in IR
interface on it, and if I can use that with the HRM then it would save
me from having to buy an IR interface.



J. Spaceman

My S720i works with the IrDA port on my laptop -- no Polar
accessory was necessary -- but you might want to check with
Polar to be sure. I think IrDA is a newer standard than the
first IR ports on laptops. The manuals might be downloadable
too, and might have more info.

Cheers,

AMG

I git a Polar 710 and it is the business. Mine is the cycling version and
you can Infra Red your records from the monitor into the PC where it does
all sorts of analysis. Cannot recommend mine highly enough.
OSB

"Chris Jain" wrote in message
m...
I'm looking around at heart rate monitors and I notice that some, like
the Suunto x6hr, allow you to log your heart rate and loss/gainage and
then download it to your PC. Then you can view the a graph of this
data.

I don't have any experience training with HRMs... How useful is this
download feature? Is this pretty useful for training purposes (&
worth paying the extra bucks for?) Or is this just a cool but not very
useful geek feature?

Also, anyone have any experiences (positive or negative) with the
Suunto x6hr, or would you recommend a another HRM/altimeter combo?

Thanks,
Chris
cj_p [AT] sbcglobal [DOT] net

On 21 Oct 2003 11:10:40 -0700, (Chris Jain) wrote:

I'm looking around at heart rate monitors and I notice that some, like
the Suunto x6hr, allow you to log your heart rate and loss/gainage and
then download it to your PC. Then you can view the a graph of this
data.

I don't have any experience training with HRMs... How useful is this
download feature? Is this pretty useful for training purposes (&
worth paying the extra bucks for?) Or is this just a cool but not very
useful geek feature?

Also, anyone have any experiences (positive or negative) with the
Suunto x6hr, or would you recommend a another HRM/altimeter combo?

Thanks,
Chris
cj_p [AT] sbcglobal [DOT] net

Hi Chris,

My Polar 510 has proved totally reliable for the last 4 years... I
haven't even needed to change the batteries yet, and I train with it
10+ hours per week. The SonicLink interface didn't work with the
PCCoach lite and one of my old laptops, but this was fixed a while
ago. I now use PC Coach ( I used to use PPP a lot, but got scared as
one of the things it tells you is the total number of heartbeats in a
workout... and that can be really scary! ), and I find it's a real
motivator as well as a running log.

HTH,

Steve