Live Heart rate monitor and treadmill

[Lesleyfool]

I want to get a chest strap hrm to use with the treadmill. The treadmill does not have bluetooth connectivity.

This should link to an app on the iphone that can sit on the dashboard of the treadmill while I walk/run and must show LIVE
heart rate.

Does such a thing exist please?

I have searched all over the internet and cannot find the answer to this.

[servodude]

I want to get a chest strap hrm to use with the treadmill. The treadmill does not have bluetooth connectivity.

This should link to an app on the iphone that can sit on the dashboard of the treadmill while I walk/run and must show LIVE
heart rate.

Does such a thing exist please?

I have searched all over the internet and cannot find the answer to this.

Yes they exist.

Most dedicated BT heart rate monitors (whether LED or thoracic strap based) will have a live (or "real time") display capability in the app they come with. A quick google suggests the LIVLOV V6 as a cheap option for a band type.

If you're trying to do something fancy or looking for very very immediate changes in heart rate (or arrhythmia) they might not be what you need - but for exercise they're pretty good

Heart rate is normally broadcast over BT in a standard format from sensors (it's got its own category in the Bluetooth specification) so you might find that a third party app might give you a better user experience than the one that comes with the sensor (I know there's a lot of these alternative apps about for the cheap fitness bands)

You might have to tinker with the phone settings to stop it dimming the screen as it's not being touched

-sd

[Hallucigenia]

Does such a thing exist please?

I have searched all over the internet and cannot find the answer to this.

The reason for that is that it's considered so standard for chest belts to talk to an app to give realtime heart rates that it's not considered worth mentioning, they all do it. FWIW in your situation, I used a Livlov belt talking to the Wahoo app - it may not be the best solution but it worked for my purposes.

A few considerations -
There's two main wireless protocols to consider. The fitness industry developed a protocol called ANT (which very quickly became ANT+ so you'll almost never find original ANT these days, it's all ANT+) to do this kind of stuff, it's now been taken over by Garmin but is the fitness industry standard. But Bluetooth is increasingly becoming the standard protocol as it's so easy to handle with phones - in theory you can add ANT capability to phones but I couldn't get it to work with my (quite old) ANT kit. Having said that, all but the cheapest belts are dual-wireless so broadcast both Bluetooth and ANT - I had to get a dual-protocol belt as I have ANT kit.

My Livlov belt has a single unbroken strap so you have to put it on/off over your head, my old belt opened with a clip so you didn't have to do that. I can imagine that maybe if you were running marathons the clip might chafe but for my purposes I preferred the clip one as it was easier to take off when knackered.

The other issue with belts is fit = I find mine is best just above my nipples but I imagine they may be more awkward for women. Also I find that the clip for shortening my Livlov belt tends to slip a bit in use, but that's not much of a problem as my chest is big enough that it still works even at maximum length. If I had a smaller chest I can imagine sewing/gluing it in place to stop that happening.

Perhaps the most fundamental question is - do you need a belt? In most cases a watch is just as good at recording your heartrate but has the advantage you wear it all the time so you can track your heart and eg steps the whole time. They are not so good for certain sports due to the wrist movements in eg rowing, but for running on a treadmill a watch should be fine. My rather old Garmin watch can broadcast HR to other Garmin devices but not more generally (I think more recent ones can broadcast to anything but not sure) - in practice that's not a real problem on a treadmill. You might think that having HR displayed on a phone in front of you is better but in reality it's fine to just look at your watch occasionally, you soon settle into rhythm where you know a certain pace corresponds to a particular heartrate so you don't need to keep looking, and you run with better form if you're not continually squinting at a screen.

[scrumpyjack]

I have tried two watches for monitoring my heart rate on a treadmill. They were both hopelessly inaccurate compared with a chest strap one (literally 30% wrong!) (A Fitbit and a Huawei)

[Lesleyfool]

Thanks all. The strap is for my other half who does not want to keep looking at a watch while walking, running which he has and does not believe it to be accurate.

[Bminusrob]

I have tried two watches for monitoring my heart rate on a treadmill. They were both hopelessly inaccurate compared with a chest strap one (literally 30% wrong!) (A Fitbit and a Huawei)

Without wishing to sound racist, this is very often related to skin colour. Watch based heart rate monitors work by shining a light onto your skin.This works much better if you have pink skin rather than "olive" skin. I find that my Garmin 235 gives identical result using the wrist monitor and a strap.

[scotview]

I have a few of activity tracker watches.

The cheaper ones record heart rate to a phone quite accurately. I have a heart condition and set heart rate alarm at 80 BPM. Lots of hand movement on a treadmill or due to car steering wheel vibration can give false readings though.

I recently purchased an Aupalla activity tracker. This has an ECG function, I have only tried the ECG functionality using the wrist button but it also comes with a chest electrode strap. This will show an ECG continuous trend on a phone, I think. Haven't tested the chest strap functionality but the wrist button method looks good.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08 ... UTF8&psc=1

[Lesleyfool]

Thanks everyone.

the Coospo Lightweight chestrap arrived and is very comfortable and we linked it to
the Wahoo app.

After 36 mins of power walking on the treadmill it displayed a steady well smoothed heart rate which enabled him to lower the speed slightly when the target hr number had been reached.

So very good since the Garmin watch was inaccurate and picked up thumping cadence. The treadmill handles hr readout was all over the shop and not helpful.