ANT+ Advice

It’s been a week since we announced version 6.0 of Cyclemeter, Runmeter, and Walkmeter, and the enthusiastic response from our users has been very gratifying. The first email we received after the release went live simply said “Wow!”.

We are often asked what equipment to buy to use ANT+ for heart rate monitors and speed/cadence sensors. Here is some advice.

Cyclists Wanting Speed/Cadence and Heart Rate

Buy the Wahoo Bike Pack and the Wahoo Soft Heart Rate Belt. This gives you a bike case, a speed/cadence sensor, and a heart rate monitor. Consider their new optional extended battery, too.

Install the bike case per Wahoo’s directions. By default, our app supports Auto-Lock, the ability of the iPhone to turn off the display after a short period of time. You can set our app to keep the display on by changing More > Advanced > Screen On to When Recording rather than Auto-Lock. Note that this will burn the battery about twice as fast, so we don’t recommend it for longer rides. In that case, you can manually shut off the display by pressing the top lock button on your iPhone.

Runners & Walkers Wanting Heart Rate

Buy the Wahoo Run Pack. This gives you a Wahoo Key, and a heart rate monitor. To carry your iPhone, I recommend the iFitness Neoprene Running Belt, which helps keeps your iPhone safe and the Wahoo Key snug. String your Apple Earphone & Remote inside your shirt. Within our app, set More > Remote Control to On, and use remote control to start and stop the app, and get on-demand announcements.

An Alternative To Using A Bike Case

A great way to use our app when riding is as follows. First, purchase the Wahoo Run Pack, a Wahoo Speed/Cadence Sensor, and an iFitness Neoprene Running Belt. When you’re riding, wear the belt with the iPhone behind your back and under your jersey or shirt, with the earphone and remote cable underneath your jersey or shirt. For safety, only use one earphone, and make it the one with the remote. Set an announcement to go off every 5 miles or km using More > Announcements > Distance Interval. Turn on remote control using More > Remote Control and set on demand announcements for On Every Click so your music stays off. Then every 5 miles you’ll get your stats, and if you want them on demand, just click the remote. As a bonus, you can take a call while riding, though keep your attention on the road. And you can use Voice Control to make calls, ask what time is it, and other commands.

What About Other ANT+ Products?

We have tested our apps to work with:

  • Wahoo Bike Case
  • Wahoo Key
  • Wahoo Heart Rate Monitor
  • Wahoo Soft Heart Rate Belt
  • Wahoo Premium Speed and Cadence Bike Sensor
  • Garmin Heart Rate Monitor
  • Garmin Premium Heart Rate Monitor (Soft Strap)
  • Garmin GSC10 Speed/Cadence Sensor

Other ANT+ heart rate monitors and combo speed/cadence sensors may work, though we have not tested with them. Write to Wahoo or us to check compatibility of such devices.

We do not currently support the Wahoo Footpod (but stay tuned), nor do we currently support powermeters. We listen closely to feedback, so if you have any particular device you want us to support, just write to email hidden; JavaScript is required and let us know.

Set the Settings

Be sure to adjust some settings to add your sensor readings to the display and announcements. Tap the gear icon on the Stopwatch to add any stat you want, and go to More > Announcements to adjust the announcements. You can also adjust your Twitter, Facebook, and dailymile posts to include your sensor data. (Stay tuned for 6.0.1, which will include many more displays and announcements, including previous split and interval averages for sensor data.)

Keep Our App In The Foreground

Under iOS 4, any app using the Wahoo system must be in the foreground. If our app is placed in the background, the Wahoo ANT+ system is powered down. Make sure our app is on the screen before the display is locked, and that our app is in the foregorund after you happen to run any other app. This will be rectified in iOS 5, and will require a software change in our app, probably in our 6.0.1 version, so stay tuned.

And Improve!

Best wishes for your training efforts. With our 6.0 sensor support, you have even more options to measure your fitness, and anything you can measure, you can improve.

 

October 12, 2011 at 7:49 am | Cycling, Running, Uncategorized, Walking


Nike+ GPS Review

Nike just released Nike+ GPS, their new iPhone application. I love competition, so I took it for a few runs to compare it to Runmeter. Disclosure: I’m one of the developers of Runmeter, but I’m an engineer, and the truth is my goal. If you see anything incorrect here, please write to us at email hidden; JavaScript is required and I will update it.

Here is a competitive matrix, summarizing all the features of Runmeter and Nike+ GPS against other popular running apps.

To learn more about Nike+ GPS, I took four short runs.  You can see them all here on the Nike site, because I have switched their default privacy setting to be more open. (Props to Nike for a respectful privacy default. )

Nike+ GPSAfter launching Nike+ GPS, you see a screen with your overall distance total, plus other  overall stats.  In addition, there are three tabs: Home, History, and Settings.

To start a run, you choose “Start a Run”, then one of “Basic”, “Time”, or “Distance”, and then decide whether you’re doing the run indoors or outdoors. That unveils a strength of the app, the ability to measure running on a treadmill using the iPhone accelerometer. Then one more tap and you are off and running. A simple display shows distance, pace, and elapsed time, along with a stop/start button.

A small icon in the corner views a map. Oddly, when you tap Done after viewing the map, it stops the stopwatch. (Maybe they thought you were not running any longer.) The map is simple, it just shows your path, but I do like its ability to color the path with a green-to-red scale indicating your slowest to fastest pace.

Compared to Runmeter, though, Nike+ required a lot of tapping and choosing to get started. With Runmeter, you just launch the app and tap Start, rather than the four taps it takes to get going with Nike+ GPS. And more importantly, Runmeter has remote control ability, so you can use your earphone remote to start and stop the app while your iPhone is stowed away. With Nike+ GPS, I had to start it, then fumble with my iPhone for 10 seconds putting it into my running belt before I could run. At stop lights and at the finish, I had to go through the same fumbling to get it out of my belt so I could stop the app. With our new stop detection capability, you could even forget to stop and start at a stoplight, and Runmeter will not count that time.

Upon finishing, the voice of Lance Armstrong congratulated me on finishing my first run. (Thanks, Lance, but it was only 0.37 miles!) Paula Radcliffe congratulated me after another run, presumably nodding her approval.

I was especially interested in seeing how Nike+ helps you compete against yourself, because we had spent a lot of effort making this possible in Runmeter. The competition capabilities in Nike+ GPS are limited, and a little odd, too. One set of options allows you to compete against your very last run’s stats (distance, time, pace). Another option allows you to try to beat your record of farthest, longest, fastest 1k, or fastest 1 mile runs. Nothing more. While you are running, there is no way to get feedback to know if you are on track to beat your virtual competition. You only hear time, distance, and pace.

In Runmeter, by simply running a route multiple times, you automatically get your best, median, and worst runs for that route competing with you on a map, and also announced as a you run. If you run different routes, say one that is hilly, you can still compete against prior runs even for routes that are inherently slower. I always listen for the announcement to saying whether I’m faster than my median run for my hilly routes here in San Francisco, and it makes me run faster. You can’t do any of these things with Nike+ GPS.

HistoryNike+ GPS doesn’t have a calendar. The history tab, shown to the right here, can’t even show 3 complete rows of runs, all just to display a distance and a couple of icons. I like the wet table visual style just like the next guy, but Nike+ GPS could be improved by considerably tightening up the user interface.

Syncing with the Nikeplus.com site was simple, I just signed up and it automatically synced when my runs finished. The Nikeplus.com site itself is beautiful, though a little slow to load, sometimes by design.
Graphs take five seconds to draw so a little running man animation is shown. It does not include a calendar, just a list of runs in your history. But Nikeplus.com’s goal setting and coaching plans are a big plus of the system.

While the competitive matrix gives the fine grain detail, here are the top 10 biggest missing items from Nike+ GPS:

  1. Ability to stop and start using the earphone remote.
  2. Automatic stop detection.
  3. A calendar and model that keeps all your runs on the device.
  4. Ghost running against previous runs, not just your very last run.
  5. Configurable announcements.
  6. Sending Twitter, Facebook, and Email announcements on the beginning of runs, including a link to map so your friends and family can know where you are.
  7. Export capabilities of ANY kind. (You can check in any time you want, but you may never leave.)
  8. Ability to edit any of the data you put into nikeplus.com. (You can only delete, or change notes, or feeling or weather icons.)
  9. Real-time feedback about whether you are exceeding (or not exceeding) your goals or virtual competition while you are a running.
  10. Ability to support any other activity besides running.  (Triathletes beware.)

My bottom line: Nike+ GPS is a well-designed entry-level running application, likely intended by Nike to drive more users to the Nikeplus.com site, where they will see promotions for Nike products. If you are a serious runner or triathlete, a more powerful application like Runmeter would be a better investment of your money and more importantly, your time.

Lastly, one word of caution: The inability of NikePlus.com to export any of your data means that when you start with their system, you are committed forever. We believe your data should belong to you, and that is why Runmeter supports both summary and detailed exports of your data, in standard GPX, KML, and CSV formats.

September 7, 2010 at 10:14 pm | Uncategorized