Heart Rate

From MB Wiki

Heart Rate is measured by a Heart Rate Monitor.

Check out Wikipedia:Heart Rate for some of the general information regarding Heart Rate.

Currently MotionBased records heart rate trackpoints and stores it independently from the GPS Trackpoints from devices that record both GPS and Heart Rate. Heart Rate without GPS is currently not read or stored at MB, although this will be a future enhancement.

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Heart Rate Sample

Just like GPS has trackpoints (time-based location) so does heart rate and we reference them as samples.

MotionBased is built to accept Heart Rate by itself and stores each heart rate trackpoint independently of the GPS Trackpoint which it was observed. This will take advantage of those heart rate samples acquired independently of location.

Let's take the Forerunner 301 GPS+HRM for instance. It reports GPS and Heart rate synchronized on the same time. Sometimes Heart Rate is reported without GPS though if there is no satellite signal. In this case MotionBased will still store the heart rate, but it won't have detailed knowledge of distance to that heart rate sample since the location is not known.

Since MotionBased has been very GPS focused during its construction then there are many places that don't take advantage of the extra heart rate information if GPS is not known. This can best be observed in the Dashboard Heart Rate section where graphs with missing GPS do not show the details of the GPS.

GPS devices that also have Heart Rate Monitors will display information in the Heart Rate section.

Check out the Heart Rate page.

Notice the GPS signal outage from 2-4 km. This is indicated by a flat line and then a significant drop.

Notice here the Heart Rate flatlines at the same spots the GPS Signal goes out. The device most likely continued to track HR during that time and MotionBased is storing that detail, however, it is not being displayed.

Since MB is using GPS to calculate the distance we are not able to determine exactly where along the distance the HR sample was observed. We should be able to interpolate it to give an approximation of where the HR point we observed may have taken place during this 2 km outage. We don't do that yet, but it is a good idea and we will make attempts to add that to the system.

Now notice the same activity with HR over Time. Since each Heart Rate Sample has a known time then we should be able to draw the exact graph of the Heart Rate. Consider this a deficiency that was introduced because of our GPS-centric coding. We will try and get this fixed at sometime in the future.

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Relevant Charts

MotionBased provides detailed analysis of your Heart Rate data.

Heart Rate Data This section breaks down heart rate data in 3 ways

Heart Rate (%max) - displays the the Average, Low and High percentages of your max Heart Rate
Heart Rate (zone) - displays Average, Low and High zones
Heart Rate (bpm) - displays your Average HR, along with the Low and High bpm

Heart Rate Zones (%max) This section shows you the time spent in each HR zone along with the total distance and speed in each HR zone.

Relevant Data The Relevant Data displayed lists the MaxHR and lists the Sample Count. The Sample Count is number of the HR trackpoints. This is where you can change your HR Account Preferences.

HR Profile Plots Heart Rate on the vertical axis in relation to distance or time so that you can see where along your course you're working too hard or slacking off.

Plot HR v Distance or Time
Display either against Elevation

HR Distribution This chart plots the Heart Rate in relation to distance and time, or elevation change, to your max bpm for the activity. Notice from the example that the participant reaches their max bpm at higher elevations.