Garmin 310xt and WKO

tunney

The Garmin 310xt is an okay device, it does speed and distance well, HR its bad enough at but on the whole I like the gadget. What it sucks at is working with WKO. This is a result of WKO being lazy and crappy and Garmin’s smart recording being ****. I use WKO with my SRMs and I wanted to use WKO to track my running too. My SRMs are wired ones so I don’t have to worry about power and the Garmin. Since it became obvious that WKO couldn’t support Garmin 310xts from version 2.2 I’ve waited for WKO to come out with a fix for itself to deal with Garmin 310 xt data files. There are a few problems in my eyes that WKO has with the Garmin files:

1. Lap times and the effect that this has on running pace calculations – say you are out running, you stop to tie your shoelaces, at traffic lanes for for any one of a multitude of reasons. You hit stop on your 310xt. You run for an hour and total stops are 10 minutes (stupidly long stops but this is just an example). You cover 12 km in the hour. Logic would say that your average pace was 5 minutes per km. WKO on the other hand says your average pace is 5:50 per km.
2. Spotty hr graphs - How hard can it be to fill in the blanks (Admitedly I’ve to reimplement this with a smarter approach)
3. Spotty cadence graphs - Same as HR


So I got sick of waiting and wrote an app myself to clean this data up.
This is the first version and it has bugs in it I’m sure. I’m not 100% happy with the cadence data either. But its a start and its better than the crap data WKO uses as it is.

Any bugs found should be submitted with a description and the TCX file that was used. Emails to tunney@gmail.com. Just double click on the jar to run it (requires a recent version of java on your machine)

Dowloads can be done from http://phoenixtriclub.com/blogs/tunney/?page_id=905

As I said I know it needs work but its a start.........


[mods I don't think this belongs in the Garmin mega thread]

robinph

tunney wrote: »

How hard can it be to fill in the blanks

Speaking of filling in the blanks.

WKO?
SRM?

tunney

robinph wrote: »

Speaking of filling in the blanks.

WKO?
SRM?

If you have to ask........

hootini

Tunney,

What firmware version is on the 310 XT. It should be approx 3.20.0.0. I have no issues whatsoever with my HR or cadence so I may be local interferance or the SRM wireless possibly?

Just a thought thats all.

tunney

hootini wrote:

Tunney,

What firmware version is on the 310 XT. It should be approx 3.20.0.0. I have no issues whatsoever with my HR or cadence so I may be local interferance or the SRM wireless possibly?

Just a thought thats all.

I don't think you grasped the problem that this application addresses. In fact most don't as most don't see the problem as it only is visible if you try to do proper data analysis.

To address a few things first:
1)The common "I have no issues with my HR". Actually you do. The severity of the issues varies but all Garmin chest straps are affected by the same problem. Static interference. There is no way around this with Garmin hardware as it is a hardware flaw in the chest straps. For some its only your BPM being out by a few bpm, brely noticeable, for others its a much bigger problem. it can be worked around by using a modified Polar chest strap. Its for this reason that the long standing predictions of Polars demise have not come to be. Particularly with the new Polar RX5 thats coming out soon with a hybrid low power bluetooth and polar coded strap - happy days.

2)I don't use my SRMs and Garmin at the same time. Thats like worrying what a sundial says when you have access to an atomic clock.

3)Cadence is fine from the Garmin, the foot pod is good. In fact you get better speed readings from the footpod than the GPS.

So back to the issue:

Garmin skimped on memory in their newer units and the SmartRecording is their solution. It simply takes a snapshot of the available data and saves it when there is a significant delta in a measured value. So the data points recorded do not come at any set interval. The Garmin connect software runs a filter over their files to make sense of this "Smart" data and that is why when you view your data in Garmin Connect it looks like a HR, Cadence and speed reading were saved every second when in fact it can be 40 seconds between recorded data points. Thats part one of the problem.

Part two of the problem is how the Garmin records stops. It doesn't do so explicitly. An activity is made up of laps, laps of tracks and tracks* of trackpoints. If the start time of a track differs wildly from the end time of the previous track then a stop has occurred. Again Garmin Connector filters the files and corrects this before presenting the data to you. However when if you want to do proper data analysis of your runs then this is no good as the 3rd party tools which do useful metrics like rTSS and Pa:HR drift and allows you to view scatter graphs of workouts cannot cope with this skimped down nasty data.

This is where my application comes in. It takes the junk data from a garmin smartrecored file, analysises it, filters it and corrects it. It joins the dots for missing HR, speed and cadence data and corrects the stops and some more. Then these files can be loaded into a proper data analysis tool such as TrainingPeaks WKO and you can do actual analysis of your run.

If all you do is look at your Garmin post session and say "oh I ran 9.87km in 43 minutes" then it doesn't matter really

baza1976

tunney wrote: »

If all you do is look at your Garmin post session and say "oh I ran 9.87km in 43 minutes" then it doesn't matter really

This should have been the first line in your post, I just wasted 3 mins of my life I won't get back