Polar Heart Rate Monitors: Gimme my data!, by Jeffrey Veen

Polar Heart Rate Monitors: Gimme my data!

I was at a sports expo this weekend -- booths of vendors set up around a marathon in San Jose, CA. As I wandered through, I noticed Polar, a Scandinavian company that makes devices for monitoring an athlete's heart rate by means of a chest strap and a wristwatch. Over the years, they've developed a couple high-end systems that allow training data to be downloaded to personal computers for further analysis. As an athlete with an interest in biometrics, I stopped to chat with the sales rep.

"So, when I download my data, can I export it into something usable - maybe Excel or a text file?" I asked him.

"Well, sure. That's theoretically possible," he replied. "But there's really no reason you'd need to. Our software does absolutely everything you need for in-depth tracking of your workouts. In fact..."

"Really?" I interrupted. "Can I geotag the data and plot exertion against my favorite routes on Google Maps?"

"Uh, what's that now?"

"Or how about auto-posting each workout through the Atom API to a fitness blog I'm thinking of starting?"

"Fitness block?"

"No, blog. Never mind. Does this software run on my Macintosh?"

"Ah! Macintosh! We've looked at the market share numbers and..."

"Ok. Thanks. See ya."

I know. That wasn't fair. Polar makes great heart rate monitors. Yet, it's clear that the company's move into the software business has proven difficult for them. Not only do their devices break the USB specification, but their data formats are proprietary. What possible competitive advantage is there in denying a fervent hacking community from extending your products?

There are a few examples, notably PC Coach and iSmartTrain for the Mac. But poking through the forums shows that 3rd party development has to be reverse engineered, from scratch, with each new model. And the only official word is corporate marketing-speak from the manufacturer.

I shouldn't be surprised, really. It's just that in the bubble of tech companies I tend to patronize, this sort of behavior seems so ... immature. In the world of Tivo, Asterisk, and Slim Devices, embracing openness and the creativity of your audience should be at the core of any product release.

I've long believed that customers of any application own the data they enter into it. What could possibly be more personal than the beating of my own heart?

This entry was written by Jeffrey Veen and posted 2 November 2005 at 5:23 PM. It was filed under Software, Technology.

Comments

1. On 2 November 2005 at 8:11 PM DL Byron wrote:

I can close to buying one of the Mac/Polar products, but worried about the exact same thing you note, and that's what I use my PC for, testing and Polar. Polar should work with VPC, but doesn't because they're USB driver is not standard. Frustrating.

And, sidenote, but wow, the Tour of California!

2. On 2 November 2005 at 11:22 PM Simon Clayson wrote:

This is frustrating, I went through the whole process a couple of years back. Polar have great products, but they are not alone in their approches. I don't get it either, and in the end it'll bite back. To be fair, the Polar software is very comprehensive and stable on the PC.

Anyway, through a combination of iMac, VPC, Keyspan USB adaptor and Polar Serial interface, I've been using the now discontinued S710 model.

I'm sure Cat-eye did a gadget last year with Mac software. Can't see it in their current line-up.

3. On 2 November 2005 at 11:31 PM Bob wrote:

What's fascinating is that it would be so much EASIER for them to do an Excel-formatted download; standing on the shoulders of giants as it were...it's really HARD to do what they did, build their own standalone software. Yet you see that everywhere...

4. On 3 November 2005 at 4:44 AM Olly wrote:

The same is true in the GPS arena too, unfortunately. I know someone who is working on that, though...

5. On 3 November 2005 at 6:11 AM Jarkko Laine wrote:

Coming from the home of Polar, Finland, I can wholeheartedly agree. Actually, they shipped my S710 with a Mac software back in 2002, but it was for Classic, didn't even start on OS X, and would've still been outdated from day one.

Unfortunately, the Mac penetration in Finland is only a fraction of what it is in US or even Middle Europe. So the firms like Polar, Suunto and FRWD have probably got the impression that there just ain't a market for Mac software. I have more than once contemplated collecting a list of people to stick down their throaths to get them wake up. If anyone's interested, ping me and we can work something out. I know a few people very close to Polar so it might actually matter. I talked with a Suunto guy this summer and he said that they are actively developing a Mac version of the software for their wrist computers. Only time tells if that was just talk.

The good thing is that the format the app exports is just plain, tab-delimited text. But like said, that doesn't help if you can't get the damned thing running.

6. On 3 November 2005 at 7:09 AM DL Byron wrote:

Jarkko,

Sign me up for a campaign to have Polar release our data and offer mac support! I'm just imagining how I'd no longer need my PC. I'm posting on this now.

7. On 3 November 2005 at 7:40 AM Stuart Tevendale wrote:

Hi Guys,
Stuart from OTAG Technologies here (developers of iSMARTtrain). We share your pain - it's been a major task reverse engineering the Polar data format, and I'm sure we still haven't perfected it!

Anyway, we're currently in the early stages of development of the next release of iSMARTtrain, so we'd be interested in your comments on the features you'd like to see incorporated - drop me an email at stuart (at) otag (dot) co (dot) uk

8. On 3 November 2005 at 8:46 AM Matt Henderson wrote:

If Polar were smart, they'd implement a platform-agnostic way to get your data to a website that they manage, which not only lets you track your own data, but also exploit all the things you could do when able to compare your data to a larger pool of data from people of similar age, sex, sport, whatever. That community would drive more users to Polar, and probably provide enough incentive to Polars competitors to provide their own access to Polar's data center (which, again if Polar were smart, they'd open up.)

9. On 3 November 2005 at 9:02 AM Glenn wrote:

Jeff,

Your insight into the simplest things astounds me. This is such a cool idea; and Matt's comment on a website for processing and sharing data is awesome! I then look at the management of the company I work for and realize why we are in the crapper. Management crushes innovation out of the system. I'm sure there are developers at Polar with the same experience.

OK. That was a bit angst-filled. Maybe it's time for me to write that long-overdue email to management...

10. On 3 November 2005 at 10:24 AM DL Byron wrote:

Matt,

I just posted how Polar could offer Web 2.0 goodness and I forgot that they are doing that now, with weblink, but it's not all open, or tied into Google Maps with a blog plugin, tagging, or anything delicious.

https://www.polarcyclingcoach.com/

11. On 3 November 2005 at 4:43 PM Adam Rakunas wrote:

I quit downloading data from my Polar ages ago, not because of the data format but the transmission method: sound. I had one of those Polar models that would turn its data into a burst of clicks and squeaks, and if I held it up to my PC's microphone, the sound would turn into data. Good gravy, what a pain...

But I second a Web 2.0 compliant Polar! Jebus, how tough could it be to churn out a .csv file?

12. On 4 November 2005 at 6:05 AM Jim Cuene wrote:

Awesom post, Jeff. Well, add me to the list of those that quit downloading the Polar data. I'd been using PCCoach, but it got kind of lonely looking at my own data day after day. Matt, sign me up when you get that data sharing/community based fitness site up. I've wishing for something like what you describe for a while, going so far as to draw up some wireframes of what it could look like. Start with the basic premise that your fitness is going progress more when you a) make a committment to your peers and b) you've got good supportive feedback from your peers and you've got the heart of a decent community. Sharing my data from a 2 hour January ride on the rollers in the basement would be much more fun than the actual workout itself (but, then again, what wouldn't be more fun than 2 hours on the rollers?)

13. On 4 November 2005 at 1:52 PM Gord wrote:

While I don't have the same gripes as many, not running a Mac, I will say that Polar came a big way in moving from the PC Coach software that came with the 500 series to the Polar Precision Software that comes with the 720i for Windows. It doesn't do everything, but it does give you a whole lot of charts and graphs to play with.

And it does allow you to do a tab-delimited text output of your data. Then you can throw it into Excel and produce altitude charts, etc.

An interesting development in this area is the purchase of Motion Based by the GPS company Garmin. They combine a small GPS unit with a heart rate monitor (ForeRunner) then let you track your workouts (what Jeff mentioned above). A guy in my office is quite the fanatic and loves the software/hardware - he even did exports and hacked Google Earth with his data collected (GPS waypoints, etc) to produce flythrough movies of the routes.

If I worked at Polar, I better be paying attention to this.

For sharing data in the meantime, I simply share screencaps of my HR data on Flickr. And annotate them. My coach runs the Polar Precision software and I can send him files directly to inspect, but for the most part, it's just fun to show people your most insane graphs.

Agree that there's lots of room for innovation in this area. And there's a lot of geeky cyclists/athletes who love their data!

Links:
http://www.motionbased.com
http://www.garmin.com/products/forerunner301/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gordonr/sets/768494/

14. On 6 November 2005 at 8:55 AM Kevin Franklin wrote:

I'm also a Polar owner (the new cycle specific CS200) but for integrated GPS too this new unit from Garmin caught my eye.

http://www.garmin.com/products/edge305/index.jsp

15. On 7 November 2005 at 8:38 PM Ben Saunders wrote:

Nike's Triax Elite HRM (and the accompanied software) seems to work fine on OS X - http://charanis.com/blog/2004/09/03/nike-triax-elite-running-watch/

As a Nike athlete, I'm ashamed to say that I've yet to try it - the Triax Elite seems to be US-only at the moment - and yes, I use a Polar hrm (and rarely download stuff these days)...

16. On 11 November 2005 at 5:37 AM Dave Wilson wrote:

I use the Garmin Forerunner 301. It's a wristmount GPS and HRM, with a USB port. I really have no complaints. I run with the local hash house harriers group, so each week's 4-5 mile run is in a different place. I come home from the run, plug in the USB cable, and upload the data (XML format) into TopoFusion. TopoFusion hits the MS Terraserver site and automatically downloads the necessary satellite or aerial photos, and then displays the run track on top of the photos. The whole process takes about a minute. Then I export the track as a JPEG, write my comments on it, thumbnail it, and post it to my site. You can see some examples at www.davewilson.cc.

The Yahoo Forerunner group has some posts saying the Forerunner will work with Mac yet. I just got a Mini recently, but haven't tried it.

17. On 14 November 2005 at 11:37 AM Mike wrote:

It's important to remember that you were talking to a sales guy, not one of the geeks at Polar. I know the sales reps where I work are, for the most part, about as tech savvy as we force them to be, whereas a lot of us back in the home office are blog-loving geeks who were thrilled when a product we were working on got slashdotted.

So there's hope that Polar might catch a clue.

18. On 17 November 2005 at 1:06 PM billg wrote:

jeff...excellent post....why stop at making the data format an open standard? lets go all the way....how about an open wireless protocol so one watch could connect with my HRM, cyclometer, smart shoes (ie adidas_1), etc.?!

19. On 21 November 2005 at 1:07 PM Lars wrote:

After I have owned the RS200sd a couple of weeks, the only thing I don't like is not having access to my own raw data :-(

Trackback: http://www.himmerige.dk/blog_comment.asp?entry=144

20. On 25 November 2005 at 11:53 AM niceguyeddie wrote:

I have a Suunto X6HR, and their software is the same. Yes, you can upload and share data on a website and compare with others (http://www.doyoudreamincolour.blogspot.com/), but you can't export the data to use yourself. I'd love to be able to post stuff like that to my blog.

One thing I do know though, if you exercise next to someone wearing a Polar and you have a Suunto, their data will be useless, the Suunto seems to interfere with it.

21. On 29 November 2005 at 6:49 PM Chris Kujawa wrote:

Jeff:

I hear ya! Don't know if you were aware of this or not, but I found this link through someone else's blog (who was just as frustrated) last April. Hope it helps!

http://developer.polar.fi/developer.nsf/274B9D08AF06359BC2256DF60045B8CB/$FILE/Polar%20HRM2%20file%20format.pdf