Notices

Earlier today I sent an e-mail to Alive Technologies Pty Ltd regarding their Alive Heart Rate Monitor. I was told that the monitor is not available for general sale as of yet and that it is only available as a developers kit for universities and R&D groups. The e-mail didn't state when it would be available. Hopefully, it will be soon.

Hello

Thanks for the feedback!

We released a Diablo compatible version of eCoach. eCoach is now also available at Maemo Extras repository.

http://maemo.org/downloads/product/OS2008/ecoach/

We are currently investigating if there are any other heartrate monitors with bluetooth connection. We know there are some others but usually heartrate data is somehow encrypted and unusable. If you guys know a heartrate monitor with bluetooth and readable heartrate data, please let us know!

If you are installing eCoach from extras, over garage version, remove maptile-loader first. There is a known issue with new ecoach-maptile-loader package which cannot replace old maptile-loader files. We will fix this in the next release.

Next release will add some new features and bugfixes. If you find bugs, please report them on ecoach project page at garage.
https://garage.maemo.org/projects/ecoach/

//Sampo

Hi all,

Here's a brief reply to the questions asked, I hope I get them all covered.

About the heart rate monitor, the cost of the AliveECG is probably too high for a recreational runner anyway. Also, the heart rate detection code in the eCoach not very mature, so I wouldn't put my money on it. There is work going on to add support to some consumer-oriented devices that are already on the market, but I can't promise any results there, because there was no protocol description for those devices (at least yet).

About the map tiles. Unfortunately the map repository plugin API has been changed a little, so that the map downloader application is not compatible with the plugin. The map tiles themselves should be compatible with maemo mapper 1.x (the 2.x is not compatible), so you could use that application to load the map tiles to cache. Changing the map repository plugin API was necessary to avoid the internet connection dialog popping up even when the map tile was already in the cache... If the tiles are once loaded, they don't need to be loaded again. Also note that the tiles are different for each zoom level.

There's a student project that continues the development of the eCoach (that's a great thing as I have very minimal resources for it at the moment). There were some discussions about moving to the maemo mapper 2.x compatible map repository. That would mean more choice in the different repositories, and downloading the tiles with the new maemo mapper versions. Let's see if they have enough time to implement this :-)

I just took eCoach for my first ride and it was pretty cool! Its a little hard since I'm here in the US and we don't do metric and I can't find anything in the program to display mph!

Also, it picked up several bogus speeds from the gps and so it threw off the speed graph greatly. The altitude seemed about right though.

Overall its a really great fitness aid. I'd be happy to donate some money for further development and will continue to do bug testing (I submitted the gps issue).

Thanks!

Ok, I know I keep posting. But I just wanted to add something more to the thread.

For those living in the US (and maybe it works elsewhere) you can upload your runs to http://mapmyrun.com/

Its a free site and its pretty nifty. Made even better by the fact that you can upload gpx files to it and save them as workouts! Very nifty indeed.....

Ecoach 1.1 Released!

Changelog:

* User can now select measuring units between metric and english system
* Map can be zoomed and moved with tablet hardware keys.Also autocentering is possible
* Added few more icons to the menu
* Implementet BMI and maximum heartrate calculators
* Maybe some other minor changes
* Fixed gps bug #2972

We are now working on support for FRWD B600 heart rate monitor:
http://www.frwd.fi/index.php?57

http://ecoach.garage.maemo.org/


//Samppa

Awesome!
I just learnt about ecoach the other day. I honestly think it's one of the most polished apps for the N810 today! Way to go!
Seeing as the biking season is over for the year, I can't really try it out until spring.

However, I've used maemo mapper and google terrain maps a lot for mountainbiking. Is there any chance to use google's terrain maps in ecoach? Or any idea to make that happen?

I installed the application but how can the maps be displayed ? When I have a GPS fix I can start a new session but I don't see a map.
I have an internet connection.

Do we need the whole B600 system or the Textile heart rate transmitter belt is enough?

Question from a $$$ point of view but also on a # of gadgets to carry on - if only the belt is needed it would be 2 otherwise a third is necessary ---> the N800/810 will be too much to carry on just to know your actual heart rate and the W600 receiving clock+PC for a post analisys will be better and kill the platform, IMHO

OK, just received and started testing my Christmas gift FRWD B600 but it seems that there are some problems with receiveng datas from the unit - it looks like we may have gps data or heartbeat data once at a time, not together (i.e. gps XOR heart monitor)
Any clues?