Gear Sport Not Tracking Heart Rate When Exercising

[Stevevdb3000]

Hi, is anyone else having this issue with their gear sport or gear S3?

I have had 3 gear S3's and now changed it to a gear sport and am still getting the same issue. 

When I first went out cycling with the gear sport yesterday, it tracked my HR just fine when displayed in the shealth app but since then it is just showing it go up and then a straight line which is obviously wrong. I think its a software issue. The gear S2 does it fine.

See graph 1st use and then whats happened since - before and after:1st use cycling

2nd use and onwards use

[Ricky2]

Morning Celiawheelia,

The short answer is, I don't know. No one else seems to have had a problem with the gear tracker app. If you are 100% sure that you waited for the app to display a heart rate before starting the workout then I would send a message to the gear tracker app developer. Maybe they can shed some light on what happened.

To me it looks like it didn't even start picking up a reading from the beginning.

Sorry for not being much help, as you know we are all starting to get really frustrated with this.

If you do contact the developer, please let us know how you got on

[Celiawheelia]

That ok Ricky2, maybe it was erroneous. I'll keep an eye on it,just hoping Samsung get S.Health sorted soon. 

As an aside, I had my HR switched to frequent last night while I slept and it didn't pick up at all all night 🤔 and I am pretty sure I was still quite a lot of the night. Maybe I am really just super fit 😂

Will keep you updated obviously.

[Ricky2]

Yet another example of poor heart rate monitoring...

Please Samsung, it's been 4 weeks since this was submitted to the devs (again) and as of yet l they have not even acknowledged that there is a problem.

Looking through my workout logs I can see this issue was present since I started using the device over 6 months ago! At that point I was expecting it to be fixed in a future update. 6 months later and not even an acknowledgement that the problem exists / something is being done about it.

Please can this be chased mods!Flat lines again over large periods of time where no reading was taken....seems to be triggered by the auto pause

[Stevevdb30000]

Hi @AntS, i noticed you "liked" my comment where i attached a screen shot of my HR after a casual ride, just to be clear on that, that was with a FITBIT device and not the samsung gear sport! I sent my Gear sport back yesterday because the dial was sticking but the retailer have replaced the watch for me with a new samsung gear sport and the issue still remains even with anouther watch. @AntS, please can you get this chased with Mods.

Thanks

[AntS]

Hi @Stevevdb30000. It was just to let you know I'd definitely seen your post (I noticed you'd tagged both me and TracyR at the bottom of the post). :robothappy:

I've chased up the Heart Rate tracking issue with the software team again today. 

[TheRugbyProp]

Greetings all!

I've been working out with my Gear Sport that I received back from Samsung's Repair service (they replaced the board), this is after Best Buy replaced the watch.  Both times because of the faulty HR monitoring issue. I've previously explained that there can be both significant BPM errors, that can get so excessive the HR readings shut down.

This thread has had an ongoing debate, it is hardware or software. I think it's both. I think that their inexpensive hardware approach AND their softwar algoritm limits the HRM capability.

I checked how others use optical methods for HRM and learned about a company (Valencell) that sells their technology to device manufacturers. They use a both a green and yellow LED and have spend years developing their software algorithm for HRM. They have an issued patent that I plan to read, but haven't had time yet. I'm guessing that Samsung did neither of those, nor did they seek out experts and decide to incorporate a high quality HRM into their Gear watches.

This week I tried a few other methods to use my Sport for HRM at the gym. I noticed that during my first 30 minutes, the watch tended to behave reasonably, I verified by using the exercise bike routine for HRM for 30 minutes and compared the readings with the cycle hand grips. They agreed to with 5 bpm. OK, finish that exercise and start another, also using the exercise bike routine, to run when I started my bench press. Within 5 minutes, the readings was way high, by 20 to 30 minutes and after another 10 minutes it flat-lined. I took the watch off, finished the logging and started over. Basically, the watch HRM did not like weightlifting - at least not the way I do it.

Thinking back, I'd say it's a general trend that the watch HRM does not do well when the heart rate fluctuates more rapidly. If I am doing a nice controlled exercise routing, not heavy weightlifting nor interval training, the watch seems to work OK. I verified that yesterday.

Yesterday, I tried to use an exercise mode to log HRM, but once I started lifting the error became so large as to be unusable. So, no exercise HR logging, not in continuous mode, I just used the widget to initiate a short HR measurement. The widget that gives you running graph that looks like an intensity output measurement. Many times the graph would be smooth oscillating and the resultant HR value would be reasonable. However, other times the signal would be varying without clearly defined peaks and valleys - for example right after finishing a weighlifting set - and the watch would not be able to read the HR.

I wish I had read about the Valencell technology before buying the watch, then I might have been more selective. So now what? The silence from Samsung, conspicuous by it's absense, suggests they will not be of any help. Looking at the graph output during a manual HR measurement during exercise suggest to me that the measured signal does not have enough quality for measurements of rapid HR, especially if the arm is moving around. This may suggest that the hardware imposes limitations on what the software can do. I still have to compare my findings when using the Gear Tracker app - that's on my todo list.

I may also consider another HRM device that I can pair with the watch. For example, an armband or chest strap. Scoche makes an armband with the Valencell technology... [sorry for the lengthy post]

[lilith14]

Unfortunally you cannot pair external devices to the watch that ability would be great for cadence sensors. You could pair it with the phone and use phone Shealth to the activity but that won't show as active minutes on the watch but does seem to update your calorie burned for the day,it also doesn't seem to integrate with the HR data on Shealth on the Phone or Watch.

I must say if you are going to get an external HR just go Chest Strap it is still more accurate than any optical HR no matter the tech and are much cheaper.

[ned7077]

TheRugbyProp,

There are 3rd party apps like Sporty Watch: http://www.qooapps.com/sporty-watch.html

on the Gaaxy app store that support a chest strap and possibly other types or HRMs.  If you want to pair it with just the watch natively, it isn't possible at this point in time.

[Ricky2]

Hi TheRugbyProp,

Thankyou for your thorough investigation into the matter.

Your points make sense and are most likely correct.

Regarding your hardware / software comment though, what are your thoughts on the reason we have a much higher success rate on using a different app to record the workouts? For me, using gear tracker fixes the problem 100% of the time.

Appreciate your input but it should be Samsung who is doing the investigation / testing, it seems us consumers are doing all the hardwork for them! :smileyhappy:

[yolesnoobs]

I checked my Strava logs and can confirm that the problem started after tizen 3 update  on November-December 2017
My last ride before winter break on 27 Ocober 2017 has correct HR logs.

The only strange thing I noticed is that HR was recorded/saved one time per minute, but the sensor was stable during the whole workout.