As the title. I have a Bluetooth HRM strap already that I currently use with a phone GPS tracking app. Are there any (decent) dedicated GPS trackers that will connect to it?

Not that I could find,

There is a bluetooth screen thing coming from wahoo but it still relies on iPhone. See if you bluetooth heart monitor vendor lists anything compatible, if it’s the Wahoo one like mine there is nothing shown.

You’ll probably get enough by ebaying it to pay for an ant+ replacement.

Steven

That wahoo thing got released today. Quite tempted to buy one.

Cheers grilla. As I feared.

Looks like I’ll have to chop in my Bluetooth HRM for either an ANT+ one or part of a Garmin package.

I think the new Garmins have bluetooth but not sure if it’s for input or output comms. The packages are good value though compared to stand alone kit.

Bump in case the morning crowd have any other ideas.

If you buy a decent dedicated unit, chances are it’ll come with an HRM strap anyway. Maybe flog the bluetooth one in that case?

I use a Garmin 910XT which is great for what I want, I do triathlons so it’s ability to measure swimming is very useful. I think it uses Ant+ (which I’m assuming is a form of Bluetooth used by Garmin)to connect the HRM strap to the watch.

Not even the new Garmin Fenix has BT support for HRMs (yet), probably won’t be long though. But this is the only device currently out there that has BT built in

BT is different from ANT+ – completely incompatible unfortunately.

The new Edge 510/810 have Bluetooth – it’s only for connecting to phones for data functions though. Garmin have firmly committed themselves to ANT+. I don’t think we’ll see Bluetooth sensors from them anytime soon.

Coming at it from a technical point of view, for a standalone device, bluetooth has no advantages – it is higher power, so batteries run down quicker, it is often fiddlier to connect, there are more likely to be many other bluetooth devices around you, ant deals with dropped connections in a nicer way, and it offers no better connection or accuracy. Oh, and it is more expensive to license and build.

At some point newer low power bluetooth standards will probably make ant obsolete, and it will become cheaper to implement Bluetooth, but right now the only reason for a bluetooth belt is to talk to a general purpose device like a phone.

Either that or at some point all radios in devices will be software defined meaning it’ll be trivial to support different wireless protocols, at which point phones may support ant or similar.

Coming at it from a technical point of view, for a standalone device, bluetooth has no advantages – it is higher power, so batteries run down quicker,

Joe, I think you’re a bit out of date.

These HRM devices (Polar H7, Wahoo Smart, adidas miCoach etc) already use the new Bluetooth Low Energy protocol (aka “Bluetooth Smart” or BTLE) which is designed for very low-power consumption.

In my opinion Bluetooth Smart is already winning the battle over Ant+. It has much better industry support and more importantly pretty much any modern smartphone already has Bluetooth 4.0 built-in so supports Bluetooth Smart by default, whereas ANT+ requires a different license and tuned radio.

This guy sums it up nicely:
http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2012/07/the-current-state-of-bluetooth-smartlow.html

(speaking as a developer I’ve done Bluetooth Smart work but never been asked about ANT+)

Joe, I think you’re a bit out of date.

So I am. Oops. Amazing how quick things change. Our Bluetooth HRM stuff is clearly at over a year well old out of date, and really does suck.

Over a year? That’s nearly a decade in dog tech years 😉