Bluetooth FTMS support?
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Hello,
I know Garmin has support for Bluetooth FTMS treadmills, bikes, elliptical, or rowing machines. It seems that Amazfit is also adding FTMS support to their watches.
This is interesting because in a treadmill you can have the real speed/slope synced with your watch. It’s one of the reasons that people buy FTMS treadmills for things like Zwift.
Has anybody experience with Suunto with FTMS?
Thanks
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@dreamer_ said in Bluetooth FTMS support?:
Hello,
I know Garmin has support for Bluetooth FTMS treadmills, bikes, elliptical, or rowing machines. It seems that Amazfit is also adding FTMS support to their watches.
This is interesting because in a treadmill you can have the real speed/slope synced with your watch. It’s one of the reasons that people buy FTMS treadmills for things like Zwift.
Has anybody experience with Suunto with FTMS?
Thanks
I don’t think that’s true for Garmin? Garmin has ANT+ FE-C support for somethings, but not bluetooth FTMS, particularly for rowing machines.
https://support.garmin.com/en-US/?faq=rlynVxyyoq9dcSZGw5YFo8
“ Some Garmin watches have the ability to connect to an indoor rowing machine that supports ANT+ connectivity. Compatible watches may include data fields in the Row Indoor activity profile such as Distance, Pace, Power, and Stroke Distance.”
Some Coros watches can connect to a rower by bluetooth FTMS though.
For the Wahoo KICKR Run treadmill, my understanding is Garmin also uses ANT+ there, and Wahoo/Coros are working on a special bluetooth protocol there such that Coros will not use FTMS either, but FTMS does exist on the Run and can be used say in Zwift.
Can you show a resource that tells which Garmin watches can take a bluetooth FTMS connection to a gym machine of any kind?
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@raven said in Bluetooth FTMS support?:
@dreamer_ said in Bluetooth FTMS support?:
Hello,
I know Garmin has support for Bluetooth FTMS treadmills, bikes, elliptical, or rowing machines. It seems that Amazfit is also adding FTMS support to their watches.
This is interesting because in a treadmill you can have the real speed/slope synced with your watch. It’s one of the reasons that people buy FTMS treadmills for things like Zwift.
Has anybody experience with Suunto with FTMS?
Thanks
I don’t think that’s true for Garmin? Garmin has ANT+ FE-C support for somethings, but not bluetooth FTMS, particularly for rowing machines.
https://support.garmin.com/en-US/?faq=rlynVxyyoq9dcSZGw5YFo8
“ Some Garmin watches have the ability to connect to an indoor rowing machine that supports ANT+ connectivity. Compatible watches may include data fields in the Row Indoor activity profile such as Distance, Pace, Power, and Stroke Distance.”
Some Coros watches can connect to a rower by bluetooth FTMS though.
For the Wahoo KICKR Run treadmill, my understanding is Garmin also uses ANT+ there, and Wahoo/Coros are working on a special bluetooth protocol there such that Coros will not use FTMS either, but FTMS does exist on the Run and can be used say in Zwift.
Can you show a resource that tells which Garmin watches can take a bluetooth FTMS connection to a gym machine of any kind?
Support is through connectIQ. I.E: https://apps.garmin.com/es-ES/apps/bc6d8a92-0216-42c9-b422-32183ceb00b8
There are several apps.
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@dreamer_ said in Bluetooth FTMS support?:
@raven said in Bluetooth FTMS support?:
@dreamer_ said in Bluetooth FTMS support?:
Hello,
I know Garmin has support for Bluetooth FTMS treadmills, bikes, elliptical, or rowing machines. It seems that Amazfit is also adding FTMS support to their watches.
This is interesting because in a treadmill you can have the real speed/slope synced with your watch. It’s one of the reasons that people buy FTMS treadmills for things like Zwift.
Has anybody experience with Suunto with FTMS?
Thanks
I don’t think that’s true for Garmin? Garmin has ANT+ FE-C support for somethings, but not bluetooth FTMS, particularly for rowing machines.
https://support.garmin.com/en-US/?faq=rlynVxyyoq9dcSZGw5YFo8
“ Some Garmin watches have the ability to connect to an indoor rowing machine that supports ANT+ connectivity. Compatible watches may include data fields in the Row Indoor activity profile such as Distance, Pace, Power, and Stroke Distance.”
Some Coros watches can connect to a rower by bluetooth FTMS though.
For the Wahoo KICKR Run treadmill, my understanding is Garmin also uses ANT+ there, and Wahoo/Coros are working on a special bluetooth protocol there such that Coros will not use FTMS either, but FTMS does exist on the Run and can be used say in Zwift.
Can you show a resource that tells which Garmin watches can take a bluetooth FTMS connection to a gym machine of any kind?
Support is through connectIQ. I.E: https://apps.garmin.com/es-ES/apps/bc6d8a92-0216-42c9-b422-32183ceb00b8
There are several apps.
Isn’t that like SuuntoPlus? Someone has a Concept2 connection to Sunnto that way.
https://forum.suunto.com/topic/5967/suunto-and-concept-2-indoor-rowing
I don’t consider either that or ConnectIQ a real native solution though. It’s like an Apple person getting additional apps to use for fitness tracking when they aren’t satisfied with what Apple provides in their own apps. It’s fine but not the same as the company doing it properly themselves.
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@raven it’s not native, it’s somehow like using S+ . But the thing is that it works and that’s the key.
Amazfit also added native FTMS support for rowing machines and it’s very likely they are adding support for the rest types.I think this is very interesting and should be looked at. Perhaps through S+ .
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@dreamer_ said in Bluetooth FTMS support?:
@raven it’s not native, it’s somehow like using S+ . But the thing is that it works and that’s the key.
Amazfit also added native FTMS support for rowing machines and it’s very likely they are adding support for the rest types.I think this is very interesting and should be looked at. Perhaps through S+ .
The problem for me is for rowing there’s “infrastructure” I need in addition to bringing in the data. For example, I use a rowing FTP of 160w, and have established power zones. On a site like intervals.icu, I can look at my session in ways like “time in power zones,” which doesn’t work if the ecosystem doesn’t allow one to establish a rowing FTP separate from your cycling FTP. Currently what I do is use intervals.icu for my rowing analysis, then use the training load it determines for me and “backport” it to Suunto be changing my TSS manually.
While systems like ConnectIQ and SuuntoPlus can be useful, if Garmin and Suunto use that as an excuse to not have better native support for things, and there’s limitations because of this, then that’s suboptimal.
I concur a feature of using bluetooth FTMS to get data from gym machines is useful, and an area sports watches have largely ignored. I suspect it’s because they started as focusing on outdoor activities so dedicated GPS, etc has been the focus. Right now for rowing machines Suunto uses accelerometers to determine stroke count, which works decently and matches my system, then uses that to estimate distance, which overestimates for me by a large amount. And it cannot determine power this way of course, and can only guess at pace if it corresponds to cadence. However, something like “power strokes” at 300w (1:45/500m) at a low 20spm cadence, then more moderate 175w (2:06/500m) at a moderate 24spm cadence won’t ever be determined correctly without a connection to the machine.
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@raven this is very nice post.
My use case is the treadmill. Usually when you run on a treadmill you get a final constant pace in the watch. You cannot see the speed variations and/or slopes you had in the workout and that is not transmitted later to the application. The workaround is the foot pod (i.e Stryd) but even (the very expensive) Stryd fails.
If the watch is able to see the real speed (and speed changes) or the slope, that changes everything. Because that means real data, not an estimation (with manual changes or created by a foot pod).
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My experiences with treadmills have been poor in the past and generally I’d prefer a footpod. Back before the pandemic in 2020, I’d often do indoor running at university gym and at that time I only had an Apple Watch, which can estimate pace/distance decently when you do sufficient outdoor running to calibrate it. For example, if I ran an indoor 400m track five times, I’d expect 2000m and I’d get something like 2012m, and that often would be explained by lane switches during the session. Meanwhile, a similar run on a university treadmill would always give me something like 2000m on the watch and 2600-2800m on the treadmill, just vastly giving me too optimistic results.
I’m also very familiar with certain paces, so if I wanted to do a steady state effort at 5:00/km for example, setting the tread for 12kmh (which is another problem, most use “speed” rather than “pace,” and for outdoors running, one typically uses pace) would give a result on my watch that I’d be doing closer to 4:00-4:15/km pace, and internally, I knew I was faster than the 5:00/km pace I wanted. These kind of results are often the case when I bother to use a treadmill in a hotel gym when I travel. Most just give faster results that I don’t trust.
I also have a sort of philosophical problem with how treadmills give data. Imagine a treadmill is moving at a decent speed, and I put my hands on the arm rails, and use my arms to muscle up and my feet dangle in the air, no longer running and not connected to the treadmill belt. The tread is still in motion and still marking pace and distance. I could even position myself to just get off the treadmill and let it run, gathering “free” distance if I wished.
Now, it’s not that I think people are “cheating” the results of treads, but the example is to illustrate that what is being measured isn’t the runner as much as it is the treadmill. Meanwhile, with my indoor bike, if I stop pedaling the bike comes to a stop. On my rowing machine, if I stop my effort, again the flywheel comes to a stop. So it seems to me the equivalent for indoor running is “if my feet stop, metrics stop” which is where I see a footpod as being a better way to track.
However, that doesn’t help with the issue of elevation grade changes. One solution is to use a manual treadmill like a Woodway: https://www.woodway.com/manual-treadmills/ and now there’s no motor moving the belt, and these type of treads typically don’t have an adjustable incline. It would also solve an issue of needing a good electrical outlet in older homes that may not be wired for that; simply avoid the need for electricity.
Still, most people don’t have manual treadmills, and likely have more faith in their treadmill metrics than I do. Perhaps people who own treads in their home are better at keeping them calibrated, whereas the gyms I’ve been to do not do so. Also, if someone mostly runs on a tread and not outdoors, then it doesn’t matter if the metrics are correct as long as they are consistent, I suppose. So sure, I’d like to see sports watches get the data off of them by bluetooth FTMS. Let the user decide if the metrics are valid.
