Pulse-O-Meter - Your ultimate training diary » News

New features in Pulse-O-Meter

ote — Wed, 19 May 2010 11:43:47 +0000

We have been busy working on these new amazing features :

What’s awesome?

Desktop tab. We are getting close to the release of v1.0 of the Mac Desktop version. Today we are unveiling the desktop tab on the homepage. There you can download the newest trial and read about the amazing features, that we have integrated in the desktop version.

New GPX Import. For all of you who just have a GPS enabled device or use Android apps to track their trainings we offer a new GPX import. Pulse-O-Meter will create a training for you and insert the information available in the file in your training (like speed, distance and of course the map).

On multiple request we changed the way you can add and edit your workout types. You can now edit them directly and even mark one of your workout types as default.

Equipment alert. We noticed that one of our nicest features – to track and get alerted about the wear and tear of your equipment – is only used occasionally so we decided to highlight the alert tab on the overview screen. For the alerts to be shown you have to enter the alert thresholds in the equipment settings.

Tell a friend. If you want to spread the word about Pulse-O-Meter you can do so directly from the overview tab. There you will find the “tell a friend” flap which allows you to send an email to your fellow athletes.

What’s fixed?

We added form validation to some of the public pages, like forgot password an registration.
As always, we fixed some minor things on the design, backend and browser specific stuff.\

That’s it for the moment. Send us all thoughts, ideas, question you should have via the all new feedback widget.

Make sure to follow us on Twitter or become a fan of Pulse-O-Meter on Facebook .

Keep enjoying Pulse-O-Meter.

The Pulse-O-Meter team

Pulse-O-Meter @ Bonn-Marathon

ote — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 11:50:11 +0000

Last weekend Pulse-O-Meter’s own Bernd ran the Bonn Half-Marathon and finished at an incredible 1:51:27 h.

Of course his run is available at Pulse-O-Meter ! Check it out.

Thanks to all supporters who made this possible.

Enjoy the pictures from the event.

Pulse-O-Meter supports Facebook Like button

ote — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 08:22:47 +0000

Yesterday Facebook announced the rollout of it’s Like Button. The Like button lets users share pages from any site back to their Facebook profile with one click.

As Pulse-O-Meter already makes use of Facebook connect we are happy to announce, that we are among the first sites to add the Like button to our shared trainings.

Check out this shared training session with the new Facebook Like button.

Improvement of Garmin import

Bernd — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 13:14:44 +0000

Today a new version of the Garmin import (TCX and USB) was released, which imports altitude data in a way that allows Pulse-O-Meter to show it in one diagram with the heart-rate data. So far this was only possible for Polar HRM-file imports.

Pulse-O-Meter altitude chart

FT60 completes the Pulse-O-Meter FlowLink compatibility

Bernd — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 14:31:21 +0000

Last week we integrated the Polar FT60, which was the last Polar FT model that was missing in the Pulse-O-Meter compatibility-list.

Furthermore we made some more changes to the Mac Desktop client. To get a better overview of your training sessions we integrated a calendar.

If you use the desktop client to sync with Pulse-O-Meter.com and you have either a gps-enabled heart rate monitor or you use our newest feature to draw your maps by yourself, you can now also see them inside the desktop version.

New features in Pulse-O-Meter

ote — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 10:12:36 +0000

A few minutes ago we updated Pulse-O-Meter and added a few exciting new features.

NEW – Improved Maps handling (now shows your start point, end point and distance in the map).
NEW – Add track manually
NEW – Share your training sessions via Twitter and Facebook
NEW – Added support for Nike+
NEW – Supported devices (check the compatibility matrix)
Improvement on CSV and PPT import

Polar F11 and FT40 support ready

Bernd — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 18:17:59 +0000

The newest beta-version ot the Pulse-O-Meter desktop client supports FlowLink import from Polar FT40 heart rate monitors and SonicLink import from Polar FT11 models (thanks to Marc for the testdata). As we build bugfix-releases nearly every day, there is no public download at the moment. Just send us an email including your Pulse-O-Meter.com username to: mac@pulse-o-meter.com if you would like to test it.

At the moment the Pulse-O-Meter desktop client supports the following heart rate monitors:

SonicLink:

RS200 / CS200
S410 / S510
F6 / F7 / F11

FlowLink:

RS300X
FT40 / FT80

The missing FT models will follow soon. Please check the complete device compatibility here.

User-friendly statistics

ote — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 18:42:00 +0000

It seems like an easy task, but it isn’t. Creating user-friendly statistics is really hard work.

After working for quite a while with our statistics module we decided to re-design them a few days ago. The reason was that the results where sometimes quite hard to explain to users. Even though the results where correct the representation of the data was sometimes confusing.

The next version of the statistics will be a lot easier to understand right away.

Pulse-O-Meter desktop (Mac) goes Beta

ote — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 17:21:12 +0000

After weeks of development we are happy to announce the start of the beta phase of Pulse-O-Meter’s (Mac) desktop version.

We will ship the first version of the desktop version in the next hours. This version will be shipped only to a small group of individuals. If you want to be part of this beta phase, contact us via this link.

The features of the desktop client:

Import directly from your Polar devices using SonicLink and FlowLink
Import, Manage, Analyze your data offline
Full bi-directional sync support with Pulse-O-Meter’s web application

For all Polar users: You can get rid of Bootcamp or any Windows installation on your Mac to download your data from Polar’s devices! Pulse-O-Meter offers you a native Mac application which supports both sync protocols available for Polar devices.

Please note that Pulse-O-Meter desktop is only available for Mac OS X.

Please check device compatibility here.

New features in Pulse-O-Meter

ote — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 17:09:28 +0000

Yesterday we updated Pulse-O-Meter and added a few exciting new features.

NEW – Direct upload from Garmin devices (Garmin Communicator)
NEW – Pulse data generation for devices that don’t support pulse curve generation
NEW – Added altitude over pulse diagram
NEW – Import overview – you now have the chance to edit your data directly after importing
Improvement of pulse data handling

Garmin import directly via USB

Bernd — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 21:08:13 +0000

Importing trainings from Garmin devices to Pulse-O-Meter is much easier now. You can download the data directly from your heart-rate monitor to www.Pulse-O-Meter.com as we integrated the Garmin browser plugin.

Just connect your device via USB, start the import, choose the trainings you want to receive and a few seconds later you can start analyzing your trainings. The plugin is available for Windows and Mac browsers (download here). Please contact us if you encounter any problem using this feature.

Integration of Polar FlowLink is in progress

Bernd — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 17:29:57 +0000

As FlowLink seems to be the preferred way of all new Polar models to communicate, we started to integrate this protocol into Pulse-O-Meter desktop.

We are planning to support all FlowLink models (FT7, FA20, FT40, FT60, FT80 and RS300X) in the future. Due to very few documentation, this as a very hard and often frustrating work, but we are confident to get this done soon. We started our work with the Polar RS300X. This will be the first FlowLink watch we will support in our next Pulse-O-Meter desktop release.

Polar F7 import supported via SonicLink

Bernd — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:30:04 +0000

Last week we added SonicLink support for Polar F7 Models to Pulse-O-Meter Desktop. As we do not have an F6 or an F11 watch to test we are not able to integrate these models at the moment. So if you own a Polar F6 or F11 and you want to use Pulse-o-Meter, just contact us. Some minutes or your time to create some recordings of the SonicLink sound are enough.

Pulse-O-Meter goes online

Bernd — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 17:30:11 +0000

All tries to develop a direct synchronization-mechanism between pulse-o-meter desktop and an iPhone client failed. Some were to complicated for the user, some were not allowed for iPhone apps, and some were to hard do implement. The last an best solution is to build a full featured Pulse-O-Meter online version. As this is really a bunch of work and I still have a job to pay my bills, Rafael joined the project and we started to build Pulse-O-Meter online last week. Some features we plan are:

Manage your training data online in your browser
Synchronize your data with Pulse-O-Meter desktop
Import trainings from many different file-formats (Polar, Garmin, Nike+, …)
Analyze your performance with statistics and diagrams
Much more…

Bonjour

Bernd — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 08:20:53 +0000

In the last weeks I spent much time in implementing a synchronization mechanism that is flexible, powerful and easy to use. I decided to use Bonjour to manage the connection between the desktop version of pulse-o-meter and the iPhone version I am developing at the moment. This is a zero-confguration-network. You as user do not need any knowledge of networking, FTP, or other protocols. All you need is an iPhone that is connected to the same network (via WIFI) as your Mac. This is the same technique Apple tools like iPhoto or iTunes use to commnicate with external devices.

Back to pulse-o-meter

Bernd — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 08:19:50 +0000

After some oter projects are released now I am thinking forward to finish the pulse-o-meter iPhone client. The biggest problem in this first, never released version is the synchronization between the desktop and iPhone version. The FTP-solution that is implemented at the moment is very complicated because every user needs an FTP-Server to exchange the data. At the moment I am evaluating some other techniques, that will make synchronization much easier.

Performance and Bugfixes

Bernd — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 08:17:17 +0000

After the yesterdays release I found two bugs which had to be fixed immediately. A user sent me a hrm-file which contained data from the Polar RS800. When pulse-o-meter needed 25 seconds to load this file I knew that something must be wrong. After two hours of research and debugging I could increase the performance from 25 to 0.3 seconds. The second problem with yesterdays version is that the volume-indicator did not work all the time, but this is also fixed now.
If you download pulse-o-meter 0.9.2 now you will get version “0.9.2 build 2” which is much much better than the build of yesterday!

pulse-o-meter needs Leopard

Bernd — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 08:15:40 +0000

Some users asked me if it is possible to run pulse-o-meter on Tiger, but after some research I have to say: Sorry… No. pulse-o-meter is my first Objective-C application. In my regular job I only work with J2EE. So when I started to develop pulse-o-meter I wasn’t aware that some of the Objective-C features I use are not compatible to Tiger and older versions of OS X. So the only chance to run pulse-o-meter will be mac OS 10.5 or later.

Next feature: Volume indicator for import

Bernd — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 13:15:01 +0000

Some users reported problems with the SonicLink import. They had problems to find the correct distance between watch and microphone, because pulse-o-meter
gives no feedback if the signal is to loud or to muted. So I decided to add an import volume indicator like the original Polar software has one. As I am not an audio-programmer it took some time to find out how to extract the volume information, but the first steps are done and I hope I can release pulse-o-meter 0.9.2 including this feature soon.

Integration of RS200 and Polar HRM import complete

Bernd — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 22:49:42 +0000

Last night I finished the integration of the RS200 SonicLink importer and the Polar HRM-file importer. Therefore the first version of pulse-o-meter is feature-complete now. I will have to spend some time for beautification and testing, but I hope I can finish the first trial version next week.

All the testers who contacted me will get a trial version as soon as possible.

No Nike+ iPhone

Bernd — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 12:48:46 +0000

As Steve Jobs presented some new Apple gadgets last week, I was not the only one who was confused and disappointed afterwards. Here are the facts:

Nike+ works with all iPod nano models
Nike+ works with the iPod Touch (2nd generation)
Nike+ does NOT work with the iPod Touch (1st generation)
Nike+ does NOT work with any iPhone
The iPod Touch 2nd generation has an integrated receiver, so you only need the sensor. For all the Nano’s you need the receiver

This looks like there is a real hardware incompatibility between Nike+ and the iPhone, so I might have to abandon the hope of using it with my iPhone.

Polar presents FlowLink (PC only)

Bernd — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 23:47:52 +0000

Some days ago Polar presented some new watches. The models FT40, FT60 and FT80 are quite colorful and have some nice features, but more important for me is the new connection deviceFlowLink, that shall make it more easy to transfer the training data to a computer. Unfortunately, only Window is supported.
I hope anybody can persuade Polar to start supporting Mac and OS X. Nobody wants to use Windows on a Mac to synchronize the training data!
So far I could not find any technical specifications, so I do not know how it works and if it can be reverse engineered.

Please Polar, give us poor Mac developers a “Device Interface Toolkit” as you offer it to our Windows colleagues! We want to have more time left to make sports instead of spending it to get our training data on our Mac!

Refacturing, refacturing, refacturing…

Bernd — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 22:42:53 +0000

Last sunday I had some time to work on the integration of the RS200 SonicLink module. When I started I recognized that although the software is quite young some major refactorings are necessary to keep the code well structured and easy to understand. As I do not work on the software every day, it is very important, to have good sourecode, to prevent frustration, errors and delays.
As the sunday was over pulse-o-meter had a completely new XML-engine and a new more flexible importer structure.
With this new structure the RS200 import should be done until the end of this week. After that there will be some beautification work on the user interface. Then the first test candidate is ready to be tested.

HRM file importer integrated – first tests passed

Bernd — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 19:28:49 +0000

As some readers sent me HRM-files from different Polar watches (Thank you very much for this!), I was able to finish the importer and integrate it to pulse-o-meter. I testet it with following watches so far: Polar S410, S610 and S625. All files could be imported without problems. At the moment only the basic information is imported, but this will be improved soon. The next steps will be the integration of the RS200 SonicLink import and further improvements of the HRM file importer.
I also spend some time to recompile all frameworks to be able to run the application on pre-intel Macs too.

So far the pulse-o-meter desktop-client has the following features:

Import training data via SonicLink (S410, RS200)
Import Polar HRM files (all models)
Edit data
Show pulse graph if available
Sync data to an FTP-server to use it on an iPhone

The iPhone-client is still a prototype with the following features:

Sync data from an FTP-server
Show data
Show pulse graph if available

Polar HRM file importer ready to be tested

Bernd — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 16:26:53 +0000

As the integration of the Polar RS200 and RS200sd is on hold as long as I have no watch to test, I started to implement an importer, that allows to import training data stored in the Polar HRM file format. This format is used in all Polar software products. The data includes the exercise information transferred from the following Polar products:

Accurex Plus, Polar XTrainer Plus, S210, S410, S510, S520, S610, S610i, S710, S710i, S720i, S810, S810i, E600, AXN50021, AXN700, S625X, S725X, S725.

I’m not sure if the new RSxxx models use this format too, but I will try to find out.

The importer works fine with my S410. Now I need testdata from different models to ensure that it works well. If you have one, please contact me.

This feature will allow you to import all your old training data records into pulse-o-meter and manage them on your iPhone.

RS200 training data imported successfully

Bernd — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 12:27:49 +0000

As I found a collegue, who uses a RS200, I was able to test the open source “RS200 decoder” I ported to OS X. After some problems with the audio-format, I was able to “read” the SonicLink audiostream successully. Now that I know the ported code works, I can start to analyze the data the RS200 delivers and integrate the importer to the pulse-o-meter application.

Integration of RS200 and RS200sd started

Bernd — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 08:22:45 +0000

At the moment pulse-o-meter only supports direct import from Polar S410 watches. To integrate RS200 and RS200sd models I started to port an open-soure decoder that was written for windows and linux to OS X. This should be done in some days, as I only have to change some file-handling and audio-device aspects.

Call for testdata

Bernd — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 08:20:35 +0000

As the desktop application as well as the iPhone client work well with my Polar S410, I need testdata from other Polar watches, to ensure that they work fine as well. To test the import of data from different training-software, I need HRM Data files from all polar models. For the direct download from other SonicLink Watches I need audiofiles that contain the datastream of the watch, or even better a Polar RS200 itself.

Welcome to pulse-o-meter

Bernd — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 20:05:00 +0000

When I bought a macbook in december last year, I surfed to the Polar website to download the mac-version of Polar Personal Trainer that I had been using to manage my training data on my Windows PC before. But as you probably know I couldn’t find anything. I started to search for third party software but there wasn’t anything that was cheap and easy to use. What I found was some open-source C-code that decoded the audio-stream generated by the Polar watches that support SonicLink. That’s why I started to build pulse-o-meter. 3 months later I bought an iPhone and, of course, I want to have my data on the iPhone, too! That’s how I started to build the iPhone-client. Both, the OS X version and the iPhone version are not finished, but they have all the basic features and I already use them to mange my training-data. If you want to test a trial version of pulse-o-meter yourself, just contact me!