[Sportsandrec] My talking HR monitor

[Jacob Struiksma]

where did you get this from?
from
Jacob Struiksma

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Thornbury, Kelly" <kthornbury at bresnan.net>
To: <sportsandrec at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Saturday, December 13, 2008 12:18 PM
Subject: [Sportsandrec] My talking HR monitor


I just received my Oregon Scientific heart rate monitor, and thought I would 
share my opinions.

First, I purchased the chest strap monitor with the FM radio. The seek for 
stations jumps from one signal to another, so there is no fine adjustments, 
and the stations out here aren't real good, but I ordered this option 
anyway. I played with the chest strap for half an hour before realizing that 
the radio part was still in the box. This unit clips to your belt, and is 
hooked up to the chest strap, then the headphones connect to the radio. This 
allows you to hear the monitor information while listening to the radio. 
With the right cords, namely a male to male headphone wire, I think I can 
wire in my Trekker (what I use to listen to music) instead of the radio and 
still use the unit, but this experiment hasn't happened just yet.

So, the chest strap...My first worry was that the set up wouldn't be 
accessible...the salesman kindly pointed out that it probably was because 
there is no display for the unit. With some patients, it was all accessible, 
but have someone read the instructions or something, because doing it the 
way I did (trial and error) took some patients and time.

So, the unit can be set up for different training modes: manual, where you 
set your upper and lower limits; or automatic mode where you put in the 
exercise type (walking, jogging, or running...sorry, no biking I guess). I 
haven't used automatic mode, but I imagine it has different preset HR 
ranges. You set up user demographics (height, weight, gender, and age), and 
workout timers...there is a stop watch or a count down timer where you can 
set warm-up, exercise, and recovery time intervals. There is also a memory 
section that remembers the last workout (I think that is the limit of the 
memory), and records how long you were in the target zone, average heart 
rate, and the HR range during recovery (which is also an important 
evaluation of fitness). There is a three step volume control, and you can 
set the interval of HR announcements (you can also check manually at any 
time).

One annoying feature (for those of us who don't like to be nagged), is the 
voice that tells you that you are not in your target zone and you need to 
work harder.

I have yet to test it against other methods for accuracy, but I found it to 
be pretty accessible and will be a useful tool for information I previously 
had to track with radial pulses and stop watches.

This unit was around $85 or so, and the model without the radio was about 
$44 I think, and the website I ordered from shipped for free, and it only 
took a few days or so.

I would be interested in hearing about any other units listers have tried, 
but so far I really don't have any hard complaints about this HR monitor, 
and its much easier to use by myself than my Polar.

Kelly Thornbury

.
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