S9Peak with Suunto HR SmartSensor Also Failed

TonyG

@suzzlo thank you, Yeah I too am at a loss, I bought the Suunto belt for the memory to avoid this very situation, which in it self was a sticking plaster trying to get around an existing problem with S9 Series watches (not recovering from dropped R_R Packets), as such I feel very let down by Suunto products. TRUST is a big thing for me when it comes to watch tech especially when I spend what I consider to be premium money on their products.

Over the last 3 - 5 years (cant remember when I bought the spartan) I have bought from Suunto
Spartan Ultra Baro
1 Suunto Belt only
S9Baro
S9Peak
2 Watch straps @ £60 each (unbelievable cost)
1 Suunto SmartSensor
all told aprox. £1400 worth of products

Due to Hr issues, lack of website, abandonment of Spartan series (when so much was promised at launch) last night I bought
1 Coros Apex Pro (which I got as a sale bargain) - dip my toe elsewhere with another brand for the first time since 1997 see if the grass is any greener; maybe it is, maybe not - but I can’t justify spending money with Suunto at this time

dulko79

A bit off topic question concerning HR belt. Can Suunto sensor be bought without strap? I would like to buy strap in L size and additionally sensor. On Suunto website sensor is availabe only with strap in M size.

DMytro

@dulko79 in principle you could
https://www.suunto.com/de-de/Produkte/Herzfrequenzgurte/Suunto-Smart-Sensor-Modul/
but it seems, suunto no longer offers this option.
You may check out some second hand sensors though, I bought just the module on Ebay for 20 eur and then purchased the new strap in a store.

Dimitrios Kanellopoulos

@tonyg it’s ok to not spend money on Suunto and check Coros . I do wonder how the HR story goes over with Coros just out of interest. I don’t work on this department so I cannot help but as a developer that knows a bit about hr I am curious.

I hope you can come back after a few with some feedback about the 2 brands.

Enjoy your purchase. The coros apex pro is a good watch for sure !

Happy new year for now.

TonyG

@dimitrios-kanellopoulos Happy New Year all & @Dimitrios-Kanellopoulos you are very much a great asset to Suunto and its users
I will indeed do a comparison between the two brands
when I have tested thoroughly.
Best wishes

dombo

@tonyg if you still have polar H10, you can connect two devices at the same time, so you can see if other (coros) will display HR when S9P shows nothing.

TonyG

@dombo ah! Good point, definitely a good experiment

margusl

Whatever that issue was, seems that it started around 3.6km / minute 22 and looks like you also stopped there. Do you remember why or what did you do at that point? Added / removed layers, adjusted the HRM belt or something like that?

As Sports Tracker kindly shares pretty much all the workout details (kmh… down to the serial number of the watch… ) , I played around a bit with your HR and IBI values from that activity:
https://gist.github.com/marguslt/9608011e5aab4ff0f946097203da732a

Blue is unfiltered HR stream, orange is IBI(RR) dataset and green shows successive differences of IBI values (it’s actual mean is 0, but it was shifted to +0.34 for convenience ). Discrete IBI points are connected only to make changes in noise level more visible. Ofc no telling if/what kind of processing this data stream has been passed through. For example maximum IBI value was 60s, there’s no way it could be a random value - is this some kind of fallback for H10, for the watch or added later by Suunto services?

Kind of expected IBI & HR variation for first 22 minutes, then something drives it bananas until IBI stops and HR gets locked at whatever value it was at. Though no idea why it dropped where it did, readings seem get more stable minutes before and it’s actually the end where it gets really fuzzy.

Just for reference, this is how one of my activities recorded with A3P and H10 looks like (scales and axis ranges are different)

Width of the band showing successive ibi differences remains fairly stable regardless of heart rate, no sudden jumps.

TonyG

@margusl said in S9Peak with Suunto HR SmartSensor Also Failed:

Whatever that issue was, seems that it started around 3.6km / minute 22 and looks like you also stopped there. Do you remember why or what did you do at that point? Added / removed layers, adjusted the HRM belt or something like that?

Thank you v much for taking a closer look at this very much appreciated.
Looking at the map; at 22mins I stopped to cross a road, a small crossing so I don’t think I paused the watch (which I do if I am waiting for lights to alert me to cross), definitely no adjustments to belt or any layers added or removed, this activity was undertaken by using the Brand New Suunto SmartSensor Belt / Suunto 9 Peak combo.

I have just done a run with H10 Belt and Suunto 9 Baro and from what I can see; no issues with Hr :

https://www.sports-tracker.com/workout/tonygray190/61d0645abc8b8b1fbd6fbd1f

I did however soak the strap in water before putting it on; wouldn’t want to do that in freezing conditions, but as it is record breaking temps here in UK I thought I may as well. it does add a couple of variables which doesn’t help with any comparisons.

I also have A3P and it is an amazing watch, one to keep.

Dimitrios Kanellopoulos

If it helps we don’t process ibi / RR data

Also if it helps the S9s have the same software , however they have a different BT chip , faster on the s9p.