I’ve had a few customers recently asking about the status of support for the Suunto HRMs in the latest release of iSMARTtrain, as there’s no mention of it on the website.

Basically, iSMARTtrain V3.0.7 supports the Suunto T3, T4 & T6. The reason that it’s not mentioned on the website is that, during the beta period, we had a number of users who found the software just didn’t work – the software simply refused to ‘see’ their Suunto HRM. I’ve been unable to get to the bottom of the problem, as we’ve had two users with identical setups, one of whom can get the download to work, and the other who can’t. And, of course, it always works for me! I’ve got no idea how many users are successfully using the software with the Suunto devices, as I only hear from the ones who have a problem. Because of this unknown factor, we’ve decided for the moment to simply not list compatibility on our website.

If you want to know if iSMARTtrain will work with your Suunto device on your Mac, simply download the application from our website, and try it. The software is fully functional without buying a serial number. You’ll also need to download the appropriate driver (T3/T4 or T6) from the drivers section of the website (http://www.ismarttrain.com/drivers/).

Let me know if you’re successful or not…

Technorati Tags: iSMARTtrain, Mac, Suunto

The Garmin Forerunner 110 isn’t listed in the download dialog as a supported device. However, the device appears as a USB drive when it’s connected to the Mac, containing its activities as .FIT files. Since this is the same as the Garmin Edge 500, the FR110 can be used by selecting ‘USB’ from the ‘Ports’ popup menu and ‘Garmin Edge 500′ from the ‘Device’ menu.

If there’s any problems using it, let me know or post in our forums.

You should be prompted to download the latest version when iSMARTtrain starts, or you can download it from http://www.ismarttrain.com/downloads.php.

Download the latest beta from: http://www.ismarttrain.com/Beta/

Barring any other major bugs, V3.0.7 will be out as a final release after the weekend.

It will also now will happily co-exist with Polar Websync software. In previous releases, downloadng from a Flowlink device would fail if Polar’s ‘polard’ daemon was running in the background. The software now stops the daemon from running before downloading and restarts it once the download has completed. It is still necessary to quit the Websync software that’s running in the menubar, though – simply section quit from the menu. You will be asked for your system password when the daemon is stopped and started.

Download from the usual place - http://www.ismarttrain.com/Beta/

As usual, any problems/questions, etc., please email me or post in our forums.

Download from the usual place - http://www.ismarttrain.com/Beta/

As usual, any problems/questions, etc., please email me or post in our forums.

Beta 20 of V3.0.6 is out now. Most of the changes are bug fixes, and the introduction of support for Garmin/ANT .FIT files.

Downloading directly from the Garmin Edge 500 has also been added – however, I don’t have a unit to test with, so I’ve based to code on a description of the directory structure I found in the Garmin support forums. If there’s any problems, with this, you’ll be able to import the .fit files by dragging them directly from the unit’s directory into iSMARTtrain.

If there’s any problems with the .FIT importing, please send me a copy of the file in question, and i’ll hopefully be able to reproduce the problem and fix it.

Download from the usual place - http://www.ismarttrain.com/Beta/

As usual, any problems/questions, etc., please email me or post in our forums.

The FT80 is Polar’s top-of-the-range “Fitness” watch, positioned above the FT40 & FT60. Like the other models in the range, it uses Polar’s FlowLink interface to download its data.

First, the good points: The watch is fairly easy to use, even if you’ve never used one of Polar’s devices before, following their fairly standard layout of menus and options. It’s got a nice clear white-on-black display. The FlowLink interface works very well, even if the technology seems like a step back to Polar’s interfaces of the late ‘90s. It’s also got some training features such as the STAR training program which guides you to weekly targets, and strength training guidance which tells you when your body is ready for the next set.

Now the bad: This is the only model in the FT range that records continuous heart rate data, and I was surprised to find that it doesn’t record continuous speed data, only a max & average speed, plus the distance. The S1 footpod is quite big (it dates back to the release of the S625x in 2005), compared with the competition from Suunto and Garmin, and Polar’s own S3. The FT80 also works with the G1 GPS unit, but this only records speed and distance data, not positional data. Another surprising omission was that there’s no laps function – the cheaper RS300x has both manual and auto lap functions (although not continuous recording of HR data).

Downloading the data using the FlowLink interface is a pleasure to do working well on both Windows, using Polar’s WebSync software and iSMARTtrain on the Mac. Given the hassles we’ve had trying to make IrDA work on the Mac, I hope Polar move more of their CS & RS models to this interface. I noted that the new CS500 will use something called ‘Datalink’ which I can only hope will be as easy to support on the Mac as Flowlink.

Overall, the FT80 is a nice HRM, but considering its limited features (no continuous speed recording, no laps) and its price, it’s quite expensive. In the UK costs £234, while the top-of-the-range RS800cs is only £50 more at £285 (prices from http://www.heartratemonitor.co.uk/).

Download from the usual place – http://www.ismarttrain.com/Beta/

As usual, any problems, etc., email me or post in our forums.