r-r intervals - Polar RS800 - Suunto T6C
A useful question asked today by a customer regarding Polar RS800 and Suunto T6C and their use of, and analysis of R-R heart rate data - with regard to heart rate variability.
I have been looking at Suunto T series because of the R-R facility. (1) How does this compare to Polar’s R-R facility.(2) How does the software differ between T6 and T3 (not really interested in T4 Coach system).
Thanks for the mail regarding R-R analysis.1) The big difference is that the RS800 Pro Trainer software gives you ACCESS to the R-R data - so you can extract the RAW R-R information
The Suunto Training Manager does NOT
<<CORRECTION>> it IS possible to extract the RAW R-R data from a T6C or Memory Belt using TRAINING MANAGER software, please see the COMMENTS posting by our kind contributors. I stand corrected - thanks JamieB 
(10-07-09)
HOWEVER….
Suunto analyses the R-R data it has stored and outputs TRAINING EFFECT and EPOC data to give the user a very clear understanding of the WORK LOAD.
That means you have TRAINING EFFECT data for EACH and EVERY session you perform, so it is clear to see when you are over training
The Polar has the OWN OPTIMISER test. This is performed voluntarily and, upon completion, gives the user an idea of their current wellbeing - over trained, under trained, balanced training state etc.
Both are GOOOD.
For the average user, TRAINING EFFECT is useful and gives immediate review of progress and workload
The Polar RS800 is possibly better suited to the purist, the user that wants access to the RAW DATA.
2) Please review the SCREEN GRABS on these pages:
Suunto TRAINING MANAGER software with TRAINING EFFECT and TIME versus HEART RATE curves
Suunto TRAINING MANAGER LITE software - does NOT give time versus heart rate curves
The T3/4 does NOT give a TIME versus HEART RATE curve.. the T6 does
www.heartratemonitor.co.uk
Hope we can help
This entry was posted on 17/06/2008 at 04:33 pm and is filed under HRM questions, Heart Rate Monitors. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.
18/06/2008 at 06:56 am
Love the idea of being able to get the raw data. It’d be really cool to design a web application around this, where people can easily upload raw data from their workouts (sort of like Nike+, but with much more comprehensive data, and from all kinds of different workouts!)
That could become an online platform to build applications on that slice and dice the data different ways, make recommendations on how to train, visualize improvement over time, etc.
19/07/2008 at 05:07 pm
The raw rr data for Sunnto t6/t6c is available if you export a session as XML (STE file). It contains both the original rr data, and corrected values - those that were used in the training effect calculations.
10/12/2008 at 02:59 am
atg1972 can you please help me out, I need the raw R-R data but cannot access any session info as an XML - the ste wont uncompress in dreamweaver.
Your assistance would be greatly appreciated.
09/07/2009 at 10:27 pm
Using training manager, you can get raw data from the watches…but the trick is opening the STE file (which is really just a zipped xml.) Below I have cut and paste some step by step directions I have made for when I forget how to do it again.
ow to get Raw data from Suunto file.
Step 1.
Right click on Suunto file to export in training manager. If you have many files, you can highlight all of them and export together.
Step 2. Save files to a location you will remember
Step 3. GO to the folder where you saved files and right click to look at properties. Where it says “type of file” STE….”opens with” click the change button and select your zip program file (i.e. winzip or zipcentral etc).
Step 4. Double click file so that it opens in Zip program
Step 5. select Extract, with setting on “all files”
This will allow you to open the files as XML files.
Once open right click on file and choose “export to microsoft excel”
Click import
Rename the file
change columns (the HR, alt etc. is far right)
save
22/09/2009 at 08:17 pm
Just a note: the R-R data provided in all of the Suunto file formats exported by TrainingManager are *not* complete R-R data. The data points in those files are always at 2-second intervals, but R-R is, by definition, at variable intervals. A true raw R-R data set would be a sequence of numbers indicating exactly when each beat was detected, regardless of when it came. The implication of this is that the data output by Suunto are interpolated values: somewhere (either the watch or TrainingManager), something is measuring the irregular R-R sequence, interpolating it, and then sampling the interpolated result every 2 seconds to produce the data actually written to the files.
Why would that matter? Because the exactly approach is a critical issue for heart rate variability analysis. Interpolation and sampling can introduce bias and other problems. I would really like to know how exactly Suunto is producing the 2-second samples, but so far have not found information about that. Does anyone here know? (I would like even more to be able to get the real raw R-R, but that appears to be impossible.)
@burr4: Thanks for that info; I was wondering how to read those .ste files. I didn’t think it was so easy as just unzipping them!
Best regards.
24/09/2009 at 08:49 pm
Correction to my comments above: I was wrong about Suunto not reporting complete R-R data — the data is there. There is both these 2-second samples and the raw R-R. The raw data is at the end of the file as a long sequence of numbers. At first I thought those numbers were the same as the 2-second tabulated data higher in the file, but they’re not.
My apologies for the false claim above. I’d edit or delete my earlier posting if there was a way in this forum system.
Best regards.
25/02/2010 at 07:12 pm
I was very excited to see that the raw data was accessible form memory belt, but so far this method hasn’t worked for me. The excel file reports errors and only imports the headers with no data. Does anyone have any suggestions for how to get around this? Thanks, jon
Hi Jon - Tris from HEARTRATEMONITOR.co.uk says - not sure why your’s isn’t working. It would be corruption in the file. I’d suggest DELETING ALL files and make a TEST file of just a few minutes… download to TRAINING MANAGER and export to CSV format - then open it in Excel. If it doesn’t work - then I’d consider sending the item back to the supplier … this is a feature of the memory belt that does work well. If it doesn’t it is either something you are doing wrong, or a faulty belt. Also make sure you have latest version of TRAINING MANAGER - visit Suunto.com then SUPPORT and DOWNLOAD area… Tris
01/03/2010 at 01:36 pm
Hi Tris, thanks for the help. I have tried using .CSV export and that works OK after a bit of fiddling about with import settings for Excel. I now have two very long columns titled IBI and CORRECTED. presumably these are the inter-beat intervals in milliseconds? Thanks, Jon
Hi Jon - correct these are the inter-beat intervals in milliseconds. Ypu can email helpdesk@suunto.fi with a copy of the file and ask them to return it to you with < << COMMENT>>>> confirming what is what. Tris www.heartratemonitor.co.uk