Texas Instrument has released a development kit amazingly cheap only $49. It includes a watch that has temperature and altitude/barometer sensors, and also a 3-axis accelerometer (like the Wii remote).
It also has a wireless link to other sensors like HRM, pedometer or USB-dongle. The bad thing is that the link is 868 or 915 or 433 MHz. It is not 2.4GHz ANT+ like the Suunto and Garmin equipment.
Anyway, there exists HR-belts with R-R measurement. The watch also has log functionality for several hours.
The display is a bit limited compared to the dot-matrix type of the Suunto watches, but since you can program it freely, you can get lots of info output with some creativity.
Included are a lot of open source sample programs.
If we cannot get what we want from the Suunto watches, this could be a candidate. It is a lot cheaper than a T6C for sure. And freely programmable.
http://www.ti-estore.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=eZ430-Chronos-433
I saw this press release that actually says that TI will implement ANT+:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.thisisant.com/news/stories/texas-instruments-expands-collaboration-with-ant-wireless
Is there enough interest in this group to create a custom firmware for the GPS POD?
ReplyDeleteI would like to use tho POD only to record runs, as GPS coordinates as well as heart rate coming from an ANT strap - Garmin or Suunto. The POD seems to have very accessible JTAG pins exposed and the MPS430 has good open source development environment support, including JTAG. A dedicated part 32K flash can easily hold heart rate records. A rewritten ANT interface can export both the heart rate and GPS records to a PC or Mac with a low cost ANT plug, like the Sparkfun one. Thoughts?
Amazing idea, but looks like people wants to have ready to go solutions for ebay prices.
ReplyDeleteThis TI chronos are interesting product. There are many solutions already exists on its base.
http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/EZ430-Chronos?DCMP=Chronos&HQS=Other+OT+chronoswiki