Alpha HRV

For those of us interested in tracking the DFA alpha-1 metric, Garmin Connect IQ has a beta version of it ready for download there. I just downloaded it and installed it in “bike indoor settings.” I’ll give it a try tomorrow. Here’s a link with details on the install settings from Dr. Bruce Rogers. HTH, Anthony

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Ddi you get this to work OK?

I tried it twice now, first time I had on bluetooth and it didn’t collect data. Second time I switched its o Ant+ and it worked flawlessly, except HR in my other Garmin Xert apps didn’t work. Currently messing around in the settings to try and get both working

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Hi Dave, I got it connected using the same approach you did. I also lost other connectivity as you’ve described. The “deal breakesr” for me are that I cannot see the damn screen and workout at the same time, mostly because my eyesight is so impaired at close distances and the configuration of the app doesn’t help, even with my corrected lenses on. So. I’ll stick with HRV Logger. I hope it works better for you. :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

Take care, Anthony

Thanks for your reply Anthony. I have managed to get the app working through the following process.

  1. sync H10 & Garmin via BLE

  2. remove Garmin 530/830/1030 connection to H10 via ANT+

  3. open IQ Alpha - go to settings - enable “connect via ANT+ to Hear Rate monitor”

I had then to add an additional step go going into my Garmin 530 settings and re-add the H10 HR sensor in the sensor section. I thought this might screw the whole process up but it didn’t. I now have Alpha HRV working and HR recording in my XERT apps. However, I’m not sure of the accuracy of the Alpha HRV as it seems to oscillate a fair bit and seemed to be lower than the HRV logger. I guess it is early days with it and it will get refined so that it becomes more accurate for more people

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HRV logger is more “stable” because it only provides a new result calculation every 2 minutes, whereas HRV a1 does so at a default of 2 second (you can change this to a longer time to update) so every 2 seconds it provides a new live result. The only way to see finer details from HRV logger is to download the data and then run it in a software such as Runalyze. I have asked HRV4Training if they plan to have the rolling calculation at a higher frequency and they say yes but it is not likely to happen soon, though there is always hope. So the jumpiness may be due to more frequent calculations… or it could also be artifacts or some other thing causing that to happen.

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HRV Logger on my app shows A computation Window panel with time frame of 30", 60", 2 min and 5 min. I chose 2’ for my last workout and the jumpiness in fact disappeared. I think that helped me be more stable in my cadence/effort output allowing me then more readily to figure out just how better to get within the range of values recommended for alpha 1

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From what I’ve read, there are some concerns about drops of data via ANT+ that can skew R-R reading and mess with artifact correction. Given that artifact correction is already a massive challenge for real-time HRV analysis during exercise, it seems that BLE is the gold standard for recording R-R data from an H9/H10 HRM.

I haven’t seen many side-by-side comparisons of the data from Alpha HRV via ANT+ and DFAa1 from Kubios, Fatmaxxer, or Runalyze. I think Dr. Bruce Rogers has actually done one thorough look (Anthony posted the link to that comparison above). Its still relatively early though, and Garmin is still working out bugs…

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the thing you are referring to is the calculation window. The 2 minute window has been verified to be the best for the DFA calculation (you need so many data points to accurately perform the calculation). The thing is every second you can do a new 2 minute window of data for calculation. So one is the calculation window the other is a rolling calculation so it is an update window or frequency time frame. I hope that makes sense? The HRV a1 program uses 200 heart beats as its calculation window NOT 2 minutes, but according to Bruce Rogers the results are good. Also the artifact correction uses a Kalman filter and he says again it seems to work. So the reason for HRV logger being more jumpy is the same as your power meter set at 2 second sample rate vs 2 minute sample rate. However, it is strange that the the data is bouncy because it is in fact smoothed by the data window. RR data is only part of the calculation as long as there are enough data to do the fractal assessment then the result alpha 1 which is actually the slope of the function is likely still good. Again if you go to the assessment by Bruce Rogers he does the test during exercise and compares it to data analyzed by Kubios. At this point I think Bruce had intended to try out the BLE connection but was quite happy with the data he acquired via Ant+. So it is promising. BTW it is not a Garmin product it is an IQ independent developer as I seem to recall.

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Ron, thanks for the clarification/explanation. I’m a reasonably bright guy, but this material is getting past my pay grade. :smiley: :smiley:

it passed my pay grade a long time ago, but I tied to educate myself up to the point of the maths, then zoom it was gone! :wink: so I am pretty good at being a parrot though.

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I tried it last evening during an XERT session and well I can not confirm it works well. It hijacks your HRM on the Garmin 520+. So though it provides a native Garmin FIT file alpha 1 data field that Garmin can read in Connect there is no heart rate data. Which is weird because in the app it shows both heart rate and alpha 1. So because of that it then makes it hard/ impossible to link up to your HRM with that app live, but if you turn it off then you get heart rate data. So for me until they fix that I won’t be using it. At this point in time the best option seems to be fatmaxxer for data viewing live, the downside is it is an Android only app.

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@ManofSteele btw, any backlog for having alpha-d1 analytics on Xert? :slight_smile:

Not likely to happen anytime soon.

For now, I’d recommend using another app that can calculate a1 in real-time. There are some for Garmin devices, as well as apps for Android/iOS devices.