Computrainer Heart Rate is now ANT + Comapitable

ANT+ cadence would be cool. Hate the wires and the optic puck deal is $$$illy

This why they won't/can't do Cadance This is from there FB page:


Sure, as it was said "yesterday" you could do this (ANT+) with some other product (like ctANT+). Anybody using that other product knows there are features that do not work when you use it. It is because they can't work. These features negated by using ANT+ are critical to our product.

We make a product for anyone who might buy it (home-user to Pro-user and computer newbie to IT specialist) and our feature set have been long enjoyed by this wide variety of users. To negate features that many users have found to be critical to their training - just for the sake of having something that happens to be popular, like ANT+, is not wise. For anyone to suggest that they use "x product" and that is good enough for them, doesn't mean that it is good enough for everyone.

The issue with ANT+ for us, for anything other than HR, is data speed. We do physics calculations at over 100 times per second. ANT+ is about 4 times per second. Yes, we would love to completely use this tool, but SpinScan will not function at 4 Hz. Our data communication to save performance files (that can be reanimated EXACTLY AS RECORDED) can not be done at 4 Hz.

If all we were to care about was getting HR or RPM to display on the screen - then yes, this would work and is the reason all other devices use it. For that, it does work and works well. No argument. But we need, for instance, the exact moment where a crank arm is at top dead center and exactly at the right time. Can't be done with ANT+. It will only tell us only RPM.

Heart Rate for us was the only element we could use of ANT+ that did not mess with our physics models, which is the reason CompuTrainer is still looked upon today as the hardware of choice. It is, still to this day, the only device we have seen (and we look at them all) that does cycling physics correctly. It is very easy to display a wattage coming from a power meter on the screen and adjust torque to meet that - which is the trend for most electronic trainers - but to do rider inertia for true on-the-road training, for that you need what we perfected over 25 years ago and so far nobody - even with all this new technology at their disposal - has been able to match.

Some users post that we have lost touch with technology trends, but the truth is we dare not risk a proven model for a few rants from those who really are not looking at the big picture. These behind the scenes parts are what makes a CompuTrainer work.

Until now, when you wanted to use a heart rate monitor with the CT, you had to use a Polar strap that communicated with the little yellow controller of the CT. There were a lot of problems with this setup. Lots of drops. Not everyone has a Polar strap. The ones you could use were limited....it was very 1990ish. Some people it worked, many it didn't.

So, unless you were using the Polar strap with your CT, this means nothing to you.

If getting HR with your power data is important to you, this could be interesting because it will likely be more reliable