school me: devices that talk
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school me: devices that talk
Im not into electronics at all, except a basic bike computer.
In the middle of a typical ride, I stop @ a drinking fountain on my local MUP. Guy approaches, walking his dog > stops to take a drink > 'activity paused' > few minutes pass > they walk away > 'activity resumed'. Is there an app that can measure your steps?
In the middle of a typical ride, I stop @ a drinking fountain on my local MUP. Guy approaches, walking his dog > stops to take a drink > 'activity paused' > few minutes pass > they walk away > 'activity resumed'. Is there an app that can measure your steps?
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There are a lot of apps and devices (think watches) that count steps and use GPS for walking the way cyclists use it. Some of them have the phone bark at you, either status updates like you heard, or commands such as "go left" and "kill humans."
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Most phones combine GPS and cell tower location tracking to enable activities apps to track our movements with reasonable accuracy.
Many apps have an auto-pause/resume feature to automatically pause the app timer when we're not moving or moving below a speed threshold, and resume tracking when we move again. The threshold varies with activity -- lower for walking, faster for jogging/running, faster still for cycling. In some apps the auto-pause/resume threshold can be adjusted to suit the user's preference, but some are preset and non-adjustable. That's one reason why we'll get slightly different results in speed, distance, moving time, pause time, etc., with different apps, bike computers and fitness monitors.
If you have a fairly current Android or iPhone, try the Wahoo Fitness app. It's free, full featured, not spyware, nagware or adware, and syncs easily with Strava. Or you can transfer the data to other apps or software for fitness tracking, without the social networking aspect of Strava.
Wahoo Fitness has been my go-to app for iPhone and Android since around 2016. It's more reliable and less resource intensive than Strava. While it doesn't show full data within the app, Wahoo Fitness records complete data that can be used by other activity apps and software. Another advantage over Strava is there's no way to accidentally permanently modify an original Wahoo Fitness log. With Strava we can crop or modify a log in certain ways that are permanent and irreversible. Wahoo Fitness offers very limited editing within the app, so the original log can either be retained or deleted, but not altered -- we can only edit the title/description of the activity, and type of activity, but not the movement and GPS/cell tracing. So if our Strava log gets screwed up, we still have the original Wahoo Fitness log.
Most apps and fitness computers also offer options to enable or disable audible alerts. For my running app, I enable more audible updates (I usually wear earbuds) to help ensure my form is good to minimize injuries -- speed, cadence, stride length, etc. But I use few or no audible updates for walking and cycling.
My bike computer has a couple of audible alerts, beeps when I exceed a preset maximum heart rate and/or speed. I set the heart rate alarm to 160 bpm, and disable the speed alarm. The heart rate alarm is helpful when I'm training hard to increase my ability to hold a certain heart rate for a certain time/distance. It's also helpful on my easy days to remind me to ease up and avoid exceeding a certain HR for recovery rides.
Many apps have an auto-pause/resume feature to automatically pause the app timer when we're not moving or moving below a speed threshold, and resume tracking when we move again. The threshold varies with activity -- lower for walking, faster for jogging/running, faster still for cycling. In some apps the auto-pause/resume threshold can be adjusted to suit the user's preference, but some are preset and non-adjustable. That's one reason why we'll get slightly different results in speed, distance, moving time, pause time, etc., with different apps, bike computers and fitness monitors.
If you have a fairly current Android or iPhone, try the Wahoo Fitness app. It's free, full featured, not spyware, nagware or adware, and syncs easily with Strava. Or you can transfer the data to other apps or software for fitness tracking, without the social networking aspect of Strava.
Wahoo Fitness has been my go-to app for iPhone and Android since around 2016. It's more reliable and less resource intensive than Strava. While it doesn't show full data within the app, Wahoo Fitness records complete data that can be used by other activity apps and software. Another advantage over Strava is there's no way to accidentally permanently modify an original Wahoo Fitness log. With Strava we can crop or modify a log in certain ways that are permanent and irreversible. Wahoo Fitness offers very limited editing within the app, so the original log can either be retained or deleted, but not altered -- we can only edit the title/description of the activity, and type of activity, but not the movement and GPS/cell tracing. So if our Strava log gets screwed up, we still have the original Wahoo Fitness log.
Most apps and fitness computers also offer options to enable or disable audible alerts. For my running app, I enable more audible updates (I usually wear earbuds) to help ensure my form is good to minimize injuries -- speed, cadence, stride length, etc. But I use few or no audible updates for walking and cycling.
My bike computer has a couple of audible alerts, beeps when I exceed a preset maximum heart rate and/or speed. I set the heart rate alarm to 160 bpm, and disable the speed alarm. The heart rate alarm is helpful when I'm training hard to increase my ability to hold a certain heart rate for a certain time/distance. It's also helpful on my easy days to remind me to ease up and avoid exceeding a certain HR for recovery rides.
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There’s also an iPhone Accessibility setting to speak notifications, so it could have been a hardware generated announcement rather than app generated.