Today we are happy to announce the launch of the Selfloops Group Fitness app in the Android Play Store.
The Selfloops Group Fitness application allows real-time group monitoring of heart rate sensors and cardio training . The information appears in the smartphone/tablet display, but it can be projected in a external larger screen if the device has a video output port (e.g. a HDMI port as some Android tablets)
The scope of the app is to make people aware of their fitness performance and to train more effectively when real-time intensity feedback is given. Furthermore, with this app coaches can monitor their class and train people according to their fitness intensity zones.
The number of contemporaneous heart rate sensors supported theoretically could go up to 50 as this is the limit of the ANT+™ standard (the position and the processing power of the receiver may negatively affect this number).
The ANT+ standard is used by Garmin and many others. Therefore, to use the application, your smart phone or tablet must support ANT+. If your smartphone does not natively support ANT+, you can add external accessories to enable it, e.g. our ANT+ accessory (for Android 2.3.4 and higher) or the Garmin USB ANT stick with a USB OTG cable (for Android 3.0 and higher).
Our forthcoming Selfloops Accessory enables ANT+ in Android:
http://www.selfloops.com/products/accessories.html
a list of ANT+ capable smartphones and other external solutions are described here:
http://www.thisisant.com/business/opportunities/mobile/
HOW IT WORKS
At the start of the session the application will gather data from sensors in proximity.
If the user is registered, a square will pop-up with her name, otherwise she will appear as an anonymous user. You can edit the anonymous user and register her for a future automatic identification. You can also manually register users, if you know the heart rate monitor device number.
IMPORTANT
Only users with heart rate monitors in proximity will be shown during a session.
In Android devices that natively support ANT+ you have to DISABLE the WiFi for this application to work. The two radio protocols share the same antenna in these devices and ANT+ cannot work continuously.
