fitness instruments calories/bpm/distance precision (comparison Polar H10 vs Huawei Honor Band 5 vs Tapis TX9000HRC)

Morning,
in this period, due to forced isolation for corona virus auto isolation, I'm doing some fitness.
The first thought was to find the correct instruments to measure the results: calories, fat burn, etc.

I analyzed various solutions, assuming these pre-requisites:

• each possible device (smartband, sportwatch, cardio fitness chest belt, etc)  must be fitness oriented, f.e. a smartwatch with 4G/3G connectivity is unuseful because is often not IP68 (i.e. you cannot swim)
• notifications for whatsapp/calls/etc could be present, but they shall be unused (disabled) ... two reasons: a) during run/walk/etc activities calls and the whatsapp/SMS/email notifications are interruptions, they're deprecated, b) notifications are always not fully correctly managed: emoji, incorrect visualization ... at the end use your phone or do fitness
• the GPS sensor is not mandatory/useful in a smartband or a sportwatch (i.e. a fitness targeted smartwatch) and should be avoided, for two main reasons: a) it drain battery faster, b) if I'll walk/run outdoor I'll have surely my cellular phone, that has a better (precision and fast to fix) sensor and definitely more battery
• the fitness tracker must have a battery capacity able to cover more days, at minimum 3-5, because it should monitor continously trough the day (calories, sleep quality, etc)
• the tracker should be independent (except for GPS outdoor activities) from cellular, it must have an internal memory to store a fitness session; during indoor activities both fitness (tapis roulant, cycling, free fitness) and ordinary (walking, sleep, etc) ones, I don't want to worry about wearing the cellular
• swimming, waterproof, etc are often incorrectly used: I need a fully IP68 wearable device, swimming compatible; a lot of time I found: a) IP67, this is not waterproof, it's only dust and spash proof (i.e. washing hands with carefully), b) outdoor swimming in the sea is OUT OF SCOPE from my perimeter (salt water is corrosive, to find the correct device require to pimp up the budget)

I choosen:

• Huawei Honor Band 5:
• it's a smartband with at least 3 days of battery capacity, doing a) 24h real time heart monitoring ("smart" monitoring measure at different intervals according to the activities using a smart algorithm to find the correct moment), b) notifications disable, c) sleep monitoring, d) about 1 hour of fitness activity per day
• proprietary app is the "Huawei health" v. 10.0.2.333 
• trough various I discarded XiaoMi Band 4 that lack SpO2 measurement, and Huawei Watch GT or GT2 seeing a few extra feature with a low battery duration and an higher price
• Polar H10 (it's an H9 with internal memory):
• it's a cardio chest belt that is able to transmit at the same time to bluetooth, ANT+ and Gymlink (5.3 KHz) devices; I'm keeping disabled the ANT+
• two mobile apps (I use only Android 9.x): "Polar Beat 3.4.4" normally used during fitness activities, with some basic plans/indications to improve resistance/power/etc, and "Polar flow" to better analyze the results
• Polar beat keep the mobile screen on and it's comfortable for real time tracking; I'm able to cycle trough bpm/calories, fitness and fat burning zones

I also own a TXFitness TX9000HRC tapis roulant for indoor running; personally I don't love very much outdoor running due to rain, rough roads (with potholes) not "amortized", and external temperature (too cold in winter).
Tapis is able to induce the speed in step of ".1" Km/H, i.e. kilometers for hour (not minute for kilometer) as an ordinary car, and inclination from 0 to 12.


First of all keep in mind that firmware is important, because it enable last features and fixes (trough the story various bands miss or fail some measurements, or lack some features), a complete comparison could not ignore this, so:

• Band 5: firmware 1.1.0.122 (upgrade trough app), "ebay" street price 30 euros (03/2020)
• Polar H10: 3.0.50, "amazon" street price 61 euros (03/2020)

After some sessions I defined my routine and I completed a full comparison, let's analyze a 55 mins indoor running session, so composed:

• pre-defined "Tempo" Polar training plan: 5/warmup-fat+5/aerobic+20/anaerobic+5/fat; tapis inclination 2-3
• 3 mins of fat burn; inclination 0-2
• 3 mins of extreme (> 10 km/h); inclination 2
• 14 mins of rest and walking (fat burn) till to 55th minute; inclination 2-0

I started at the same time Band5, H10 and tapis. The results are:

\	Polar H10	Band 5	Tapis	Notes
Distance	-	5.35 Km	6.64 Km	Band counts 6.597 steps (I'm 1.70m taller). Band/tapis difference was constant, it could be a zero start error.
Calories	581	437	476	Polar calories are higher from beginning. Tapis know inclination and I suppose correct distance.
Fat burn	21 mins (16% of cals)	20 mins	-	BTW no one show how much "grams".
Bpm	X	X +/- 5	-	Tapis rarely receive H10 5.3 KHz signal

First of all I tried to follow the Polar "Tempo" training (to develop speed and stamina) during first 35 minutes:

Polar pre-defined "Tempo" training

Now the bpm graphs to compare Band 5 vs H10 precision:

Huawei Band 5

Polar H10

Approximately, trough various check during the training time, I see that instant beat differences was in 3-5 units.

I overlay the two graphs:

Polar H10 light red vs Band 5 dark red

As you can see:

• differences are very minimal; keep in mind that it's an indoor run so velocity vs beat should be very constant
• a little H10 over measure (see below about this period) in the initial warmup 0-10, and a visible Band 5 over measure after the 3 mins extreme peak (it should be a rest/fat-burn phase where I tried to keep the beat as regular as possible)
• about 1st period, I experimented two spurious consistent spykes from Huawei Band 5 (below the original graph); I thought to a Polar error, but subsequently I observed two times the similar error, and both the time during the same initial period (4-8 minutes)

Band 5 dark red - incorrect spurious spyke 4-8 min

Unfortunately the H10 cost as double than Band5 and it's totally blind without the cellular "screen" support; as each chest belt the wearibility is more annoying than a smart band.
Just to make another comparison I had a Lidl/Crivit chest belt and it seemed easier to moisten to get in contact with the skin and take the measurement.

What's a reason to use Polar H10 in place of H10 ? The Polar beat show real time beat graph/values, so if you're oriented to respect specific fitness level zones (fat burn, etc) prefer this ones (the band5 also show the beat and the zones, but you need to switch on the screen, because the app is not in realtime).

regards,
    gino

ASUS-MikroTik dual WAN with cellular USB failover

Morning,
I live alone from fiber/super connectivity/etc, so I definitively switch over the home data connection from ADSL/etc to mobile 4G one.
My need is a method to use "mobile quota" from main home connection rather than trough various cellular/mobile family ones.

I built my home network with two SOHO devices: an ASUS and a MikroTik routers.

The MikroTik SXT LTE kit (https://mikrotik.com/product/sxt_lte_kit) is a PoE powered (via a power injector) 4G router, it should be mounted trough a roof pole (but in a such a moment I'm able to use inner into home with sufficient s/n level).
The LTE kit does not FDD band aggregation, so you're limited to 150/50 Mbit up/down link (actually there should be a FDD variant); my 4G provider furtherly limit me to a symmetrical 30/30 line, so definitively correctly sized. To overcome the limitation change MikroTik model or switch to Huawei (B525S-23A if you prefer an indoor model with SMA antennas, and to drill a wall for a maximum displaceable distance of 5 mt/15 ft).
The 30/30 nominal bandwidth is sufficient to surf and stream net video.

The ASUS router RT-N66U (https://www.asus.com/Networking/RTN66U/) mainly act as a Wi-Fi access point, it's a forwarding only machine (no source dynamic NAT, a.k.a. masquerading).
Internal net is an unique subnet formed by both wired and wireless client, the external net stay between two routers (it's like a backbone, but no one client is present at all).

My architectural design is based on these requirements:

• [mandatory] dual WAN technology: the secondary WAN via ethernet cable (back to back) to MikroTik router, and primary one for an USB connected modem (tethering Android phone
• [mandatory] web filtering to disallow bad traffic (malware, adult, gambling, advertisements, etc)
• [optionally] some specific source NAT rules to allow "free and unfiltered" web traffic for master admins (i.e. parents)
• [optionally] Quality of Service (i.e. shaping) to limit the TV streaming transfers (I would reduce excessive video resolution quality)

so, basically each last ASUS model should be suitable. MikroTik is a very powerful and flexible piece of hardware, unfortunately with an obfuscated syntax, btw, thanks to a presence in the business environment, the net is a very large library of ideas (you can find a lot of examples).

The foundamentals points are:
1) each wifi DHCP client is served by ASUS router, and receive an OpenDNS server (a.k.a. Cisco Umbrella) to filtering web traffic

2) normally ASUS router use secondary WAN and forward traffic to MikroTik 4G router



ASUS dual WAN config

3) the 4G connectivities are not flat and so we must take advantage of 4G quotas trough various family phones; dual WAN: each USB connected Android phone to ASUS create a tethering point, and the configured failback activate the new line, when phone shall be disconnected, the ASUS fail to secondary (ethernet) WAN

4) install OpenDNS updater client into each phone, both to update the actually assigned dynamic IP, and to protect (URL filter) the mobile phone when outside home

5) to warranty master admins (parents) unfiltered traffic, you must allow queries to non OpenDNS server; this ASUS script NAT the DNS queries
#! /bin/sh
iptables -t nat -I PREROUTING 1 -p udp --dport 53 -s x.x.x.x -d y.y.y.y -j DNAT --to 8.8.8.8
iptables -t nat -I PREROUTING 1 -p tcp --dport 53 -s x.x.x.x -d y.y.y.y. -j DNAT --to 8.8.8.8
exit 0

#

where x.x.x.x is the source IP address of parent terminal (phone, PC, etc), and the y.y.y.y is the ASUS LAN address; ASUS act as a forwarder DNS server toward to OpenDNS.
Actually I'm unable to automatically schedule the script (I manually run it over the time, mainly una tantum after router reboot).
Then you need to allow all DNS traffic with MikroTik firewall rules; the traffic shall be present when the "secondary WAN" shall be active:

 
these allow my phone to 8.8.8.8 and others to OpenDNS, deny any other DNS query.

ASUS detect the active line by the configured probe method: use only ping (as in figure), but -- both -- allow DNS UDP queries and ping to specific 8.8.4.4 host from WAN ASUS address.

regards,
    gino