[gallery type="rectangular" columns="2" size="medium" ids="57041,57040"] STRAVA Adds Back Bluetooth Sensor Support This is another YAY moment. Many of STRAVA's recently expanded 70-million strong user base will be excited. Very excited. Back in June 2019, STRAVA removed BLE sensor support citing stability issues. Several weeks ago STRAVA put the Bluetooth sensor support back into its smartphone apps IN BETA. Well, I've just cranked up my iOS app and HRMs are working! I've managed to pair a Wahoo TICKR and a Garmin HRM-PRO and both seem to work fine. So it looks like we have BLE-only heart rate support right now and I'm guessing that the addition of ANT+ support is very unlikely. Whilst some smartphones DO support ANT+ most newer HRMs support both BLE and ANT+, so there will be little incentive for STRAVA to support legacy ANT+-only straps for the minority of smartphones that will support the legacy straps. Sorry folks. However, STRAVA has also promised MORE on this front for the future. They said this Our plan is to first roll out heart rate monitors with BLE pairing to ensure it’s working as intended before we look at expanding to power / cadence meters, we don’t have a hard timeline but if our rollout of BLE pairing works as planned, you can expect power / cadence meter support to be recording devices that we would look at to support in the future. This feature will work for all users, however more advanced heart-rate analysis will be only available to subscribers. You can see on the images, above, where the HR is shown on tow of the different screens. Apple Watch users will be wondering what all the fuss is about. Apple Watch and Wear OS users never lost HR on the STRAVA app! At least not when recorded from the onboard HR sensor [gallery type="rectangular" columns="2" size="medium" ids="55527,55510"] Caution: I *AM* on the beta programs for SOME STRAVA features but I don't think BLE straps is one of those beta programs. So this does seem to be truly live as of NOW. Although it might take a short while to roll out everywhere globally (a couple of days) Here are a couple of screenshots from STRAVA on iOS showing where to add your sensors back [gallery type="thumbnails" columns="2" size="medium" ids="57046,57045"] https://the5krunner.com/2020/06/10/new-strava-local-legends-segments-captain-but-not-as-we-know-them/ https://the5krunner.com/2020/03/12/strava-summit-packs-are-dead-long-live-strava-summit/ https://the5krunner.com/2020/03/11/strava-runner-motivation/ https://the5krunner.com/2020/01/14/sports-apps-2020-report-table-winners-losers-of-2019-best-sports-app/ https://the5krunner.com/2019/12/03/45143/ https://the5krunner.com/2019/09/16/strava-app-removes-ble-sensor-support/ https://the5krunner.com/2019/02/15/strava-apps/
