Polar F6 Exercise Extraction Tool

Purpose

The f6-split-tool is a little helper tool to extract the exercise data in RAW data files from Polar F6 and F11* heartrate monitors on Linux (It might also work with other Polar F-series models like F55; user feedback and RAW data is welcome). The RAW data can be captured by using SonicLink and the rs200-decoder tool by Jani Hursti. The split tool is neccessary to make the gathered data usable for SportsTracker / PolarViewer by Stefan Saring.
However, the f6-split-tool is only intended to be a transitional solution until a more sophisticated tool is available. So stay tuned and check back regularly.

News

2008-09-16: Version 0.0.3 released with support for Polar F11 watches (thanks to Dominik Schmidt)

Usage

First you need to transmit the data from your heartrate monitor to your computer using the rs200-decode tool:

 $ rs200_decode -m -b -o dump.bin

After that, use the f6-split-tool to extract the exercises from the previously gathered dump:

 $ f6-split-tool watch dump.bin

where watch is either --f6 for F6 or --f11 for F11.
This will generate individual files for each exercise. The files are called "exercise_X.frd" where X is a number between 0 and 11. 0 is the most recent exercise whereas exercise 11 is the oldest in the watch's memory. The exercise files will also contain the total cumulative exercise duration as well as the cumulative calories burned (this is added by the f6-split-tool). The *.frd files can then be imported into SportsTracker/PolarViewer.

Download & Installation

The tool has no special dependencies. The installation follows the standard installation procedure. The program is free software and licensed under the GNU GPL v2. Download the tarball below.

Current version:

f6-split-tool-0.0.3.tar.bz2 (53.3kB)

Older versions:

f6-split-tool-0.0.2.tar.bz2 (3.0kB)
f6-split-tool-0.0.1.tar.bz2 (2.7kB)

Unpack the tarball and build the program. After that, the tool is ready to use.

 $ tar xf f6-split-tool-x.y.z.tar.gz
 $ cd f6-split-tool-x.y.z/
 $ ./configure
 $ make
 # make install

Bugs

There are no known bugs. If you find any bugs, please drop me a note (see below).

Comments

If you have comments, suggestions or improvements, feel free to get in touch with me.

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