How to Get a Calibrated Respiration Rate from a Garmin Fenix 6 Watch

Last Updated on October 19, 2022 by pg@petergamma.org

– buy a Garmin Fenix 6 or 7

– get the Garmin .fit file

– convert it with the following tool to the CSV format:

– the respiration rate of the Garmin Fenix 6 is only accurate at 12 breath per minute, according to our own little experience

– Program a Garmin watch to vibrate every minute. This can be done in Garmin Connect by creating a custom workout, which can be downloaded to the watch. A Forerunner 230 without HRM is sufficient for this purpose. It runs more than 12 hrs if programmed to vibrate once every minute.

– With two Forerunner 230 watches worn alternatively, we get an option which vibrates every minute, and can run 24 * 7

– for Shamatha Meditation Focused on the Breath, we count the number of breath between two vibrations to get the number of breath taken in a minute

– make a table of the number of breath per minute with a timescale when we practice

– load the data into a database software

– load the .csv data of the Fenix 6 with the Fenix 6 respiration values in the database software. These contain a timestamp as well

– the respiration rate of the Fenix 6 is inaccurate, but we have a table of the manual counted breath per minute which are simultaneous to the Fenix 6 respiration data

– so we have all the data to calibrate the Fenix 6 respiration values with our manually counted respiration values

– If the calibration works fine, we don t need to manually count our breath rate anymore, we can take the respiration values from the Fenix 6 watch and can calculate the correct values according our calibration table.