Peter Gamma (Physiologist & Director) Meditation Research Institute Switzerland (MRIS)

Issues we have with treadmills to practice and analyse walking meditation

Last Updated on December 6, 2023 by pg@petergamma.org

Should we use a Stryd on our Newgen Medical treadmill. Is Stryd accurate on a treadmill?

Fellnr concerning this topic:

  • «The Stryd is so accurate outdoors, I couldn’t understand why it was so bad on a treadmill.
  • To my chagrin, I discovered that the main problem is my treadmill speed display is way wrong.
  • Accurately calibrating a treadmill proves to be rather more complex than I’d have expected, as the treadmill will slow down when your foot is in contact with the belt, then speed up when you’re in the air.
  • For details on how to evaluate your treadmill have a read of Treadmill Calibration.
  • However, this variation makes it tricky to know what the “true” speed should be.
  • Obviously, the average speed of the belt is completely wrong, as the speed of the belt while your airborne has nothing to do with your running speed.
  • During the time your foot is in contact with the belt, should you use the minimum speed, the average speed or the maximum speed?
  • With my treadmill, the difference between minimum and maximum during contact is about 15%, and between average and minimum is about 9%.
  • I’ve found Stryd seems to be quite close to the minimum speed rather than the average during contact.
  • I calibrated my treadmill and then calibrated Stryd to the corrected treadmill speed, which is a lot of effort and tricky to get right.
  • A much simpler solution is to use the North Pole Engineering Runn Treadmill Sensor, which measures the treadmill speed with far less effort and greater accuracy. «

https://fellrnr.com/wiki/Stryd?fbclid=IwAR2cEOkkV-lGzN8Q20ZaeERx3xepsHuQXyXrYgmZMTwPrG9zL7avPnH62qI#Treadmill_Problems

Treadmill speed during contact with the belt (graph taken from fellnr)

Comment of the MRIS:

  1. Should we use a Raspberry Pi treamill speed sensor with a data analysis software for our application?
  • Is a Raspberry Pi treamill speed sensor connected to a data analysis software not better than the North Pole Engineering Runn Treadmill Sensor?
  • We have to check if the NPE run is accurate anyway.
  • Which scientific journal accepts the answer of DC Rainmaker:

«However, when I start running on it, the treadmill still shows 10km/h, but the Runn reports a more accurate 9.7/9.8 km/h»

https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2020/01/npe-runn-treadmill-smart-sensor-everything-you-need-to-know.html

  • Eventually Swiss poster Eni on the DC Rainmaker blog. He answered to us in a discussion about the Verity Sense:

«did you not listen what Ray has said?»

  • This was his answer in the discussion with him on the DC Rainmaker blog about the Verity Sense accuracy:

https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2021/02/polar-verity-sense-optical-hr-sensor-band-in-depth-review.html

  • Are statements at the level of:

“L’État, c’est moi”

  • from DC Rainmaker which is according to Swiss poster Eny infallible helpful for scientists?
  1. Should we use a treamill for really serious althletes for our application?

4. Issues we have with our current setup

  • The MRIS currently uses a Newgen medical treadmill with a treadtacker treadmill speed sensor and the a training tracker app.
  • The speed of the treadmill computer differs from the speed of the treadtracker sensor data on a training tracker, and we did not calibrate the treadtracker sensor yet.
  • Since we practice walking meditation speed in steps per minute is a measure which is helpful for us personally.
  • Treadracker uses the foot pod protocol, but unfortunatley treadtracker can only be paried via Bluetooth and the Bluetooth protocol does not support steps (personal communication Dr. Ing. Rainer Blind), but only the ANT+ protocol.
  • So if we want steps per minute from our feeds on our treadmill we need additionally a ANT+ foot pod.
  • We have several of those, but none is calibrated correctly.
  • And we have several Stryd foot pods which we bought on Ricardo Switzerland which all have dead batteries.
  • To buy a Stryd for more than 300 USD which has issues on the treadmill with accuracy as described above to count steps from our feet with a training tracker? Is this not a very expensive step counter?
  • The Newgen medical treadmill does not offer computerized motor control. This would be helpful for us personally to implement the Bruce protocol for stress tests.
  • Xioami treadmills can be controlled in Home Assistant:

https://community.home-assistant.io/t/xiaomi-treadmill-walkingpad-integration/204713

  • But if we are looking for a treadmill which allows data analysis we are asking the question: is it not better to choose a more robust treadmill as the ones listed here:

a training tracker with an ANT+ foot pod is great since it counts steps from the foot pod and stores it in .csv. It is the only application we know which counts the steps of a foot pod, and we suppose it is one of the most accurate applications to count steps, more accurate as for instance wrist based step counters since these take data frome th wrist and not from the feet.