GPS system that can sync with heart rate

[Selim]

Hi,

My name is Erik Lundkvist and I work as an associate professor at Umeå University in Sweden. Recently me and a couple of colleagues published a paper where we investigated if emotions like nervousness, irritability, tenseness and control predicted performance using a point-by-point design (study subjects answered these questions between every hole) in golf competitions. Our results showed that emotions did not seem to predict performance of the upcoming hole as much as performance of the last played hole predicted emotions (especially irritability 😉). We also found that better players seem to be less influenced by their previous results than less skilled players which is nothing new and probably have a lot of different reasons.

 

Even if this study (and other studies) have learned us a bit on how emotions predict performance the design have several weaknesses. Therefore we are now planning to do several studies where we try to look deeper into this question from several different angles. One study we plan to do will be to do a similar study in several golf competitions and training rounds where we want to use heart rate as a proxy for nervousness (seem to work in a pilot study we did i e-sport) where we want to pick the situations when a person are in more pressuring situations (for example very hard holes, if one has played very good or are in a tricky lie etc...). Therefore I am looking for a way to sync GPS positions when a shot is hit with heart rate. I thought this would be pretty easy with Game golf, Shotscope or Arccos but it seems harder than I thought since they don´t seem to provide time stamps on when a shot is hit. After trying to email some (all I can think of) manufacturers I am do not feel that much smarter. Either it can´t be done or they have very little interest in a researcher from Sweden. So, does any one here know a way to do this or has an idea on how to do it?

 

Best regards

Erik Lundkvist

 

 

[jvincent]

Off the top of my head you could probably do this by using the data from a fitness app like Strava which track GPS position and heart rate.

 

It will record when you have stopped moving so you'll know where / when you made your strokes. You would need to do some filtering to get rid of pauses where the golfer is waiting for others to hit but if there is correlation to heart rate data that might be easy.

[Selim]

6 minutes ago, jvincent said:

Off the top of my head you could probably do this by using the data from a fitness app like Strava which track GPS position and heart rate.

 

It will record when you have stopped moving so you'll know where / when you made your strokes. You would need to do some filtering to get rid of pauses where the golfer is waiting for others to hit but if there is correlation to heart rate data that might be easy.

Thanks, I have tried this without Arccos/Shotscope just looking at where I have been and it works ok but comes with a time consuming extra work when chiseling out when the actual shots were done and when we stop for other reasons like help our playing partners, waiting when others hit their shots and so on. This is my worst case scenario. I tried syncing Arccos, Polar heart rate and Strava but that was one bluetoth signal to much. This can off course be solved if the heart rate strap has a memory (like whoop and the newer polar bands) but it will still be pretty time consuming if I have a large sample or has a lot of rounds for each person in the sample.

 

 

[Curmudg3on]

Can you imagine your heart rate playing golf with Playboy bunnies?  

[betarhoalphadelta]

Yeah, I just looked at Strava results from my Garmin Fenix 5X watch. When I choose "Walk" as my activity, it will sync pace, heart rate, and cadence. When I choose "Golf" as an activity, it will also log the walking as a separate activity, but it does not record HR, pace, or cadence, just total distance and elevation.

 

If you used a Garmin you'd have to find a way to correlate and time-sync the Walk activity (rather than Golf) to Arccos or something else so you knew exactly when shots were hit. 

 

However, if you can simply time-stamp the shots you actually can automate this. The file used by Strava is just a GPX file, which is XML. This file has heart rate as one of the things it records, and it records heart rate once every second, so you can absolutely correlate to exact times shots were hit.  You'd need to get someone who has experience with scripting languages who can take the timestamps from Arccos and pull out the heart rate information from the XML, but once the script is written it should be easy to simply automate the process.

 

Do you know what file Game Golf, Shotscope, or Arccos actually stores its data in, and can you export that file from the app? If so, it probably has all the info you need to get timestamps. 

[Selim]

13 minutes ago, betarhoalphadelta said:

Yeah, I just looked at Strava results from my Garmin Fenix 5X watch. When I choose "Walk" as my activity, it will sync pace, heart rate, and cadence. When I choose "Golf" as an activity, it will also log the walking as a separate activity, but it does not record HR, pace, or cadence, just total distance and elevation.

 

If you used a Garmin you'd have to find a way to correlate and time-sync the Walk activity (rather than Golf) to Arccos or something else so you knew exactly when shots were hit. 

 

However, if you can simply time-stamp the shots you actually can automate this. The file used by Strava is just a GPX file, which is XML. This file has heart rate as one of the things it records, and it records heart rate once every second, so you can absolutely correlate to exact times shots were hit.  You'd need to get someone who has experience with scripting languages who can take the timestamps from Arccos and pull out the heart rate information from the XML, but once the script is written it should be easy to simply automate the process.

 

Do you know what file Game Golf, Shotscope, or Arccos actually stores its data in, and can you export that file from the app? If so, it probably has all the info you need to get timestamps. 

I don´t think Arccos (that is the one I have tried) releases their stored data as a data file. If they did it would probably be pretty easy. 

[Glenn Salongo]

Just build it! Sounds like the perfect thesis for an mechatronics engineer.

[betarhoalphadelta]

19 minutes ago, Selim said:

I don´t think Arccos (that is the one I have tried) releases their stored data as a data file. If they did it would probably be pretty easy. 

 

Well, you might be surprised. It might not be easy to get to, but if you know where to look, it might not be well-protected.

 

For example with Garmin, if I go to the Garmin Connect web site, and open one of my activities, it's not particularly easy to find. You go into the "settings" menu tucked way away in the corner and it has options to export the file to GPX, TGX, and a couple other formats. Arccos may have a way to download the raw data--after all it's your data, right?

 

Arccos is an app rather than storing the data on your own device, but it might have the file stored on the actual phone... Hook up the phone to the PC and go browsing around. You might be surprised what you find. 

 

And you can always ask their support team...

[jvincent]

1 hour ago, Selim said:

Thanks, I have tried this without Arccos/Shotscope just looking at where I have been and it works ok but comes with a time consuming extra work when chiseling out when the actual shots were done and when we stop for other reasons like help our playing partners, waiting when others hit their shots and so on. This is my worst case scenario. I tried syncing Arccos, Polar heart rate and Strava but that was one bluetoth signal to much. This can off course be solved if the heart rate strap has a memory (like whoop and the newer polar bands) but it will still be pretty time consuming if I have a large sample or has a lot of rounds for each person in the sample.

 

 

 

Another option would be to use an app to record waypoints every time you make a stroke. That way you could sync up with the Strava data more easily.

 

[Tmintx]

I’m looking for one that syncs up with curse words.