Wireless Interference

[old] Fran · Post by **[old] Fran** » January 5th, 2005, 5:59 am

Hi... first off I really do apologise if this has been dealt with before but I couldn't find any likely references in any of the searches I put out. I've been happily using the C2 HR interface with a bog-standard Polar chest transmitter for some time now, along with a laptop next to the C2 which I use for online rowing (via RowPro). Everything worked perfectly until a couple of days ago when I upgraded the laptop with a wireless card to take advantage of the Netgear wireless router we've just got. Now the HR monitor side of things (both the BPM displayed on the PM3 and on the RowpPro screen) is all over the place. Both displays erratically show nothing at all or a variety of bogus figures ranging from 4 to 299 BPM, with neither displaying the same figure at any given moment. Even when the Polar transmitter isn't being worn (and with the RowPro screen set to *not* display HR data) the same, random figures are shown The only fix I've found so far is to completely turn off the wireless networking function on the laptop *and* disconnect the HR interferface from the C2... which is all somewhat less than satisfactory. Has anyone come across anything similar and found a solution? I'm wholly unfamiliar with wireless technology at this stage but have tried 'switching transmission channels' to no avail and am now at a total loss; so any/all suggestions will be VERY gratefully received! The signal from the wireless router appears to be very strong, in case that has some bearing on things??? Cheers in advance for any help and advice

[old] Steve_R · Post by **[old] Steve_R** » January 5th, 2005, 9:17 am

I'll be very interested if others have had issues with this as well. I just upgraded to a PM3 and am planning on moving a computer and wireless router near to my C2. According to Polar, the transmission frequency is 5kHz. From what I have read, 802.11a uses 5kHz for transmission of wireless signals. You may be able to fix it if you can turn off 802.11a compatibility. 802.11b/g is standard for most home wireless equipment which uses the 2.4GHz frequency. I have wireless equipment in the room (about 15 feet away though) with my erg and T31 chest belt and have had no issues. I had to upgrade my cordless phones to 5.8 GHz to keep from interfering with my wireless router. I guess the other option for me will be to keep the router in the other room and figure out how I can run a long CAT-5 cable to the router for the computer near the erg. Steve

[old] Fran · Post by **[old] Fran** » January 5th, 2005, 4:59 pm

Many thanks for your response Steve - I've been running eveything on 802.11b/g so there wasn't anything I could change there... but... I've happened on some good news - I think?! After effecting what has seemed like innumerable trials over the last two or three hours it looks, almost certainly, as though it's a conflict between the laptop's recently installed wireless card and the RowPro software (any moderators out there, I don't know if you want to move this thread to the eRow forum?). This is good news as, A: you shouldn't experience any difficulties simply having a computer and router near your C2... provided you're not running RowPro and wanting to use the HR monitor at the same time; and B: even if you do want to run RowPro et al, and you find you have similar problems, it looks like a fix might been found at this end which I'll post up a.s.a.p just as soon as I've run a few more tests to get a solidly conclusive result (by tomorrow all being well) Cheers for now, Fran

[old] whp4 · Post by **[old] whp4** » January 5th, 2005, 5:34 pm

<table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td class='genmed'>QUOTE </td></tr><tr><td class='quote'> even if you do want to run RowPro et al, and you find you have similar problems, it looks like a fix might been found at this end which I'll post up a.s.a.p just as soon as I've run a few more tests to get a solidly conclusive result (by tomorrow all being well) </td></tr></table> I've had a devil of a time with Rowpro and an 802.11g card I installed - reliably causes a freeze after a short period of rowing. Fortunately, running an ethernet cable to the PC wasn't any big deal, but I'd like to ditch it. I don't suppose your fix is related?

[old] michaelb · Post by **[old] michaelb** » January 5th, 2005, 11:54 pm

Other than all the bugs still in the beta versions of rowpro, particularly for online rowing, I haven't had trouble running rowpro with a wireless connection on a b network. So I don't think that is the problem with the heartrate monitor (although it could be). Long before rowpro, I remember threads about interference with heartrate monitors, and there were lots of possible mysterious causes. Is anything else different about your setup? Any chance the belt batteries are running low? Can you get a proper heart rate with the PM and without the laptop even booted up? This is going to be strange, but I decided that my heartrate monitor problems were related to the TV on the floor in front of the erg. I was getting bizarre, all over the place readings like you. Moving the receiver to the opposite side of the rail (and off the bottom) solved that problem. I have since switched the rower around and put the TV on the shelf, and haven't ever had further problems like that.

[old] Coach Gus · Post by **[old] Coach Gus** » January 6th, 2005, 2:02 am

Various electronic devices can interfere with HR monitor signal. I always erg using a HR monitor. While my g router, TV, cell phone, 900MHz home phone don't cause problems, I have found that certain fabric shirts do cause erratic readings. Polar warns about some man made fabrics causing a problem. Just something many people don't think about as a cause of irregular HR monitor readings.

[old] Fran · Post by **[old] Fran** » January 6th, 2005, 6:25 am

Hi all, I'm afraid we may all have to hang fire on the potential fix I *thought* I'd found as I haven't (after several more and hopelessly fruitless rows) been able to reproduce the successful trials that were experienced late yesterday. Basically it began to look as though the RowPro/wireless card conflict may have been down to the fact that we (my hubby and myself) had elected to let the Intel software on the laptop, rather than Windows software, run the new wireless card's functioning. A quick reconfiguration, allowing Windows to handle it as opposed to Intel, followed by two consecutively rowed pieces, produced HR readings that were entirely consistent and perfectly within normal BPM ranges. Delighted, we then knocked it on the head for the night as we were both knackered after what was effectively half a day's rowing just to try and fix a bug! Bad news, though... this morning (and for absolutely *no* appreciable reason whatsoever!) we simply cannot repeat the results.The HR readings are back to being utterly erratic again A couple of things that we've established for certain are that: 1. If the laptop is on, with the wireless network fully-functional and with a strong signal but WITHOUT RowPro open then the HR readings on the PM3 (and on the Polar wristwatch we used as a 'control') were absolutely fine. So, it's not the proximity of the laptop to the C2, or the wireless technology itself, that's causing the problem. 2. Repeating the above scenario but this time with RowPro open the HR readings immediately go haywire, disappearing altogether momentarily only to reappear part way into a row but with ridiculously inaccurate data e.g. PM3 monitor displaying 11 BPM and the RowPro screen displaying 211 BPM and so on, PM3 = 05 BPM, RowpPro = 205 BPM (the 200 BPM difference seems to be a constant although I've no idea if that's significant or not). The Polar watch displayed normal HR data throughout both of the above scenarios. I think I can fairly conclusively say that other interference isn't an issue as the original setup was: the C2, with a laptop right beside hard-wired into the Net via cabling and running RowPro, in a room which also contains a radio, TV and video. Everything worked absolutely perfectly - no glitches, no RowPro bugs, no HR monitor anomalies just seamless functioning of all the software and hardware concerned (sigh, they were the days... only a *couple* of days ago!). It's all gone to hell since upgrading the laptop to wireless... well, as far as trying to run RowPro *and* use the HR monitoring facility is now concerned. I know I could just unplug the HR interface from the C2 but, y'know, it was a pretty expensive piece of kit - not mention a useful one - to simply 'not bother with'. I've given up on the whole thing for now as I'm exhausted and have to stop arsing around with all this and get on with some work - my hubby's running some more trials at the mo' though; so he may come up with some better news (?). I'll post up any outcomes. Cheers again for now, Fran

[old] michaelb · Post by **[old] michaelb** » January 6th, 2005, 10:45 am

I think this is worth an email to digital rowing support, although they seemed to have disappeared for the last month or so. I remember a comment on their forum though that rowpro doesn't send info to the PM3, so if you are getting errors on the PM3 they may say it not rowpro related. But it sounds like rowpro to me, and not HR monitor interference by the wireless network. The other configuration to report on is this one: it you turn off and disconnect the wireless network, can you run the HR monitor and rowpro normally? ie. go back to where you were before wireless networking? I can't tell why are switching your wireless card driver around, but I would not use the built in windows driver. Definitely download and install the lastest version of the driver/software that is specific for your card. I had an unrelated rowpro problem start a couple of weeks ago: I was getting wildly erratic power/pace readings in rowpro, and the display would be very jerky. It seemed like rowpro was dropping the connection to the PM3 every few seconds. The HR display on rowpro was also getting messed up. I had not changed anything about my setup to lead up to this. But it may have started after rowpro crashed during an online row, since I can't remember rowpro working properly after that. So, last night, equally frustrated, I hit control-alt-del and looked at the processes that were running. While I had a just row running in rowpro, I noticed that the rpengine process CPU time was fluctuating wildly. There was also another process (I forgot to write down the name) at the top that looked suspicious; I couldn't tell what it was, and its cpu use was fluctuating too. So I force quit that top process (not the rpengine.exe), and rowpro went back to normal. I will have to see if that comes back (it didn't after a restart of rowpro). I have no idea what that was, and it had survived numerous restarts and reboots. There have been other reports that rowpro can start running funky, and for those problems not to be solved by a restart of rowpro or a reboot of XP. So it may be worth looking in there for you and see if anything funky is going on. This is beta software, and it clearly has bugs. Force quiting running processes is a little dangerous, so obviously make sure you aren't running anything else, and maybe back up your rowpro database first.

[old] cityeast · Post by **[old] cityeast** » January 6th, 2005, 11:31 am

I have the following when I row: *C2 Model D / PM3 *Acer Travelmate 660, Intel centrino 1.6, 512mb, built in 802.11b Intel WiFi card running RowPro 1.7b4 *Polar coded chest belt *Polar 720i watch Up until yesterday it was running fine, but then I got erratic or no HRM readings on the PM3. Reading on the Polar 720i remained accurate. Remember, the laptop/Rowpro has nothing to do with the HRM reception, that is all passed on by the PM3 interface. This seems to be where the problem lies. I just realised it is possibly the fact that the transformer for the laptop power may have been to close to the interface, creating interference. I willl try again tonight on 10K row, see what transpires. HRM often suffer interference. My 720i always gets false HR / Speed readings when I am near electrified railways. It once gave me a 121km/h on my roadbike on the flat. I wish! The beauty with Polar software, however, it has a very useful feature to correct the such errors.

[old] Fran · Post by **[old] Fran** » January 7th, 2005, 6:55 am

Okay, the following is as good as it gets, apparently... well, for the time being anyway. After endless trying of 'this, that and the other', what I've finally had to resort to is to simply plugging the laptop back into the router via the original ethernet cable we'd been using prior to going wireless. Now, the *weird* thing is that without even activating the old LAN (i.e. the laptop's still using the newly set up, wireless connection to the router) the HR data instantly flipped from the erratic and bogus figures we'd been getting back to completely normal ones!?! It seems that to avoid the conflict all that's needed is for the laptop to be hardwired to the router, even if it's not the hardwiring it's actually using to connect. Obviously this is in no way a fix (naturally, the whole point of going wireless was to loose some of the spaghetti round the house) but at least the HR readings are fine again and the laptop still utilises its new wireless facilty which is something that I needed for general, rather than just C2 purposes; so I suppose it's not all negative. Sadly, I'm not au fait with the bump and grind side of this technology and so have no way of being able to deduce anything from my findings (or, better still, find any real solutions to the problem) but maybe someone out there can? Keep uz posted Fran

[old] cityeast · Post by **[old] cityeast** » January 7th, 2005, 7:42 am

Fran, A few important questions: Is your 802.11g card internal or external? Have you tried setting your wireless to 802.11b settings? (Unless your deal in large files, it makes practically no difference). What level of encryption are you using? Does it work properly when you "disable" the card in your network settings menu? Does the erratic HRM reading appear equally and synchroniously on the PM3 display? I use a 802.11b internal card and 802.11b/g Netgear Router, which is a couple of rooms away from the rower. Encryption is 128bit Hex.I have only once had erratic readings, I think it was my laptop transformer. I am not 100% convinced the problem lies directly with the laptop, most likely your wireless signal is interfering with the HRM interface. Unfortunately the HRM interface cable is not shielded to my knowledge (ie the data wires are not packed in aluminium foil and earthed at one end). This cable is nearly 2 metres long and therefore very susceptible to EMF interference.

[old] Fran · Post by **[old] Fran** » January 9th, 2005, 6:31 am

Hi cityeast... huge apologies for the delay in replying... was away on work. <table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td class='genmed'>QUOTE </td></tr><tr><td class='quote'>Is your 802.11g card internal or external? </td></tr></table> Internal. <table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td class='genmed'>QUOTE </td></tr><tr><td class='quote'>Have you tried setting your wireless to 802.11b settings? </td></tr></table> Yep - sadly no difference was made. <table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td class='genmed'>QUOTE </td></tr><tr><td class='quote'>What level of encryption are you using? </td></tr></table> 64bit, although we've tried everything, including no encryption at all, to no avail. <table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td class='genmed'>QUOTE </td></tr><tr><td class='quote'>Does it work properly when you "disable" the card in your network settings menu? </td></tr></table> Nope. Although a different problem is manifested... when the wireless card is disabled both the PM3 and RowPro show normal-ish HR readings with the exception that there are frequent (as in every few seconds) crashes of data and the readings themselves seem uncustomarily insensitive and 'sticky'. i.e. instead of the HR reading going up in response to a steady increase effort it will hold fast at, say, 116 BMP then suddenly jump to 128 (or whatever). <table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td class='genmed'>QUOTE </td></tr><tr><td class='quote'>Does the erratic HRM reading appear equally and synchroniously on the PM3 display? </td></tr></table> No, as mentioned in one of my earlier posts there's a difference of 200 BPM between the PM3 and the RowPro screen. If the PM3 is reading 03 BPM then the RowPro screen will display 203 BPM. There's no time differential in display output, though; so the readings (despite being incorrect and unequal) are synchronised. As I wrote before, everything is working faultlessly now I've once again got the laptop hardwired to the router; so this conflict issue isn't the end of the world. It would be good to get to the bottom of it, though. Cheers, in advance, for any thoughts/input. Fran

[old] cityeast · Post by **[old] cityeast** » January 9th, 2005, 8:12 am

Hmmm, it is a pretty nasty problem. I can only suggest the following: Try a shorter USB cable (strange I know, but the standard PM3 cable is damn long and maaaay have something to do with it). Try an external PCMIA Wireless card (if you can borrow one) Try another laptop (if you can borrow one...difficult I am sure). Try RowPro beta 5 (if they ever get around to releasing it). Its basically a process of elimination from here on.

[old] busterG · Post by **[old] busterG** » March 2nd, 2005, 5:15 pm

the exact same thing has started happening to me since I installed RowPro .. at first i thought it was the TV .. i switched that off and it seemed to work for a bit, but later .. same thing. I've had my chest belt for a number of years now so the battery might be on the fritz... i was considering buying a new one... i've had it for well over 4 yrs... i'm running a B wifi network, linksys, and an IBM T30 laptop with internal cisco wifi card... another thing i noticed .. and it may have nothing to do with it but ... when running rowpro with high-res graphics, the processing caused a lot of interference on my laptop screen ... which only went away when i lowered the resolution. I'm wondering if the intense graphics of the program are somehow generating noise in and around the laptop .. enough to distort the signal from the chest belt.... just a random idea.

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