Bryton Rider 450: Downloading Raw Workout Data

Tuesday, 7 July, 2020

In my earlier post I noted a couple of “bugs” that would be good to fix and one of these was downloading workout data (locations and sensor readouts) from the device, app, or Bryton Active website. There is no button to press or link to click to do this, but it does exist and is actually much lower level than this!

At it’s simplest, the Rider 450 is simply a data logger with a built-in GPS that can also link to other ANT+ devices and record all of the sensor data. It writes the data to a file using Garmin’s binary FIT file format (Flexible and Interoperable Data Transfer Activity file) which is simple, small, and flexible. When you plug your Rider 450 in to your PC, it mounts the device as a drive and all the FIT files are in the top directory. You can just copy them straight off!

So what can you do with them? DC Rainmaker has a handy list of bike related software including many to manipulate FIT files, however here are a few worth looking at:

  • FIT Conversion and Repair: from Steve Gordon, this site allows you upload and convert or repair your FIT files. Simple and easy.

  • FIT File Tools: a very handy select of FIT manipulation tools, including merging tracks, so if you accidentally split your workout then this can splice it back together.

  • GPSBabel: the Swiss Army knife of tracklog manipulation, GPSBabel supports FIT files and allows you to convert them in to a range of different formats. Originally a command line utility, it also has a GUI which runs the command line in the background. I wanted to convert my FIT file to a text file (CSV) and it didn’t work because (I think) the GUI didn’t produce the right command line. You want to be using something like this:

gpsbabel -t -i garmin_fit,allpoints=1,recoverymode=1 -f my_workout.fit -o unicsv -F my_output.csv