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

Bryton Rider 450: Desired Features and Bugs

Friday, 3 July, 2020

This will be a “live” list as things come and go, but I thought I’d start putting down some things that would be good to add or fix:

Desired Features

  • Reverse a route: I’ve planned a route one-way. It would be handy if you could reverse the route once you get to your destination and then follow the navigation back. Maybe too much to ask.
  • Read full notification: notifications only show you the first ~11 characters. Would be good to see an entire message
  • Join tracks: I’ve accidentally stopped and then restarted a track when I’ve been recording it which is irritating as your stats are then calculated separately for each one. The ability to join tracks together.
  • Download Data: would be great to be able to download the raw data from Bryton Active
  • Navigation Screen: you can tailor the bottom row of the navigation screen to show any of the data fields available. If you are not following a route, then speed is shown in the top-right, if you are following a route then it changes to “distance to go” in the top-left. It would good to make the top row configurable.

Bugs

  • Distance to Go: if you are following a route, then the map page shows you distance to go to the finish, however it overestimates this by 15-20%. Quite why I’m not sure as I know the route length from the route planning application and when I get to the end the distance is the same
  • Turn By Turn Instructions: if you are following a route and switch from a data screen back to the map page, the next turn instruction will be out of date and won’t update until the instruction refreshes at the next turn.
  • Lap Timer Error: I’ve set the auto-lap to give me a time every 2km, however if the auto-pause kicks in (e.g. at a junction) then this isn’t subtracted from the lap giving a timing error. The correct time is produced after the ride so it’s clearly correct when the stats are produced, but not during the ride itself.
  • Max Number of Lap Times: I did a 300km ride a few weeks back I when I got to auto-lap 130 (2km each) it stopped recording them. Is this an in-built number of laps it can record?