How to “POLAR Enable” your exercise bike.

I have a Schwinn 213 Recumbent Exercise Bike and it came with a hand-grip style heart rate monitor (HRM). Unfortunately HRM died couple of years ago just after the warranty is ended. I did not like the hand-grip HRM from the beginning as it was inaccurate and required me to hold the hand-grips all the time.

I’ve been playing with Polar heart rate (HR) receiver for a while and it is really easy to use. So, I decided to open up the recumbent bike’s console and replace the hand-grip HRM system with the Polar HRM system.

Let’s start with the Polar RMCM01 HR receiver unit. Continue reading “How to “POLAR Enable” your exercise bike.”

Repairing Harmony 670 Remote

I absolutely hate waste. We are wasting a lot of resources in this country from bare necessities to entertainment items. This is even worse in the small electronics area. If a small electronics item gets broken most of us don’t even think of repairing it.  There is a better, newer version out there that we want anyway, and it doesn’t cost that much. So, we dump the broken one and got a brand new one. I struggle with that mentality as I know I can repair them most of the time. Do I have time to tackle every single broken electronics item in my house? Not all the time, and I previously had resource constraints as well. I used to have one table that I did my coding and electronics projects on. Our garage is not a useful place as it is detached and not finished inside so there is no room in there for me to setup my electronics lab. I was clearing out my desk every time I worked on an electronics project, pushing away the monitors, keyboard etc. The problem is that the next morning when I needed to code, my desk was covered with components, soldering iron etc. That meant, cleaning it again. I think you got the drift. Continue reading “Repairing Harmony 670 Remote”