When I arrive at the gym, I wet the two sensor pads with tap water and attach the strap to my chest, pretty tight, right under the pecs. My chest is not really hairy (I shave it from time to time).
The monitor (watch) usually shows a heart rate at this point.
I get on the treadmill and start running. The treadmill has a Polar display as well, and normally shows a number very close to what’s on the watch. Typically, after a minute, I get either no results at all (the treadmill shows no heart rate and the watch shows zero) or ridiculous results such as 217 (on both displays).
Sometimes, after several minutes of exercise, the display reappears with normal results for a little while, then it goes wild again.
The strap remains in place, it doesn’t slip down or anything.
I have tried switching batteries on both the transmitter and the watch, it doesn’t fix the problem. The transmitter on the FT4 is removable and I remove it from the strap when not in use, per instructions; I guess this preserves the battery.
I had similar problems with an older Polar unit, but I always blamed them on the non-replaceable battery in that strap.
I hesitate to buy yet another monitor until I’m sure I’m doing things correctly.
What should I do? Use saliva? Use some ECG gel? Have a USB port installed in my chest?
What about if you were just to wear the HRM around the house or out running errands? What happens? In other words, see if this behavior is related directly to when you exercise.
Not sure what that would tell you except that perhaps the sender unit may be faulty in some way.
Your Polar device is operating exactly as it was engineered to act.
Caveat: That’s just my opinion since yours seems to work exactly like the piece of $#%7 Polar that I no longer wear. I replaced batteries, used gel, water, etc and mine still did the same thing.
After a while I thought it might be me. I have a heart condition which makes me produce the rhythm of a very bad jazz band. I thought it might just be that my unusual rhythm was messing up it’s little mind some how.
I had the same problem years ago and thought it was the battery too. Replacing didn’t help and I never solved the issue. It sounds like it’s just defective. I’d contact Polar and ask for a replacement (if it’s not too old).
I don’t have a Polar but I’ve been through 3 Garmin HRMs in the last year and they’ve all failed to work consistently for more than a month at a time. First one eventually pegged at 197bpm and stuck there even when I took the thing off. The second one would drop in and out while I was wearing it, regardless of how wet/dry/sweaty etc… it was. Third one did basically the same thing, normally returning to proper function as my lap lap counter switched on the GPS. Horribly annoying and makes it impossible to try to do any sort of zone training. It also makes it more difficult to track calories and level of effort. I’ve tried both the hard and soft strap versions. They are ANT+ devices.
The straps/sensors are horribly overpriced as well. They are 25 cent pieces of hardware at most and they sell them for $50-60 minimum a piece.
The 217 BPM could be cross talk from the guy on the next treadmill having the same frequency. I had that with Polars. Get too close to some else wearing on and bingo 200+ BPM
Riding user power lines can cause dropouts from to much electrical noise. Wear the unit outside the gym and see if it still happens. It could be your gym is electrically hostile.