Actively maintained Branch: Lots of bugfixes, huge application improvements

[JaapvanEkris]

New functionality:

• Introduction of the session manager, which allows setting up workout plans (intervals and splits). These can be set via the PM5 interface (ErgZone and EXR) and MQTT
• Added support for ANT+ rowing metrics broadcast
• Improved Bluetooth Low Energy interface:
  • Major upgrade of our PM5 interface, bringing it much closer to the official PM5 interface specification: apps like ErgZone, EXR and many others now work in PM5 mode in most scenarios (see the known limitations section for more info). This allows you to set up a workout in the session manager with ease, have force curves presented and record the data (adresses this request).
• Much better integrations:
  • Added RowsAndAll.com and intervals.icu integration for workout reporting (i.e. automatic uploading of a result).
  • Added a MQTT peripheral. This reports metrics live to MQTT brokers and control home automation, etc. (see this discussion, this discussion and this request). The MQTT listener allows you to push workout plans from home automation systems to OpenRowingMonitor (see the integrations page for more information).
  • Added support for creating Garmin Fit-files, including reporting of distance per stroke, workout plan, intervals, splits and pauses. Files work with Garmin, Strava and intervals.icu
• Improved user interface
  • Allow the user to change the GUI layout and metrics, including displaying the force curve
  • Allow user to turn on or off ANT+ and BLE functionality and dynamically switch between ANT+ and BLE HR monitors from the GUI

Added some bugfixes/robustness/accuracy improvements:

• Drastic improvement of the architecture to make it more robust and more extensible
• Major stack upgrades:
  • Added support for the newest version of Raspberry Pi OS (Bookworm), moved from Node.js v16 (EOL) to Node.js v22 (current),
  • Removed a lot of unneeded npm packages and upgraded npm packages where possible, fixing a lot of security vulnerabilities and installation issues.
  • Upgraded ESLint and its configuration, our code is now inspected beyond the use of spaces.
  • Introducing JSDoc in our code, to make our code easier to maintain (see also).
• Rewrite of the entire bluetooth stack which fixes the Bluetooth issues where Bluetooth will not work after a reboot or crashes after a setting change (see the related issue for more info)
• Major performance improvements:
  • Improved the accuracy, responsiveness and efficiency of both the Linear and Quadratic the Theil-Sen algorithms. For larger 'flankLength' machines (12+ datapoints), this improved algorithm will also result in 50% reduction in CPU use, while increasing the responsiveness and accuracy of the forcecurve and powercurve. For smaller 'flankLength' machines it will improve less, but still improve.
  • We moved from Chromium to Firefox for the webkiosk service as it greatly reduces the CPU load, practically freeing up a complete CPU core.
• All linear regression calculations (stroke detection, Drag calculation, recovery slope calculation) now use the Linear Theil-Sen algorithm, making this calculation more robust against outliers and stroke detection errors
• Added a configuration sanity check which
  • logs obvious errors and (if possible) repairs settings, preventing that users who mess up their config get completely stuck.
  • provides an automated upgrade path for 0.8.4 users to 0.9.6, as all the newly added configuration items between these two versions are automatically detected, logged and repaired.
• Robustness improvements:
  • Added restart limits to prevent infinite boot loops of the app crashing and rebooting when there is a config error
  • Made Flywheel.js more robust against faulty GPIO data
  • Improved the structure of the peripherals to allow a more robust BLE and ANT use
• Bugfixes:
  • Fixed the GPIO tick rollover, which led to a minor hickup in data in rows over 30 minutes
  • Fixed a bug in pause behaviour for magnetic rowers causing them to stop permanently (fixes this bug).
  • Fixed a bug in the metrics presentation, which caused some metrics presented/recorded to be averaged too much.
  • Fixed a bug in restart behaviour that made the recorders crash (fixes this bug).

Known issues

• Our PM5 interface still has some minor limitations:
  • ErgZone and similar apps also can set a 'Calories' based workout. This interval type is still on our backlog, so it currently isn't supported yet. The PM5 interface will fail silently and will not send an error message on this.
  • ErgData will not work well with our PM5 interface: sometimes it can program OpenRowingMonitor, but you will not be able to save your workout, as we can't create the cryptographic hash to upload the workout results. This also causes a deadlock that hangs communication at both ends (kill the ErgData app to resolve this). As ErgData is propriatary to Concept2, we have decided against putting in the effort to resolve this (see issue 117).
• Some Garmin watches have issues with our 'Cycling Power' and 'Cycling Speed and Cadence' Bluetooth profiles as a result of a change on Garmin's side in handling unencrypted Bluetooth commmunication. This affects all current and past versions of OpenRowingMonitor, and might be caused by Garmin (see issue 125).

[JaapvanEkris]

We just released version 0.9.5

New functionality in 0.9.5

• Added FIT-File support: you can now automatically generate a FIT-file after a rowing session, which allows for a more detailed reporting than the tcx-format, and is commonly accepted by most platforms
• Introduction of the session manager, which provides support for intervals, splits, rest intervals and spontaneous pauses in the session and also adds these to the FIT, tcx and RowingData recordings. Please note, setting predetermined intervals and splits in a user friendly way (via PM5 and webinterface) is still a ToDo that is intended for 1.0.0.
• Improvement of Magnetic rower support: the new session manager makes sure that the session is nicely stopped, even when the flywheel has stopped quite abruptly before pause timeouts have time to kick in. This is the case on some magnetic rowers which have an extreme high drag, resulting in very short spin down times of their flywheel.

Bugfixes and robustness improvements in 0.9.5

• Improvement of the architecture: we cleaned up the old architecture and went to a more message bus structure where clients are responsible for listening to the datatransmissions they are interested in. See the architecture description for a deep-dive of the implementation. Key benefit is that this is more maintainable as it allows serving data more easily to totally different clients (webGUI, recorders and BLE/ANT+) with totally different needs, making future enhancements easier.
• Improvement of Bluetooth stability: we moved away from abandonware's BLE NoBle/BleNo implementation and moved to stoprocent's implementation, as that package is better maintained and works better with newer installs of BlueZ, which should fix some issues on Raspberry Pi Bookworm. Unfortunatly, none of the NoBle/BleNo descendents are immune to some specific BlueZ issues (see known issues).
• Performance improvement of the TS estimator, further reducing CPU load, which significantly improves accuracy of the measurements and metrics as the Linux kernel has an easier job keeping the time accurate.
• Removed a lot of memory leaks, although only being problematic in large simulations (i.e. over 3000K), we want to keep our code to behave nice
• Improved robustness of the stroke detection algorithm
• Validation of the engine against a PM5 for over 3000KM, where the deviation is a maximum of 0.1%

Known issues in 0.9.5

• Bluetooth Heartrate can't be switched dynamically: due to some underlying changes in the OS, BLE heartrate monitors can't be activated through the GUI without crashing the BLE metrics broadcast (see the description of issue 69). As this is an issue in the OS, and all previous versions of OpenRowingMonitor are also affected by this issue. Version 0.9.5 has a workaround implemented that mitigates this at startup. So configuring the use of a BLE heartrate monitor in the config file should work.

[JaapvanEkris]

We just release version 0.9.6

New functionality in 0.9.6

• Major upgrade of our PM5 interface, bringing it much closer to the official PM5 interface specification: apps like ErgZone, EXR and many others now work in PM5 mode in most scenarios (see the known limitations section for more info). This allows you to set up a workout in the session manager with ease, have force curves presented and record the data (adresses this request).
• Added RowsAndAll.com and intervals.icu integration for workout reporting (i.e. automatic uploading of a result).
• Added a MQTT peripheral. This reports metrics live to MQTT brokers and control home automation, etc. (see this discussion, this discussion and this request). The MQTT listener you to push workout plans to OpenRowingMonitor from home automation systems (see the integrations page for more information).

Bugfixes and robustness improvements in 0.9.6

• Simplified Strava integration, which now is in line with the rest of the integrations (see this discussion) and greatly simplifying the backend-architecture
• Rewrite of the entire bluetooth stack, greatly improving stability and removing limitations. This also fixes the issue that heartrate device can't be switched dynamically (adresses the known limitation of version 0.9.5, reported in this bug, this feature request and this bug report.
• Fixed a bug in pause behaviour for magnetic rowers causing them to sttop permanently (fixes this bug).
• Fixed a bug in the metrics presentation, which caused some metrics presented/recorded to be averaged too much.
• Fixed a bug in restart behaviour that made the recorders crash (fixes this bug).
• Upgraded ESLint and its configuration, our code is inspected beyond the use of spaces.
• Introducing JSDoc in our code, to make our code easier to understand (see also).
• Upgrade npm packages and node.js: we cleaned house by removing a lot of unneeded npm packages, upgraded npm packages where we could and upgraded to Node.js v22 (current) to increase support. This makes our stack current and fixes some security vulnerabilities.
• We moved from Chromium to Firefox for the webkiosk service as it greatly reduces the CPU load, practically freeing up a complete CPU core.

Known issues in 0.9.6

• Our PM5 interface still has some minor limitations:
  • ErgZone and similar apps also can set a 'Calories' based workout. This interval type is still on our backlog, so it currently isn't supported yet. The PM5 interface will fail silently and will not send an error message on this.
  • ErgData will not work well with our PM5 interface: sometimes it can program OpenRowingMonitor, but you will not be able to save your workout, as we can't create the cryptographic hash to upload the workout results. This also causes a deadlock that hangs communication at both ends (kill the ErgData app to resolve this). As ErgData is propriatary to Concept2, we have decided to not put in any effort to resolve this (see issue 117).
• Some Garmin watches have issues with our 'Cycling Power' and 'Cycling Speed and Cadence' Bluetooth profiles as a result of a change on their side in handling unencrypted Bluetooth commmunication. This affects all current and past versions of OpenRowingMonitor, and might be caused by Garmin (see issue 125).

Upgrade instructions for 0.9.6

[!IMPORTANT] When upgrading from an existing install, upgrade using sudo /bin/bash /opt/openrowingmonitor/updateopenrowingmonitor.sh (be aware you need to install from the jaapvanekris github branch!). Please be aware several things have to be done by hand:

• If you use an attached screen, you need to install firefox by sudo apt-get install firefox
• If you use the automated Strava upload, you have to configure your Strava setup in config.js again. Please look at the integrations manual for how to do this.