Making a walking treadmill app: question about file formats

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Hi @david ! Thank you for building Intervals.icu, I discovered it recently and it’s quickly becoming a service I love and use all the time.

I’m building a mobile app that connects to walking treadmills using the FTMS protocol, like the many affordable models using the FitShow hardware.
I want an app that connects automatically to the treadmill as soon as it starts broadcasting over Bluetooth, starts and stops recording workouts accordingly and connect to a specified heart rate sensor if available.

It’s easy to end up walking for 5+ hours or 15+km per day while working, so that’s definitely something to track in terms of fitness, training and health :smiley:

As I’m exploring the data formats, I’m not sure if the industry has standardized the treadmill walks specifically.
In the FIT SDK, the treadmill sub-sport is applicable only to running and not walking, however there is an indoor_walking sub-sport which could mean either treadmill or any kind of walk happening indoors.

I plan to implement the Intervals.icu API in order to not rely only on Strava for uploads, as well as giving the option to generate workout recordings files which can be handled fully offline.
When uploaded manually to Intervals.icu, they should be classified correctly without user intervention, corresponding to "indoor": true in Intervals.icu API or the “Trainer” checkbox in the UI.

What would you recommend my app to generate:

  • FIT files with walking as sport and indoor_walking as sub-sport?
  • TCX file: which values set?

I’m considering TCX because it’s trivial to generate compared to FIT (I’m not using the SDK)

Thanks :pray: