Main contributors: Abasz and Jaap van Ekris
Beta testers: fkh-bims, jryd2000 and carlito1979
Important
When upgrading from an existing install, 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.jsagain. Please look at the integrations manual for how to do this.
- 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 (there are some known limitations). 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).
- 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.
- 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).
Main contributors: Jaap van Ekris and Abasz
- 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 (see issue 59).
- 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 emulator and webinterface) is still on our backlog.
- 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.
- Improvement of the architecture: we cleaned up the old architecture and moved to a more message bus structure where clients are responsible for listening to the data transmissions 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: as a temporary fix we moved from abandonware's NoBle/BleNo Bluetooth implementation to stoprocent's implementation, as that package is better maintained and works better with newer installs of BlueZ. This should fix some issues on Raspberry Pi Bookworm. Unfortunately, none of the NoBle/BleNo descendants 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
- Bluetooth Heartrate can't be switched dynamically: due to some underlying OS changes, 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, all current and previous versions of OpenRowingMonitor are also affected by this issue. Version 0.9.5 has a workaround implemented: configuring the use of a BLE heartrate monitor in the config file should work. However, dynamic switching via the GUI will crash the BLE connections. This issue is resolved in version 0.9.6.
Main contributors: Jaap van Ekris, Abasz and carlito1979
- Added support for ANT+ rowing metrics broadcast, allowing the use of smartwatches for recording and analysing workouts.
- Allow the user to change the GUI layout and metrics, including displaying the force curve and support for larger screens
- Allow user to turn on or off ANT+ and BLE functionality and dynamically switch between ANT+ and BLE HR monitors from the GUI
- Added the option for more complex workouts, as an initial hook for the PM5 and webinterface (these are on our backlog)
- Added support for the newest version of Raspberry Pi OS (Bookworm), moved from Node.js v16 (EOL) to Node.js v20 (current) and upgraded packages where possible.
- Improved the accuracy, responsiveness and efficiency of both the Linear and Quadratic Theil-Sen algorithms. For larger 'flankLength' machines, this results in 50% reduction in CPU use, while increasing the responsiveness and accuracy of the resulting forcecurve and powercurve.
- Drag calculation and recovery slope calculation are more robust against outliers and stroke detection errors by also moving them to the Linear Theil-Sen algorithm.
- Added a configuration sanity check which logs obvious errors and (if possible) repairs settings, after several users messed up their config and got completely stuck. This configuration sanity check also provides an automated upgrade path for 0.8.2 (old config) users to 0.9.0 (new config), as all the newly added configuration items between these two versions are automatically detected, logged and repaired.
- Added restart limits to prevent infinite boot loops of the app crashing and rebooting when there is a config error
- Fixed the GPIO tick rollover, which led to a minor hickup in data in rows over 30 minutes
- Made Flywheel.js more robust against faulty GPIO data
- Fixed a lot of small memory leaks which were to untidy closure of dynamic data structures. Although this wasn't encountered in regular training sessions, it did show in long simulations (over 10.000K);
- Fixed an application crash in the RowingData generation when the target directory doesn't exist yet;
- Improved the structure of the peripherals to allow a more robust BLE and ANT use
- Validation of the engine against a PM5 for over 3000KM, where the deviation is a maximum of 0.1%
- Support has been dropped for the Raspberry Pi Zero W, as WebAssembly will not work on Node.js V16 on ArmV6, and other core packages require at least Node V18 to function on newer versions of the Raspberry Pi OS (see this discussion)
Main contributors: Jaap van Ekris and Abasz
- New Metrics: With the new rowing engine, new metrics are introduced, including Force curve, Peak force, average force, power curve, handle speed curve, VO2Max (early beta), Heart Rate Recovery. All have over 1000 kilometers of testing under their belt, and have shown to work reliably;
- Added Cycling Power Profile and Cycling Speed/Cadence bluetooth profiles for compatibility with more smartwatches
- Improved metrics through BLE FTMS and BLE C2-PM5: Based on the new engine, many metrics are added to both FTMS Rower and PM5, making them as complete as they can be. Most metrics also have over a 1000 km of testing with EXR, and both types of interface have been used with EXR intensly.
- New export format: There is a RowingData export, which can export all metrics in .csv, which is accepted by both RowingData and RowsAndAll. It is also useable for users to read their data into Excel. This export brings the force curve to users, although it will require a small subscription to see it in RowsAndAll;
- Simpler set-up: a better out-of-the-box experience for new users. We trimmed the number of required settings, and for many cases we’ve succeeded: several settings are brought down to their key elements (like a minimal handle force, which can be set more easily for all rowers) or can be told by looking at the logs (like the recovery slope). For several other settings, their need to set them perfectly has been reduced, requiring less tweaking before OpenRowingMonitor starts producing good data. To support this, there also is a new setup document, to help users set up their own rower;
- Switch to 64Bit: OpenRowingMonitor supports the 64 Bit Lite core, which has a PREEEMPT-kernel. The setup-script accepts this as well, as this should be the preferred kernel to use. The PREEMPT-kernel is optimized for low latency measurements, like IoT applications. As PREEMPT kernels can handle a lot higher priority for the GPIO-thread, this setting has been switched from a binary setting to a priority setting.
- An initial stub for session mangement: As a first step towards sessions and splits, a session object in Server.js is added as a placeholder for session targets. If a target is set, it will termintate the session at the exact right time. As is with the PM5, ORM counts down if a target is set. You can't set these targets through the webGUI or through BLE yet. However, it is a first step towards functional completeness as it lays a preliminary foundation for such functionality.
- Totally redesigned rowing engine: Linear and Quadratic Regression models are now the core of the rowing engine, leaving the classical numerical approximation model. The new model is much more robust against noise, and completely removes the need for noise filtering from OpenRowingMonitor.
- Improved logging: the logging has been more focussed on helping the user fix a bad setting, focussing on the underlying state of the engine and its settings (for example the drive time and drive length). Goal is to have users be able to tune their engine based on the log.
- Finite State Machine based state management: OpenRowingEngine will now maintain an explicit state for the rower, and RowingStatistics will maintain an explicit state for the session. Aside reducing the code complexity significantly, it greatly impoved robustness.
- Added a new GPIO-library, making measurement of the flywheel data much more accurate and allowing to "debounce" the measurements, as many sensors have this issue
Main contributor: Lars Berning
- Added Strava support
Main contributor: Jaap van Ekris
- Refactoring of the Rowing Engine, as Dave Vernooy's engine (ErgWare) is good, but its variable naming left a bit to be desired. The underlying physics has been described in the physics of OpenRowingMonitor, and is largely based on the work of Dave Vernooy and Anu Dudhia.
Initial release, Main contributor: Lars Berning, porting of Dave Vernooy's ErgWare to JavaScript and addition of Bluetooth.