Deep Dive: Indoor Rowing with the Concept2 PM5

Trckify started on the water: stroke detection from motion sensors, GPS pace, sections, the Mac analysis app. But most rowers live in two worlds — and from autumn to spring, the second one has a fan whirring in it. With 1.5.1, Trckify treats the erg as a first-class citizen. This post is the long version of what that means.

The goal was never “another erg display”. The PM5 is already a great erg display. The goal is one training log: your water sessions and your erg sessions in the same history, the same charts, the same iCloud library, the same analysis on the Mac — with the erg data coming from the source that knows it best: the monitor itself.

Pairing, and what flows over Bluetooth

Pair your PM5 once in Trckify’s settings and the app reconnects automatically from then on. During a session, Trckify reads the full live picture from the monitor: pace, stroke rate, power, distance, elapsed time, and the split/interval structure of your workout.

Heart rate flows the other way too, which still feels a little magical: Trckify takes your pulse from the Apple Watch or a BLE chest strap — whichever you use — and sends it to the PM5, so it appears on the monitor’s own display exactly where Concept2 designed it to be. No ANT+ dongle, no forgetting which device owns your heart rate today.

Everything in this connection is local: phone and monitor, nothing else. Data only leaves your device if you upload a finished workout — more on that below.

Programming workouts from the phone

Tapping through a PM5 menu with sweaty thumbs is a rite of passage, but it doesn’t have to be a daily one. Trckify programs the erg for you: Just Row, fixed distance, fixed time, or intervals — built in the new workout builder and sent to the monitor when you start.

One detail we sweated: split lengths. Early in testing, a 500 m piece came back from the monitor as a 400 m split plus a 100 m remainder — because if you don’t program a split length explicitly, the PM5 quietly picks one for you. Trckify now always sets the split structure it means (500 m by default, clamped to the piece length), so what lands in your log is a clean 1×500, not arithmetic homework.

Real splits, not reconstructions

This one matters if you care about your numbers. When a workout has splits or intervals, Trckify doesn’t estimate them afterwards from a data stream — it subscribes to the PM5’s own split records and stores exactly what the monitor measured: time and distance per split, work and rest per interval.

On top of that, Trckify enriches each split from its once-per-second samples: average stroke rate, calories, and a complete heart-rate profile — average, minimum, maximum, and the value as you crossed the line. The difference shows in the Logbook: interval tables where every row carries its own heart-rate story, not just one number for the whole session. Your coach sees the session, not a summary.

The Concept2 Logbook connection

Trckify uploads to the official Concept2 Logbook — the integration is registered with Concept2 and runs against the production Logbook, with write access granted by the Concept2 API team. Connect your account once (you log in directly with Concept2; Trckify never sees your password), then upload per workout or flip on auto-sync and let finished sessions file themselves.

What goes up is the workout result: totals, splits, intervals, stroke rate, calories, power, heart rate. Indoor workouts contain no GPS data — there is none to send.

After the session

On the iPhone, every erg session gets the full stats treatment: pace, stroke-rate, power and heart-rate curves, interval summaries, calories. On the Mac, the big screen earns its keep — profile charts you can actually read from a distance, interval tables, and a section comparison view that puts your pieces side by side.

And because an erg session is a first-class activity, everything else applies too: save it to Apple Health, upload it to Strava (as a trackless FIT — Strava handles those fine), or export the file and take it anywhere.

Under the hood, briefly

For the protocol-curious: the PM5 speaks CSAFE, a state-machine-driven command protocol, and it is particular about sequencing — commands sent in the wrong state are politely ignored or impolitely errored. Trckify drives it the way Concept2’s own apps do: response-driven, state-aware, with a clean reset when a session ends so the monitor is ready for the next rower. Sessions are also crash-safe — if the app dies mid-piece, the recording recovers on next launch.

What’s next

Configurable split lengths (500 m is the right default, not the only answer), richer per-split metrics straight from the monitor’s second data channel, and deeper interval analysis on the Mac. If you row with a club and want your whole boat on one tool: that conversation is exactly why this feature exists — say hello.

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