Bluetooth FTMS
Zach CardozaTulare, CA
I represented Keiser on the Bluetooth SIG Health and Fitness Working Group from 2013 through 2017. The specification I helped write became FTMS and FTMP, the GATT services that fitness equipment manufacturers now use to talk to phones and apps. The whole thing started with a briefing I gave Keiser's founder, explaining why no Bluetooth profile suitable for fitness equipment existed yet.
- Role
- Software Engineer
- Employer
- Keiser Corporation
- Dates
- 2013 - 2017
- Scale
- Adopted as the industry standard for connected fitness equipment
- Outcomes
- GATT specification ratified by the Bluetooth SIG
- Used industry-wide by fitness equipment manufacturers
- Tech
- Bluetooth Low Energy
- GATT profiles
Artifacts
The original problem was practical: Keiser was building Bluetooth-enabled fitness equipment and there was no standard protocol for the category. Bluetooth and ANT both existed; neither had a profile that fit. I briefed the founder, Dennis Keiser, on the gap and was sent to represent the company on the Bluetooth SIG Health and Fitness Working Group.
I traveled to Amsterdam for the working group meetings, mostly during the proposal phase around 2013 and 2014, and proposed what eventually became FTMS and FTMP, along with related profiles. The final ratified spec went through additional final-testing phases I was not involved in directly. The current spec is broadly recognizable as the structure we proposed.
Co-developed alongside engineers from Nordic Semiconductor, Garmin, and others. The Personal Identifier profile and adjacent test protocols (heart-rate calculations, FTP tests, kilocalorie calculations) all came out of the same working group's effort.