Polar H10 Windows Capture

Rusty XR Companion includes a Windows-only Polar H10 capture service for operator-side biosignal experiments. The service lives in the Windows project because it uses WinRT Bluetooth LE APIs and should not become a Rusty XR core dependency.

Scope

RustyXr.Companion.Windows.PolarH10WindowsCaptureService can:

connect to a Polar H10 by Bluetooth address;
read battery metadata when available;
optionally subscribe to standard heart-rate and RR notifications;
optionally start Polar PMD accelerometer streaming at 200 Hz, 16 bit, 8 g;
write newline-delimited JSON records for sessions, battery, HR/RR, PMD

control responses, ACC frames, and malformed frames;

stop the PMD stream during cleanup where the device still accepts the command.

The JSONL output is intended as a local witness format for bridge and plotting tools. It is not a stable public data interchange contract yet.

PolarH10WindowsCaptureOptions exposes IncludeHeartRate and IncludePmdAcc so capture tools can run HR/RR-only, PMD-only, or combined Windows sessions. PMD is still explicit at the call site even when a command defaults to the legacy combined capture behavior.

PMD Ownership

Treat Polar H10 raw PMD streams such as ECG and accelerometer as single-owner streams. The H10 can be configured for two Bluetooth receivers for live heart rate, but that should not be interpreted as a guarantee that raw PMD streams can be consumed by two devices at the same time.

For direct-vs-mediated Quest comparisons, prefer one of these designs:

PC owns PMD and forwards selected data to the Quest broker over LSL, OSC, or

ZeroMQ-style bridge transports.

Quest owns PMD and relays timestamped broker events back to the PC for

plotting.

HR/RR is tested separately as the dual-receiver path.
Two sensors are used when a true same-time raw ACC or ECG comparison is

required.

Bridge Planning Command

Use the portable CLI planner before a live capture to choose the PMD owner, transport options, and timing evidence to collect:


dotnet run --project src/RustyXr.Companion.Cli -- polar plan --json
dotnet run --project src/RustyXr.Companion.Cli -- polar plan --profile pc-owned-pmd --out .\artifacts\polar-bridge --json

The planner is device-free. It does not open Bluetooth, ADB, LSL, OSC, or ZeroMQ sockets; it only writes JSON and Markdown planning artifacts. Current profiles are:

pc-owned-pmd: Windows owns Polar PMD and forwards to the Quest broker over

LSL, OSC, or ZeroMQ-style bridge transports.

quest-owned-pmd: the Quest broker owns Polar PMD and relays timestamped

records back to the PC for plotting.

hr-rr-dual-receiver: both PC and Quest receive standard HR/RR while PMD is

disabled.

two-sensor-raw-compare: two sensors provide independent raw PMD streams for

direct and mediated comparison.

For a single H10, do not label PC and Quest as simultaneous PMD owners. Run the LSL broker round-trip probe alongside live captures when a headset is available so plots can annotate clock offset and round-trip stability.

Throughput Diagnostic Command

Use polar throughput for the live timing run. It writes a bundle containing the raw Windows JSONL capture where applicable, polar-throughput-report.json, CSV timing extracts, and polar-throughput-summary.md.


dotnet run --project src/RustyXr.Companion.Cli -- polar throughput `
  --mode windows-owned-pmd `
  --serial <quest-serial> `
  --device-address <polar-mac> `
  --duration-seconds 30 `
  --lsl-dll <path-to-lsl.dll> `
  --out .\artifacts\polar-throughput `
  --json

dotnet run --project src/RustyXr.Companion.Cli -- polar throughput `
  --mode quest-owned-pmd `
  --serial <quest-serial> `
  --quest-device-address <polar-mac> `
  --duration-seconds 30 `
  --lsl-dll <path-to-lsl.dll> `
  --out .\artifacts\polar-throughput `
  --json

dotnet run --project src/RustyXr.Companion.Cli -- polar throughput `
  --mode hr-rr-dual-receiver `
  --serial <quest-serial> `
  --windows-device-address <polar-windows-mac> `
  --quest-device-address <polar-quest-mac> `
  --duration-seconds 30 `
  --lsl-dll <path-to-lsl.dll> `
  --out .\artifacts\polar-throughput `
  --json

windows-owned-pmd opens PMD on Windows, records HR/RR and ACC frames, pushes those records to a Windows LSL string outlet, and, when --serial is supplied, asks the Quest broker to run a bounded LSL string inlet capture for the forwarded bio:polar_acc records. quest-owned-pmd starts the broker-owned Polar source on the Quest and listens on Windows for the broker's LSL-mirrored bio:polar_acc events. hr-rr-dual-receiver disables PMD on Windows and starts HR/RR on both sides, which is the supported single-sensor overlap test.

Use --device-address when both hosts see the same BLE address. Use --windows-device-address and --quest-device-address when Windows and Android expose different BLE identities for the same strap.

The command also runs the existing broker LSL round-trip probe unless --skip-roundtrip is set. That gives the report an LSL clock-correction and transport-stability witness independent of the Polar samples.

For PMD handoff reliability, run quest-owned-pmd, verify the broker reports PMD stopped, run windows-owned-pmd, then run quest-owned-pmd again. Raw PMD should have exactly one owner in each leg.

Public Boundary

Keep raw capture artifacts, local run paths, study identifiers, and private stream names out of this repository. Store run artifacts in the private planning workspace or another user-selected output directory.

The Companion repository should own reusable Windows acquisition and operator tooling. Project-specific bridge orchestration, private plotting manifests, and experiment notes should stay outside this public repo until they are sanitized into generic contracts.