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Pegasus Stride System Macro User Guide

September 2008 V1.0

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Table of Contents

1. MANIPULATING DATA.......................................................................................... 3 1.1 Dressage with GPS position................................................................................ 9 1.2 Select Gait Manually......................................................................................... 11

2. RACE HORSES ....................................................................................................... 14

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Manipulation of Recorded Pegasus Data This document takes the reader through all of the stages to successfully generate graphs, charts and tables from the data recorded by the Pegasus System. The software used to carry out this is an Excel 2003 macro. This document covers the following Macro file versions. Macro V6.4 To check the version on your system go to the folder database and read the file name that includes the version number. If yours is different please contact ETB for an updated file.

1. MANIPULATING DATA When you have successfully loaded your recorded information into the laptop using the Poseidon software, you can do many things with the information that you have gathered. The file that was saved is in a format called 'comma separated variable', CSV for short. This is a very simple file structure that can be read my almost any mathematical package or spreadsheets. In order to allow you to see results quickly, ETB have supplied a macro that runs under Excel 2003 on the laptop supplied with the computer. The following are the simple instructions to generate the graphs so you can see your recorded data more easily and understandable. 1. The first thing to do is to navigate to the folder where you have saved the data file with the

.CSV section. These files are easily recognised, they have a .CSV extension after them, also, the little icon has an 'a,' in the picture. See figure 1 below, where the CSV file is called 'fred'.

Figure 1, CSV file icon

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2. Double click on this file and it will automatically open Excel 2003. You will be presented

with a window like that shown in figure 2 below. It may look bigger than shown depending how the last person was using it. You can clearly see the information that was recorded during the trial in the columns, but it likes headings.

Figure 2, Opened CSV file

3. The button that is most important is the little yellow smiling face. Single click this icon with

your mouse and the following dialogue box will be displayed in figure 3 below.

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Figure 3, User form

4. Now fill in the top three boxes which are self explanatory, use the ‘tab’ key to move from

field to field, see sample below in figure 4. All these boxes are free form text fields, so you can write anything in them.

Figure 4, Partially filled User form

5. The box labelled 'Event Type' depends on what you were doing. Essentially if you were

not galloping your horse, click the Dressage radio button. For this demo data the trial was carried out in a ménage, so we will click the dressage radio button, see figure 5 below.

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Figure 5, Dressage button selected.

6. You will now see that two selections have turned white, these are 'Select Gait Manually'

and 'Include GPS position’. We will ignore these for this run through. Just click the 'Execute' button. The spreadsheet will now calculate and you will be presented with the following worksheet, see figure 6.

Figure 6, Calculated Data.

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7. You will initially see that the chart of the test has been produced, the chart presented

shows rhythm and length against time. If you look at the bottom you will see three tabs. The chart you are looking at is highlighted in white. If you click on the 'Rhythm-Length-Speed' tab you will get a different chart shown which adds speed, see figure 7 below. The speed of the horse is the extra black line.

Figure 7, Rhythm Length Speed Chart

8. Now click on the third tab, 'Data' and you will see the data that was recorded, presented in

a different format to the CSV file, see figure 8 below. You can now see that all the data has meaningful headings, both for dressage and racehorse. You can scroll down to look at the data if required. It is this data that is used to generate all of the charts, maps and tables.

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Figure 8, data worksheet.

Depending how confident that you are with Excel you can manipulate this data to carry out

other statistical analysis. Some of our customers export the data into statistical mathematical packages.

9. The most important thing to do now is to save the file as an excel spreadsheet file. This

type of file will have an .XLS extension. So click on File, Save as, and you will be presented with a dialogue box below, see figure 9.

Figure 9, Save dialogue box

Note the default file type to save is a CSV file. You must change this to 'Microsoft Office

Excel Workbook', see figure 9. Failure to do this overwrites the original file, which you won’t be able to go back to. To do this, click on the down arrow on the 'Save as type:

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white box area. And scroll to 'Microsoft Office Excel Workbook'. You can now change the file name if you wish, and direct the file to another directory. Now press 'Save'. The file has now been saved with the same name so the folder that we saved it in will look like the following figure 10.

Figure 10, CSV and XLS Macro Demo files

You can easily see the original CSV file and the new 'Macro Demo XLS file which has a

grid on it. The next phase will discuss the other options that you have when you are selecting the

information that you require.

1.1 Dressage with GPS position Again select the CSV file. 'Macro Demo' and click on the smiley face, and fill in the test

details as in the previous example. This time click on Dressage and GPS data. Your window should look like figure 11 below.

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Figure 11, Form view

Now click on Execute and you will see the screen below in figure 12. As you can see the

screen is quite different. You now get the graph you previously had, but to the right is also a map showing the position of the horse in the ménage.

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Figure 12, Chart and map display.

You will also notice that the chart has a black dot at the beginning, and the map has a

purple dot. These are curser positions at the start of the test. Ensure that you are in an empty cell on the spreadsheet, and press the 'F9' key and the black and purple dots will move. You can keep it pressed continually to move forward quickly. This facility allows you to observe where in the ménage or arena you are, allowing you to gather more information about your riding. For instance, you may find that you are always reducing rhythm at a certain point in the ménage, the map will immediately see where this is occurring. In this instance cutting corners and making the ménage egg shaped.

To move the curser back at the beginning, click on the 'Reset Cursor' button in the top left

corner of the chart. The rest of the data is the same as previously explained. You can save this file if you wish as a XLS file, or just close it without saving. We’ll select

another option.

1.2 Select Gait Manually. Select gait manually allows you to select part of the graph for dressage riders for the walk,

trot and canter gaits. This will produce a chart showing rhythm against length. You can then view the capabilities of your horse within each gait. Lets’ get a chart viewed were we can explain in more detail as we go along.

So open the Macro Demo CSV file and fill in the User form as follows. You can still select

GPS position if required. In this instance we won’t select it. Your form should now look like the one in figure below.

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. Figure 13, User form

When you click on 'Execute' . The original chart that we have seen is presented with a

dialogue box shown in figure 14 below.

Figure 14, Walk prompt

You can easily see in this demo where the walk, trot and canter are. The walk is averaging

55 strides per minute (rhythm), trots 85 strides per minute and the canter 112 strides per minute, for a refresher refer to figure 12. So all you need to do is click on the chat on the blue line, two points. The greater the number of points you chose the more reliable is the chart that will be produced.

So press the 'OK' button and make your selections. Another dialogue box will be

presented showing what point numbers were selected. See figure 15 below, were we have a good selection of points.

Figure 15, Walk points selected.

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Now press OK again, and another box will ask you to select points for trot, press OK and

then select the Trot points. The following points for trot were selected.

Figure 16, Trot prompt

Now do the canter, in this example there was not a long canter so not as many points will

be selected.

Figure 17, Canter points selected

Press OK and another type of chart will be produced, see figure 18 below.

Figure 18, Stride versus Length.

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You can now see three interesting graphs showing the horses walk, trot and canter. The straight lines are those published by Dr. Hilary Clayton ABC, DEG and Bar, when the USA dressage team were filmed at the Atlanta Olympics. So the lines show where a typical Olympian horse will be on the chart. The most important thing as a rider is to not get the individual gaits looking like smudges. So this horse and rider in the walk appears to be fine (the red points). The trot (green) the rhythm of the horse is changing far more for very little stride length. The length is also quite short. The canter (blue) is tidier, but again only a small variation in the stride length. Once you have discussed these results with your trainer, you can start to work directly on the rhythm to get that flatter, then start working on your length. Over time you can keep a check on progress by doing another test.

Don't worry if you are short of the Olympic lines as it also depends on the conformity and

breed, but it gives an idea. If you also look there is another tab at the bottom where this chart is located called 'Stride v

Length'. There is also another tab labelled 'Table'. Click on this and you will see the information from your chart as a table that details your mean (average) and how far away from the Olympic standard you are.

Now don't forget to save the file as an Excel spreadsheet if you want to look at the data. If

you go back to the Rhythm-Length tab you will also see that this horse is different on the left and right reign. This test was left reign walk trot canter, followed by right reign. If you look at the trot, left reign averages 88 strides per minute, right reign, 92.

This covers the topic for general use. Race horse trainers are discussed below.

2. RACE HORSES The differences between the dressage graphs and the Racehorse graphs are the scaling

on the left is higher, and the units are presented in the more common, secs/furlong, so all that has been described in terms of process is the same. The difference is that heart rate data can be included if required.

You can add heart rate data from a standard Polar equine heart rate monitor. There is no

linking of the Polar system to the Macro, so it relies on the accuracy of the time that is set onto the Polar watch. You need to copy your heart rate file which is in the format of filename.HRM. Copy this file to the directory where your .CSV file is, or any other preferred location.

So let us open the CSV file again and click on the Racehorse and tick the Heart-rate box

and click Execute, see figure below.

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Figure 19, User form

The following dialogue box is presented for you to select the .HRM file to use.

Figure 20, Select file dialogue box.

Navigate to the file and select it.

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You are then presented with the chart of Rhythm-Speed_HR. If you also look loosely to the tabs along the bottom, there is also a 'Heart-Rate' tab. This is where the heart-rate information is located. Now if there are differences in the heart-rate watch, these can be accounted for by following these instructions.

A typical racehorse graph is shown below in figure 20. Notice the units are different.. If

you want to monitor an endurance ride, just use the racehorse button to allow you to get access to the heart rate radio button.

Figure 21, Heart rate data incorporated.