Here are some common mistakes made when using EQUISYM for the first time and potential solutions to avoid them:
👉 You swaped sensors!
The problem: putting the right hind leg in place of the left hind leg. Unfortunately, the EQUISYM algorithm is not yet able to detect ambling gait! Similarly, you can swap the head sensor with the withers sensor. In this situation, you will obtain data, but it will be ‘swapped’ on your application.
Potential solutions: get into the habit of always storing your sensors in the same order in the case. Example: at the top, head/withers/croup; at the bottom, left front/right front/left hind/right hind. Also, be careful when placing them!
👉 You are placing the sensors in the wrong direction!
The problem: a small horse is drawn on your sensors, it must always be in the cranial position -towards the head (for head/withers/croup sensors) or facing downwards (for limb sensors). The same applies to the limbs: they should not be positioned on the lateral side of the limb but on the cranial side. The limb attachment may rotate; beyond a certain degree, the EQUISYM algorithm will no longer be able to detect the trot phases correctly.
Potential solutions: don’t forget your morning coffee! Adjust the limb sensor attachments correctly to prevent them from rotating and quickly check that all attachments are correctly positioned between each condition.
👉 You don’t fill in all the conditions before starting!
The problem: when you start a session, you have to fill in all the conditions: pace, figure, type of ground, otherwise you won’t be able to start recording.
👉 You have not connected the small dongle to download data from the sensors to the tablet!
The problem: only customers with cases containing dongles are affected. You clicked on ‘Finish your review’, your application is running and running, but it seems that the tablet is unable to find the sensors and therefore cannot download the data.
Potential solutions: you might have forgotten to connect the small WiFi dongle that allows the sensors to communicate with the tablet when downloading data. It also sometimes happens that even with the dongle connected, the tablet will connect to another WiFi network instead of EQUISYM WiFi. You will therefore need to change the settings to switch to the correct network.
👉 You are collecting data over a too short period of time!
The problem: EQUISYM needs a minimum range of 3.5 seconds or approximately 5 trotting strides at a relatively constant pace for the algorithm to work, without any sudden acceleration or deceleration. Data collected over a too short period will either give you an error message saying ‘Less than 5 strides detected’ or data with completely inconsistent curves.
Potential solutions: do not hesitate to let the recording run for a longer period, for example at least 30 seconds. The more data you have, the more representative it will be of the horse’s locomotion.