How to calculate calories burned during different exercises?

gatecityradio

I'm trying to figure out the best ways to figure out calories burned during exercises, and I think I'm starting to get confused. On a mountain bike, road bike, or in the gym on an elliptical or stationary bike. I'm wanting to get into a bit of strength training as well to build some muscle in my arms and legs. Bear with me this may be a long post:

Mountain/ Road biking: Right now I use endomondo on my android phone. It tracks distance, ave speed, age, gender, and weight and uses this to calculate calories burned. It can use a bluetooth HRM to track heart rate as well, although I'm not sure if it considers HR when calculating calories (I haven't found anything online saying either way). Also I'm noticing the GPS on the cell phone isn't as accurate as I would like, it jumps around a lot which can add to distance and make the ave speed higher (especially if you use it for walking).. It uses the gps to track speed and distance so...if the gps is wrong calories burned will be wrong as well. POSSIBLE SOLUTION: Garmin 405cx HRM. Has a GPS so I can still track my rides and has HRM strap so it can do HR as well, although again I'm not sure if it takes HR into account when calculating calories. Plus it has a speed/cadence sensor you can attach to your bike to make it even more accurate, so even if the gps tracking isn't good it can still get the correct distance and ave speed. So I think when it comes to biking this would be an excellent solution. Now the problem....

Stationary Bike: So far I've used the calories displayed on the bike itself. I know it asks for weight and age, so I'm guessing it assumes you are a male (which obviously won't be a problem for me). Other than that I think it takes distance into account but I'm not sure. It doesn't display average speed or watts at the end of the work out. Just calories and distance. It does show watts and rpm in real time, but I really need the average. So if I get the Garmin 405cx, it's only purpose here would be to keep up with the average heart rate and I doubt it could come up with a very accurate number for calories burned from that. So what do I do to come up with an accurate number from distance and heart rate?

Strength Training: I have yet to do any so I really have no way of tracking it. I see this site has a calculator that uses reps, sets and weight. Is it accurate? Is there a way to tie in HR, or is it just a waste of time to track heart rate while doing strength training?

I guess I just want the most accurate way to track stuff.

gatecityradio

bump, just looking for some advice.

Longbowgilly

I use a Mio Motiva watch to track what I have burnt, I set it up with my details, height, weight, age and sex and I can then go about doing my daily stuff and when I want to do some exercise I put it in that mode, take my heart rate several times during the exercise and I get a really accurate count of what I have burnt.
They are ECG accurate without a chest strap,are not too expensive and really work well. have a look at the website and you will be able to see all that they do!