Paddling Activity Gone?!

Did you try adding the strokes to the Kayak activity with the help of a Connect IQ Data Field app, as a workaround? Using the field "Cadence" should work, I believe. There may be apps specifically for that, but if you do not find any, the AppBuilder 5 | Garmin Connect IQ is universal enough, and can add the cadence too.

Otherwise, I recommend suggesting the modification to Garmin via Share Ideas | Garmin. They won't see you demand here, on the user forum.

Thanks for the suggestion. But cadence is also not available in Kayak activity. 

There are some IQ apps for Kayak that count cadencd (no datafield yet). Still, Garmin needs to offer a full product. 

Yes I have send the share idea suggestion many times. Ppl have been asking for Kayak stroke cadence for many years and Garmin still ignores us. 

This topic was specifically about the Paddling in the sports list inside Garmin Connect. Today I tried again and Paddling is back at least!

9970217 said:

Thanks for the suggestion. But cadence is also not available in Kayak activity.

That's exactly why I wrote to use a CIQ app like the AppBuilder 5, which can add the cadence (among others) to any activity profile.

Yeah I noticed that they took it away about 2 weeks ago! I think it was a mistake since they put it back about yesterday or the day before. They had changed all my paddling activities to "Other" and I've just noticed that they reverted it back to Paddling. So I reckon they had to do some database update to reverse the changes.

But yeah I use this activity type to record my outrigger canoeing and dragon boating exercises. Clearly they're not "kayaking". I paddle a surf ski and that I can call kayaking.

I understand that they didn't do a good job with cadence. But even as bad as it was, that activity type served a purpose...

trux I tried the AppBuilder 5 but it seems to me that it won't add cadence field to a sport that is not natively computing cadence. 

Can you confirm?

9970217 said:

trux I tried the AppBuilder 5 but it seems to me that it won't add cadence field to a sport that is not natively computing cadence. 

Can you confirm?

I do not use it myself, so can neither confirm nor deny, but you can ask the developer. He sometimes comments here on the forum too, so let me ping him: FlowState, perhaps he'll peek in.

However, even if it should record the cadence only at some activities, you could still record your kayaking, or whatever else sport, under another activity profile using the cadence (even swimming, running, or walking), and then changing the type to the desired Kayaking (or whatever else), in Garmin Connect. Once the data is recorded in the CIQ field, the data (including the graph) will stay in the activity data, even if the original native activity profile does not support the cadence or strokes..

TL;DR no.

Technically Connect IQ apps can add data like cadence to a sport as 3rd-party data which shadows native data (a so-called "nativeNum" field), but:

- Garmin Connect (the app and website) will ignore it

- Most 3rd party sites will ignore it

One exception is power - third party sites like Strava will respect power added by 3rd-party apps because it was necessary to support Stryd.

To be clear, CIQ apps can't add true native data, they can only add 3rd-party data which is intended to serve the same purpose as a given native field (e.g. cadence. speed, power, etc.), but this is useless since Garmin itself will ignore this data.

trux what I usually do is record my activity as SUP (renamed). SUP and ROW apps record stroke cadence and distance per stroke data. 

Later in Garmin Connect app if I change it to "Kayak" the stroke data and graphs disappear. So it's not like you said.

That's why I change it to "Paddling" activity, which preserves stroke data and changes pace graph to speed graph. 

FlowState thanks for you answer!

Just did a brief dry test recording the cadence with the AppBuilder. Although, as FlowState wrote, the app cannot change the standard fields, and cannot send the data to 3rd parties, it still can add the Cadence graph to the Kayaking stats in Garmin Connect, and that's what I understood you looked for:

Nice! I tried just putting "cadence" in the app builder. What configs did you use? 

Did you just run or also moved arm simulating paddling?