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Apple Health Synch is corrupting Active and Resting Energy

Divindude
over 1 year ago

I was getting some erratic Apple Health readings for Resting and Active Energy. For the record, I only use my Garmin Edge 1040 for biking activities. There are NO other activities types tracked with Garmin products. I synch every activity immediately after I complete the activity and wait for it to appear in Garmin Connect. NONE of them have been stored up! So in looking at the data, it is obvious that garmin connect is NOT working properly and is corrupting important data used by others. It seems to violate Garmin’s marketing that suggests thet support Apple Health for these 2 important data points. Lastly it is important to note that this is Garmin’s problem as Garmin feeds the data to Apple Health via internal iOS APIs.

On March 20, 2024, I did an indoor bike ride using my Garmin Edge 1040 bike computer with a Garmin HR strap. According to Garmin Connect, there was 44 resting calories, 464 active calories for a total of 508 calories starting at 8:40am and ended at 9:11am.

Garmin Connect made the following 3 entries in my Resting Energy Apple Health for March 20, 2024:

1. Resting Energy: 281 cal; Start TIme: Mar 20, 2024 at 00:00:00; End Time: Mar 20, 2024 at 08:40:21; Source: Connect; Date Added to Health: Mar 25, 2024 at 18:26:25

2. Resting Energy: 46 cal; Start Time: Mar 20, 2024 at 08:40:21; End Time: Mar 20, 2024 at 09:11:21; Source: Connect; Date Added to Health: Mar 25, 2024 at 21:03:16

3. Resting Energy: 481 cal; Start Time: Mar 2024 at 9:11:21; End Time: Marc 20, 2024 at 23:59:59; Source: Connect: Date Added to Health: Mar 25, 2024 at 18:26:25

Garmin Connect made the following 3 entries in my Active Energy Apple Health for March 20, 2024:

1. Active Energy: 1.1 cal; Start Time: Mar 20, 2024 at 00:00:00; End Time: Mar 20, 2024 at 08:40:21; Source: Connect; Date Added to Health: Mar 25, 2024 at 21:01:41

2. Active Energy: 435 cal; Start Time: Mar 20, 2024 at 08:40:21; End Time: Mar 20, 2024 at 09:11;21; Source Connect: Date Added to Health: Mar 25, 2024 at 21:03:16

3. Active Energy: 1.8 cal; Start Time: Mar 20, 2024 at 09;11:21; End Time: Mar 20, 2024 at 23:59:59; Source Connect; Date Added to Health: Mar 25, 2024 at 21:01:41

I would only have expected the two bolded lines to be present as that was the ONLY Garmin data available in Garmin Connect. And I would have also expected that data to reflect that stored and presented within Garmin Connect when viewing the activity. I would have also expected that the “date added” would reflect WHEN the activity was synched from my Edge 1040 to Garmin Connect. 

In this case, just about everything is wrong! Where did the numbers come from for the bolded lines when they clearly do not match what Garmin Connect displays? Why were they updated 5 days AFTER the activity (the date added timestamp actually is the time when I’m writing this so Garmin refreshed the data somehow and for some reason as that was the time I looked up the activity). And lastly, where did the other 4 rows come from? There is NO Garmin data to support any of those rows, NONE! Why are they there other than to corrupt!

There is NO reason for this mess and it is obvious that nobody at Garmin bothered to QA testing this!

  • 0 over 1 year ago

    This really helps me.  A couple of years ago I was trying to decide if I should keep my Apple Watch SE for all day and buy a new Garmin (I've owned about 5 of their watches) to track workouts, or if I should give up on Garmin and just buy an Ultra.  Since Garmin refuses to integrate effectively with HealthKit, I went the Ultra route.  I just ducked back in the forums to see if they had ever decided that I owned my data and not them.  (as Apple has), and the answer is 'nope'.  Obviously their HealthKit integraiton is still garbage and other than a few minor improvements a couple of years ago they are content to leave it as such.    Since I'll be looking to buy some new gear this year I was seeing if a Garmin watch would fit in that mix, but the answer is obviously 'no'.  

    To answer your questions:   Garmin doesn't play nice with others.  Their assumption is that you will never use anything other than Garmin gear, and that they can write garbage into Apple HealthKit because they don't care about how it is supposed to work.  So, your Edge 1040 / Connect looked at your day, based on your demographics took a guess at your resting calories and wrote them to Apple HealthKit using time stamps that block the entire day.  So if you have Connect as a higher priority data source than an Apple Watch or anything else that adds resting calories, HealthKit will ignore that (likely much better data) and only use the garbage Garmin wrote. 

    Same deal on the active calories.  It only recorded while you were using it... so, you clearly only burned 2 active calories the entire rest of the day.  (Because if a Garmin device didn't record it it didn't happen).  So, instead of time stamping it with the few seconds it actually recorded, it time stamped it for the entire day.  

    Basically if you are going to use Garmin and only Garmin gear, great!   But if you are an iPhone user and want to use any health/fitness app other than Garmin connect for anything, you are much better off buying any other solution.