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Altitude data wrongly included for surfing activities

aledthomas79

This shows in the web app (garmin connect) and in the mobile app.

I develop a surfing app for garmin watches and it correctly labels recorded activities as surfing, but in addition to the other stats displayed it insists on showing altitude gained/lost and an elevation graph in the summary on garmin connect. As surfing is by definition an activity that takes place at sea level and has no climbing or descending worth noting it seems silly to include this data. I've already had several queries about why my app includes this data but I only record the track as normal and garmin chooses to display this metric based on the activity type "surfing". Uploading the same recorded track to strava for example, does not show any elevation data in their summary so could this be corrected in the garmin connect web and mobile views please as it very annoying. I've already emailed about it but I guess it didn't get passed to the right person so hopefully someone reads this who can fix it. thanks

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    Elevation gain is included in data from Garmin's native apps for kayaking and rowing. So why should it be any different for data from an IQ app? 

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    aledthomas79 said:
    As surfing is by definition an activity that takes place at sea level and has no climbing or descending worth noting it seems silly to include this data.

    I think those surfing 10m or 20m waves would disagree :) And those who find the altitude annoying like you, can simply click the button Customize Charts and remove the altitude chart from all surfing activities.

  • 0 in reply to AllanOlesen67

    Those are completely different sports, why not also include pedalling cadence and stride length as well in that case? Elevation data is just taken from the GPS track but it's Garmins choice to show it. Strava gets it right so why can't Garmin.

  • 0 in reply to trux

    Firstly, there is no one during 20m waves. Secondly there is only a tiny number of people surfing 10m waves compared to the hundreds of thousands of surfers on normal waves, and of that tiny number I would bet none would disagree that elevation data is nonsensical and can't be measured anyway especially with the pressure experienced during a wipeout on a 33ft wave, I'd also bet that none of them wear Garmin watches.

    Yes you can hide the graph on the web version, but it still leaves the elevation data showing, and there is no way to even hide the graph on the mobile app. A better solution would be for it to just not be shown at all, otherwise why not show it for everything, indoor cycling? Yoga? Alternatively everyone who emails me asking to change it or leaves a poor review for the app I spent my own time producing I could just forward them on and you could explain to them why it makes sense.

  • 0 in reply to aledthomas79
    aledthomas79 said:
    Those are completely different sports,

    They are water sports. Where I paddle, the surface of the water is level, except for a little waves and tide. So elevation gain makes no sense - exactly as in your case.

    Still Garmin has chosen to add elevation gain to those activities - exactly as in your case.

    There is no difference. Claiming that they are other sports is just foolish.

  • 0 in reply to AllanOlesen67

    No, kayaking canoeing and rowing would often (usually?) take place on inland waterways and i can see why some people would find elevation data useful. I'm not claiming they're different sports, they ARE different sports, hence why Garmin classes them as different sports, and has metrics specific to them (stroke rate etc.)

  • 0 in reply to aledthomas79

    I believe you misunderstood the purpose of the user forum. It is here for the purpose of mutual help of users to each other. We offered you the help in the way that we mentioned the possibility of removing the altitude data by the end-user self. If this is not what you were looking for, and instead would like that Garmin changes their software or API, you need to contact Garmin directly, and not the users on this forum. We cannot help you with it.

  • 0 in reply to aledthomas79
    aledthomas79 said:
    No, kayaking canoeing and rowing would often (usually?) take place on inland waterways and i can see why some people would find elevation data useful.

    You are not doing yourself a favour with this line of argumentation. If you start to find use cases where altitude information could be potentially interesting in all other water sports than your watersport, then you have also declared your use case so marginal, that it is understandable that Garmin haven't bothered making exemptions for you in their API.