Garmin Blocking Access to My Data

I think "blocking out" is still to harsh. They're making it harder. So now if you're a startup with a good idea, rather than milking Garmin Connect, you have to understand how these devices work and make a path from the device to your database. Doesn't sound that hard to do, especially if you have a really good idea that people will be willing to work a little to use. Garmin is being stupid, but we already knew that. Actually, if you're really good with HTTP/HTML, you can probably still get the data (Export is still there) if you know your user's credentials. Garmin may be trying to set up a country club with membership cards, but they don't prevent you from giving the card to an avatar, and I don't see how they could without blocking you out as well.

Except, it's different for different devices.

The Edge devices are handled differently than the FR620, which is handled differently than the FR910XT. Then of course, that further depends on whether the user is using ANT Agent or Garmin Express. And none of that solves the whole problem with people simply wanting to avoid plugging their devices in. And after-all, Garmin surely understands the value there since they introduced WiFi/BT connectivity. If they didn't see any value there, they wouldn't have done that.

I guess at the end of the day everyone else is making it easier to get data out after purchasing their device, while Garmin is making it tougher for end users.

Not sure that I agree. For one thing, the problem is that it's a country club with a $5,000 membership fee. For another, if you're writing a smartphone app, there's no way to get the data without using the API or writing an extra program, probably a cross-platform one for PC and Mac at least. Paying out $5,000 for the API, assuming they don't reject your proposal in the first place, is probably the cheaper way to do it.
Exporting isn't really satisfactory either; the API is the only way to get the original FIT file, and you need that for things like running dynamics, Tempe temperature readings, heart rate recovery data, and whatever else they've put in since they settled the TCX standard.

No, no, there's no membership fee. The fee is charged to developers who want life easy, or want any data that isn't given back. My guess is that in the end Garmin won't get much, they'll just reciprocate with the parties they're agreeing with if they're peers (if Garmin and Strava ever pair up, I don't think Strava will wind up paying anything), and small developers will shy away. I'm talking about your (and my) Garmin Connect credentials, the things that Express uses to send data to Garmin and you use to look at it on GC. Those are free; they haven't charged yet, although I bought a "premium" membership (or whatever it was called) from MotionBased a few months before it became Garmin Connect. Garmin Connect, to my knowledge, has never done this, sign up credentials have always been free. So those credentials give you access to your data, so they should give a properly written program that you run access to your data, for free. A browser is just a program; it sends HTTP back and forth between a server and gets HTML back, which it renders. Ordinarily a human gives the received data meaning, but there's no reason that a program can't do that. A program could ask for a list of your activities, compare it with a previous version, and it knows what activities need to be downloaded. Request them one at a time, parse the HTML to see what the "Export" button would do, do that, and you're downloading your data to a program. Not trivial, but not impossible. Garmin might be able to try and screw this up, but they'll risk screwing up the Garmin Connect experience for users. There's no legitimate reason they can give where you can download data but a program run by you can't, since a browser is just a program run by you.

But your point about the data that they don't give back is very legitimate, so this isn't a perfect solution. They do have GPX extensions for temperature (and even the acceleration data that the VIRB produces), but I don't know if they give that back nowadays.

Except, it's different for different devices.

The Edge devices are handled differently than the FR620, which is handled differently than the FR910XT. Then of course, that further depends on whether the user is using ANT Agent or Garmin Express. And none of that solves the whole problem with people simply wanting to avoid plugging their devices in. And after-all, Garmin surely understands the value there since they introduced WiFi/BT connectivity. If they didn't see any value there, they wouldn't have done that.

Yes, some devices aren't as easy as others, but that's why you have to make your software/web site more compelling than Garmin Connect (which shouldn't be hard). When you plug an FR620 in, it doesn't mount as a disk? That is worrisome if it shows up in other products down the road.

I always in the back of my mind keep open the possibility that I'll switch back to Linux on my main work computer someday, if Apple continues iOSifying OS X until I can no longer use it for work. That's why I want devices that make it simple to get data off, so I'm not really interested in Bluetooth or WiFi that sends only to a specified web site (unless I can specify that web site).

I guess at the end of the day everyone else is making it easier to get data out after purchasing their device, while Garmin is making it tougher for end users.

That's why I asked, who better than Garmin? One of these days, my 800 and Fenix will fail or get lost, and I'll have to make the next choice. Right now, that would be another 800 (certainly not a 1000 at the moment) and another Fenix, but they won't be around forever, and if Garmin screws things up some more, it well may not be Garmin. At the moment, as I understand it, to get data off a Suunto device you have to run their software and send it to their site, right? How about Magellan/Mio?

The 620 mounts as a USB drive, and looks very similar to your fenix when it's so mounted.

I agree that programmers can try to work around the API, though they will still need to understand how the login process works, and that appears to be quite complicated. There are various things that could be done to restrict this (checking the user agent string against a list of browsers, though that can be changed to look like any browser you want, and temporarily blocking a session which is requesting TCX files faster than a person could possibly be clicking in their browser, just off the top of my head). Garmin appear to be motivated by wanting to reduce the programmatic hits on their API by people who aren't using it efficiently, and the sort of session we're talking about would inevitably be less efficient than the API, so trying to restrict this sort of thing would be consistent with their current position. I think dcrainmaker's suggestion in his blog post of a lower tier of API that would be free, but very limited in what it could do, would be a good solution; nobody would be blocked out, everybody can be wireless if they want, nobody will be writing code that thrashes the servers, and if your business is doing well you can afford to upgrade to the top tier.

Anyway, I don't think we're going to change each others' minds, so perhaps we should just agree to disagree?

Habe den Forerunner 310XT fürs laufen und Radfahren. Auch ich habe seit kurzem immer den Fehler 403. Finde es eine Sauerei, dass man die Daten von Garmin Connect nicht mehr runter laden kann. Garmin Connect entspricht nicht meinen Vorstellungen, daher verwende ich SportsTrack. Schreibt man Garmin an, wartet man vergeblich auf eine Antwort. Das ist kein Service und keine Empfehlung für Garmingeräte.

I'm getting more and more upset with this junk Garmin pulls out. I have been a Polar user until March 2014 when I got my FR620. And, so far it has been nothing but a pain for the most part, with the biggest issue being horrible GPS-precision. Garmin forces us to use Garmin Connect to sync with, and have as middle hand before putting to other, user driven, sites or applications. Now they make it harder to use other sites... while not doing anything but a visual "upgrade" to their own site. On Garmin Connect I cannot even find accumulated time during exercises!!! I want to know what time I had at e.g. 5 km during a half marathon, not just lap times. If you fix your site, people wouldn't get so upset, but when basic functionality doesn't even work and there is no real ability to customize what data is being displayed, sorry but what are you doing? We need programs like SportTracks to get the functionality you do not provide! ST is worse than Polars ProTrainer 5 from like 2008 though, but it's way ahead of GC.

Please don't make your customers upset, Garmin, it's not working in your favour!

I don't know where the problem lies (or the solution) but I also get the 403 error, which is quite annoying. I would be delighted if someone provided a solution.

I have three Garmin watch but their commercial policies displease to me, so I think the next watch will not be a Garmin ...

I'm an unsatisfied Garmin customer too due to the "403 server error":-( Same issue as the previous comments.
Did buy five Garmin GPS devices for running and biking over the past decade, always in favour about that outstanding products.
Now, I'm fairly unsatisfied about Garmin. Independent of the final application for analyzing and archiving my personal GPS data, I don't want to use a web server based application (such as Garmin Connect) due to their inherent requirement of Internet access, despite the fact of slow processing in remote server mode:-(
The very majority of Garmins GPS users got the requirement to operate with a local Application + local GPC device download option also in Internet Offline mode. This is independent of any data backup options.