Last week I was on a liveaboard with no Internet access. After diving, I'd pull up my phone (in airplane mode), sync my dives with my Mk3i via Bluetooth, and capture notes about the dive in the Android Garmin Dive app. I did this successfully for 22 dives on the trip.
Problems arose when we got back in-country and had Internet access again. I'm not sure exactly, but I believe what happened was:
- The Android Garmin Connect app detected the Internet connection and synchronized the FIT files from the watch to the cloud;
- The cloud processed the dive logs and added them to Connect Web;
- When I opened the Android Garmin Dive app, it hung at startup because the local dives (with notes) didn't match the cloud dives (without notes);
- After turning airplane mode back on, I was able to start the android Garmin Dive app, see the local dive files and take screenshots to backup the notes;
- With the notes backed up, I reconnected to Connect Web, I used OCR to copy the notes text from the screenshots, and paste them individually into each dive;
- Finally, I uninstalled the Android Garmin Dive app, to clear out the local dive files, and reinstalled to pull the dive list (with notes) from the cloud.
Since the dive log notes were still available locally, they weren't lost as long as the phone didn't have Internet access and didn't try to reconcile duplicate logs from the cloud.
Not looking for an immediate fix, but would just like guidance on what the expected behavior should be:
- Should I not be able to edit dive logs while offline?
- Is there some kind of data precedence enforced using modification date of the dives?
- Was the fact that Android Garmin Connect was syncing dives instead of the Android Garmin Dive app the problem?
- Should I plan to capture dive notes, such as DM/buddy/site name, visibility, sights, etc. in a different app until I'm sure I have Internet access and dive files have fully synced?
Thanks!