X steps per hour

I am engineer and usually work at PC for the whole day. I concentrate myself on the work so much that i forget to stand up and move a bit. That is horrible.

Until now i was used to get a reminder 10 minutes before every hour o´clock from 9 to 18 to stand up and walk at least 250 steps. And that worked very good for me. I bought a Vivoactive 4 some days ago and discover that this funcionality present on my old watch is not possible here. I only get a move reminder and if I do not react I do not get any more alerts... :)

Question to the Vivoactive users: Is there any alternatives in the Vivoactive to get something similar?

I thought if this funcionality it is not present by default, I could programm one. That would not be a problem. Question to the developers: It is possible to register in any way the number of steps per hour and to alert the user every hour (for example) or is there any restrictions? Because I cannot imagine that nobody had ask for this funcionality in the past...

Thanks in advance for the comments.

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0 Juggus over 4 years ago

Hi, it looks like a typical apple feature.

You can t do an app that work in background and send notifications, so the only way seems to implements your own watch face, it will be always in foreground when you work at PC.

So a watch face, you have time and cummulate step, so you can count the number of step per hour and display something on the screen (+ vibration) according to the algorythme you want.

You have too the possibily to have some settings that allow you to choose :

- the number of step per hour

-the start and end time, the notification are sent.

You can too take a look to the garmin store, maybe some watch face can do that.

0 jim_m_58 over 4 years ago

Can't you use the move notification? On the watch, under settings, Activity tracking, make sure move alert is on.

If it's off, you'll still able to see the move bar on many watch faces.

0 jim_m_58 over 4 years ago in reply to Juggus

vibration/tones can't be done with a CIQ watch face.

0 Juggus over 4 years ago in reply to jim_m_58

Aaaah yes, my mistake.

0 8911212 over 4 years ago in reply to jim_m_58

So far I have seen, the move notification has only the possibility to be actived/deactived. You cannot configure how much steps do you want to configure or between which day hours you should be notified.

And from my little experience, if I ignore the first "Time to move" notification (maybe I am in a meeting at this moment) I do not get any other notification.

If I am wrong, please enlight me :D

By the way, that is a feature on my fitbit charge.

0 jim_m_58 over 4 years ago in reply to 8911212

The number of steps is fixed. For the 1st segment, it's 1 hr with less than 100 steps, and the smaller segments are for each additional 15 minutes. When this came out, I recall it was based on some study as far as what should be good numbers.

You should get an alert after the 1st hour and then again when all 5 segments are full, and as I said, on many watch faces, you can easily see if you need to move.

It's also smart enough not to give you alerts during your configured sleep/wake times. Even if you are just at home and watching TV, you should have a minimum level of steps,

0 8911212 over 4 years ago in reply to jim_m_58

Good Info! I thank you for it.

Do you know wether there is the possibilty to manipulate those parameters through the API or to be able to develop an app doing the same. As you explained, it is clear to me, that from the hardware and software perspective should be doable. If it is already fixed in some kernel Garmin functions, should be able to be developed a similar app (maybe app is not the correct term because i am not familiar with this api) if the correct APIs methods are exposed.

Ok. I will stop asking and looking for the methods by myself

Thank you jim and thank you juggus!

0 jim_m_58 over 4 years ago in reply to 8911212

This is something where a background service would be used, but they have some limitation, and I'd likely do it in a widget.

You don't need much more that the time and the step count in the background, and maybe use getBackGroundData() so the background knows some history when the main widget hasn't been run in a while and requestApplicationWake() to let the user know..

0 4294178 over 4 years ago

I totally agree that this is a huge downside to Garmin, and the lack of sensible answers from Garmin support is most unhelpful. FitBit does this very well and - as far as I understand it - the 250 steps (minimum) per hour is based on internationally accepted, peer-reviewed, medical and scientific studies that 250 steps per hour is significant for heart health, prevention of circulatory issues, etc. The Garmin move alerts seem to be very random (as one person has said lower down, you can run 10k, and 2 mins after you stop get a move alert, and equally you can sit still for 3 hours and notget one at all if you are, for example, typing, so that yoru wrist keeps moving. FitBit has gone way downhill and become very unreliable, which is why I've switched to Garmin, but I'll likely switch back or change to something like Samsung if this feature and one or two other less important (health-wise) ones are not fixed. I thought Garmin was supposed to lead the way but it seems not to be leading at the moment. Thank you so much for raising this question - did you ever get a satisfactory answer, or develop a solution yourself?

0 8911212 over 4 years ago in reply to 4294178

Exactly. That is my point of view and my real needs. Move x steps per hour, and force the clock to remind me. I continued investigating how to implement/develop it on my own, and after one or two weeks I discovered that it was not 100% possible and any alternative would be a heavy influence on the battery. This, along with a couple more basic needs (for me) that were missing, made me go back to my old Fitbit and return the new Vivoactive to my seller.