Simple Data Field: Ascent Feet Per Mile

Requesting/suggesting a simple data field:

For a cycling activity (and possibly running as well), it would be valuable to know the average ascent per mile traversed as a way of quantifying and comparing the difficulty of the activity.

It should be a simple division of data already stored on the device: Ascent (feet) divided by Distance (miles). For the metric world, one could create a similar data field of Ascent (meters) divided by Distance (kilometers).

I'd love to see someone slap such a thing together. Thanks!

FlowState over 7 years ago

This is already possible with my simple data field, AppBuilder:
https://apps.garmin.com/en-US/apps/d...a-9b8485d2fc80

AppBuilder lets you specify practically any mathematical formula you want. In this case:

TotalAscent / Distance

TotalAscent is in feet or metres, as per device settings.
Distance is in miles or km, as per device settings.

If you need values in fixed units, regardless of device settings, you can use the following "raw" values and do any additional math yourself:
TotalAscent_raw (metres)
Distance_raw (metres)

The constantskmPerMile and metersPerFoot (or metresPerFoot) are available in the app, if you want to convert units yourself.

ornoth over 7 years ago

I was skeptical of AppBuilder... A third-party generic programming tool seemed like way overkill for creating a simple data field. I figured it either wouldn't work, or would be way too bloaty.

However, I gave it a try on my Edge 820. It was surprisingly easy to configure, and gave correct results on the first try.

It seems like its biggest shortcoming is the inability to configure more than one data field. You can get around that by installing multiple versions of the app, but that's really a hack. It'd be nice if ConnectIQ allowed an app to control multiple data fields. How do other CIQ apps (e.g. Di2 D-Fly integration) handle that?

Thanks for the prod! It's definitely a useful tool for creating such straightforward data fields based on Garmin's existing data. Weldun.

FlowState over 7 years ago

You're welcome!

Thanks for the feedback! Well, if I'm being 100% honest, I was skeptical of the utility of such an app myself. I implemented it to challenge myself, in response to a user request. But I'm glad people are finding practical uses for it :).

Yeah, I'd say the biggest limitation is you can only have 2 instances of AppBuilder on most running watches and 4 instances on Edge bike computers.

Of course, there are complex data fields like Dozen Run which take up the entire screen, and draw multiple data fields. I've had requests to implement that, so people could have, say, 4 custom fields (or more) per screen, on 2 screens.The problem is that it would take a lot of memory on the device. Def not doable on older watches; AppBuilder is already right up against the memory limit for them. Also, I'm not sure if the demand/need is quite there yet.

I'm not a cyclist, but with regards to to Di2 D-fly, if you're talking about Cycling dynamics like this -- https://www8.garmin.com/manuals/webhelp/edge520/EN-US/GUID-AEA5BC72-9B27-4F4A-8E44-68E24DDC57D0.html -- Garmin added support natively afaik. In Connect IQ, data field apps cannot communicate with each other.

It would be great if CIQ apps could talk to each other: say, one app in the background to do calculations, and one app to draw a full-screen layout. Or even better, like you suggested, if one app could just provide data for multiple placeholder data fields -- the watch could still handle the layout/drawing of the fields, and the app would just provide that data. That would be a great suggestion for Garmin. Maybe if enough people suggest it, one day it could happen:
http://www8.garmin.com/contactUs/ideas/