Phone as bridge for BLE sensors

Former Member over 9 years ago

Hi 920xt and Fenix3 support connection via phone via BLE, but does not support BLE sensors.
I want to implement phone application which act as bridge between watches and BLE-sensors.
For that reason I have to implement two things
1) (Phone-side) implement an connection class which will send data to watches. This is relatively easy via Toybox.Communications
2) (Watch-side) Virtual sensor: create generic sensor from data received from phone (from MailBox or other place)

First part is relatively easy to implement, but I do not now how to create second part(the virtual sensor) the only way to implement this is to write App (similar to MoxySensor) which makes it unusable to use
other generic modes (run,swim,etc).
As Far As I understand in order to create virtual sensor I have to figure out how to push data to Toybox::Activity::Info object which later will be delivered
by others via ->getActivityInfo()
Please guide me good way to do that

Former Member over 9 years ago

It is not possible in inject sensor data into the core Garmin system. You could receive data from the phone as you have described in a ConnectIQ App or Widget. The App could display this data, but there is no way at this time to cause the system to record that data to a fit file, or pass it on to other processes on the system.

Former Member over 9 years ago

This is sad

That is bad news. Because HR history is more important for me for later analysis.
I hope that at the time http://www.ampstrip.com/ will be available I can use it during competitions (convinient HR strap is not comfortable if athlete run with backpack )

Are any plans to support BLE sensors or ANT2BLE bridges?
But there are at least two workaround this.

*1 Write my own application which support fetching data from external sources similar to MO2Sensor

2) Use hybrid approach (save and merge)
A) Transmit HR to phone. And let phone record HR log.
B) Watch show HR fetched from phone as data field w/o saving it to activity log
C) After activity is finished. Phone can fetch activity log from watches merge it with HR log and upload it to GC

AFAIU both approaches has disadvantages because T.E. will not be available :(

Off course where is always work around for that

Former Member over 9 years ago

Supporting BLE sensors is a product design question, and isn't something I can answer.

I think your best bet at right now would be a BLE to ANT+ bridge. I don't know if there is anything available commercially. I know that there is a ANT+ to BLE bridge that is sold by a company called 4iiii, but that is the opposite of what you need here.

You could use the Communications and Generic ANT modules in ConnectIQ to develop a BLE to ANT+ bridge, but you would need a second device to run that bridge while recording an activity on another.