Swimming app for the 230/235/260?

Former Member over 9 years ago

With these new devices soon to arrive, what do you think the likelihood that a swimming app can be made, similar to the one currently on the vivoactive?

Is this possible with the current hardware and platform? Or with the coming updates to the platform in 2016?

Thanks.

travis.vitek over 9 years ago

It really depends on what you want the app to do. If you just want it to keep time, then yes that can be done quite easily. If you want it to identify distance, strokes and flip turns, then maybe. The app would have to process accelerometer data and turn it into something meaningful, and that might be difficult to do with a 64K memory limit. I don't know what other developers are planning, but this isn't something that I'd consider taking on.

Travis

Nikeow over 9 years ago

I doubt there is a significant market for this app as well as majority of the swimming metrics are either null values or not exposed by the SDK.

so, I too won't be taking this up.

Besides - Garmin spent a lot of time fine tuning the swim algorithms. Esp open water swims.

Former Member over 9 years ago

I mentioned the vivoactive swimming app above, which is for lap swimming and tracks the basic metrics. The hard part I think would be using the acceleration to detect number of strokes (not stroke type) and laps. But laps could be as simple as hitting the lap button at each end (for those of us who are casual swimmers and can't do flip turns). As a starting point at least.

The market? I think you underestimate the number of us trying to decide between the vivoactive (or 2 when it comes out in 2016) and new forerunner watches. There are pros and cons to each, but the one thing the latter can't do at all is swimming.

If you run and swim a few days in the pool (not uncommon), want to track your swims and don't want to have to own and put on a second watch just for that, then a basic swimming app for the 230/235/260 would be a perfect solution. Anyone whose primary sport is running but also bikes and swims I can imagine would be interested and probably be happy to pay a bit for it as well (i certainly would).

My main question though was really, given current hardware and the platform, is it possible?

jim_m_58 over 9 years ago

Possible, but a bunch of work. Same if you wanted something like the vivoactive's golf app on one of these watches.

Swimming on the 235 actually makes the most sense though, as with the optical HRM, it would allow for getting HRM in the pool. (Ant+ data and water don't mix!)

My "swimming" consists of getting in the pool with a Frisbee and a cold beer on the ledge, so this is NOT a project for me! :)

Nikeow over 9 years ago

I mentioned the vivoactive swimming app above, which is for lap swimming and tracks the basic metrics. The hard part I think would be using the acceleration to detect number of strokes (not stroke type) and laps. But laps could be as simple as hitting the lap button at each end (for those of us who are casual swimmers and can't do flip turns). As a starting point at least.

The market? I think you underestimate the number of us trying to decide between the vivoactive (or 2 when it comes out in 2016) and new forerunner watches. There are pros and cons to each, but the one thing the latter can't do at all is swimming.

If you run and swim a few days in the pool (not uncommon), want to track your swims and don't want to have to own and put on a second watch just for that, then a basic swimming app for the 230/235/260 would be a perfect solution. Anyone whose primary sport is running but also bikes and swims I can imagine would be interested and probably be happy to pay a bit for it as well (i certainly would).
I
My main question though was really, given current hardware and the platform, is it possible?

Let's see..
1) numher of stroke - if not mistaken, garmin just opened up the accelerometer but to what extend I don't know. And will likely Take a lot of tuning to get right.
2) laps - sure u can hit the lap button and get a lap but u won't get any metrics with laps. (Lap pace / lap time / lap stroke etc ) as lap is not exposed currently by the SDK. need to custom code it
3) I don't think I'm underestimating - in fact, I think I've done the latter and overestimated demand.

Anything is possible for sure. But can it all fit into the 64kb memory allocation? That's the key question. But I'm sure that the accuracy will be suspect and releasing an app for this purpose will have 2 sides - ppl who are OK with the accuracy being OK, and people that will nitpick the accuracy level up to the milliseconds.

Good luck! Perhaps u can start a kickstarter campaign to gather x amount of user interest to get a developer to commit?

Btw - I believe it can be done. We alry have an open water swim app for the VA and power meter support for the VA so, for sure can work around some limitations (up to a point)

sills2010 over 9 years ago

Put me in the camp wanting to see this!

Former Member over 9 years ago

I would pay for a simple pool swim app that counts strokes, time, and starts a rest timer on 'lap' press; then restarts the stroke count/time on 'lap' press. I know how far I swam for each interval, and can plug total yards in on Garmin Connect website. oh, yeah, would like it to upload as a 'swim' automatically from my FR230. open water, 'other' activity is just fine. If it can count my steps it should count stroke, and time seems to be a no-brainer, not sure about rest timer, but that has to be a lot like a run/walk activity, right???

Former Member over 9 years ago

Another "I want it" vote!

I also would love to see (and would pay for) a swimming app for the FR 230/235. I'd use it primarily for pool swims - though an open water option would be interesting. At minimum, I'd like to see distance and time fields. It would be nice to have user-configurable pool length (in yards, for me), as well as time/lap, and SWOLF score. This would be great for the swimmers among us who can't afford a 920/Fenix, &/or want the OHR on the 235.

Nikeow over 9 years ago

http://developer.garmin.com/downloads/connect-iq/monkey-c/doc/Toybox/Activity/Info.html

See that. See that most if not all swim metrics are returned as null. (Including SWOLF)

Brandon.ConnectIQ over 9 years ago

We're working on getting the swim metrics added. I think it's going to be included in the next release, but I'm not 100% certain of that at this point.