Background Widget Alert User upon GeoFence Trigger

I just want confirmation as I'm 70% finished w/ my widget and am about to start the background process part of the app.

However, Its looking more and more like this is going to be another app that can't get completed.

Goal:

Create a GeoFence and alert user if I've out of the GeoFence limit

Wha I want to do:

1) User starts widget and sets the GeoFence location and radius

2) User Exits the widget (temporal event is set-up for like every 5mins)

3) upon the temporal event occurs, Widget will request for GPS and get a location fix

4) this location fix to be used to compare w/ the initial GeoFence location and determine if we're out of the radius

5) If out of Radius, then an alert will come up.

From what I gather, seems like I cannot access GPS from a background process:

https://forums.garmin.com/developer/connect-iq/f/discussion/7367/positioning-in-background-processes/49749#49749

Background processes are not allowed to enable the GPS. The permission error you are receiving is a result of this restriction. Your application is allowed to request the permission because the main widget process is allowed to enable GPS. 

Assuming that now being 2 years later, this has changed (unlikely but...) can a background process do anything more complex than just fetch the data and store it into the Object Store? Is it not possible to do some calculation and to alert the user? (even if it's just the ApplicationRequestWake)

Thank.

  • Actually, a widget cant' store to the object store.  That's done in onBackgrounddata() if needed by the main app

    Nothing has changed as far as GPS.  You can't start it up in the widget background.  GPS uses a bunch of battery, so you don't want it starting up every 5 minutes.