Smart or 1s recording is a function of the FW, and from CIQ there's no way to modify that, or even tell which mode the FW is in (for devices that support both).
I get the distinct feeling this is garmin keeping the lower priced devices from having certain features. I doubt the hardware in the vivoactive can't recording at specific intervals.
I get the distinct feeling this is garmin keeping the lower priced devices from having certain features. I doubt the hardware in the vivoactive can't recording at specific intervals.
There is a very very good reason why it is done. Otherwise .. people would buy the Vivoactive HR and not the Fenix 3. Common sense tells you why it happens. I too would like to see 1 sec recording on the VAHR (as it is the same price as the Forerunner 235 that has it). Still hoping.
We'll have to disagree on whether that's a "good" reason. Crippling hardware with software for product differentiation is a pretty terrible reason in my book. If they can't convince people to buy a fenix or 920 with better form factors and hardware, it's just scammy. Moreso, it makes the their "app store" a false promise.
The reason the bulk of the apps suck is because there is nothing you can do with the api. Sure you can make apps that will track specific activities (which Garmin should just do), but you can't do anything clever. I'm 99% certain it is fairly trivial to make an ultra-trac like feature the VA given its hardware. Similarly, open water swim tracking isn't rocket science and could easily be implemented with a capable api.
In short, Garmin locking devices down and providing an api that doesn't do much leaves a very bad taste in my mouth.
Neither device can control whether 1 sec recording feature is enabled/disabled in CIQ. It might be best to voice your displeasure with the Garmin support folks if the FW on the device isn't meeting your needs.
I seriously doubt it is the device that is the problem. I'm fairly certain the software on the device is the issue.
I'm really just after being able to control the intervals. If it can't do 1s, that's fine, but I want to be able to control how often it polls. Using that, a developer could basically recreate the ultra-trac feature (because that's all ultra-trac really is anyway).
1s intervals would be nice, but moreso, I just need control over the timing. Open water swimming could also be done with the combination of quick polling + the ability to discard position reads before adding them to the activity recording.
Basically, these watches have the hardware, but garmin seems to have locked them down to force you to buy a bigger watch with other features you may or may not want. Some people may think that is a fine business practice. I think it sucks. I think it doubly sucks because they promise this Connect IQ API and key features are crippled.
Yeah, maybe I should complain to garmin, but if I'm right about their motivations, they don't care about my opinion on the matter.
I believe that in a CIQ app or DF, you'll see the GPS data at the same frequency if it's Smart or 1s. It's just how much data is saved in the .fit.
You don't even need to be recording to see the flow of GPS data when you enable GPS.
The va and va-hr both have less space to store .fit files than other devices, and that might be the reason for "smart" only, as they take up less space.
Update: I was curious, and and just tested a CIQ app that displays lat/lon and updates the screen every second. Yes, in the code you do see an update every second with smart recording on.
As far as I can tell, the GPS on these devices is continuously active when enabled. If the recording mode is set to 1 second it writes the GPS data to the file every second. When in UltraTrac or Smart modes, it writes GPS data to the file at an interval depending on recent history and probably the time since the last data point was recorded. Regardless of the mode, the built-in applications all send updated data to data fields once per second.
You could probably poll for data at a higher/lower rate, but you have no control over how frequently data is or is not written to the .FIT file, and you have no control over the data that is written. i.e., you can't implement any sort of filtering from the ConnectIQ API.
This limitation of the ConnectIQ system applies to all devices equally. You cannot control the data recording rate on a fenix3 from ConnectIQ any more than you can do it on a vivoactive_hr.
Due to technical difficulties .. I cannot post what I wanted to. Sigh. 1 sec recording is still no matter how you slice it .. so much better than smart recording.
