Can a custom Datafield use a BLE connection?

Hi, I am a diabetic Type 1 and would really love to have my blood glucose reading available during exercise as a custom datafield. I have managed to create simple datafields and uploaded them to my device but before I start spending serious amount of time, I need to know:

Is it possible to have a custom datafield retreiving data through a BLE connection?

Here is the setup:
I am running a blood glucose app on my iPhone that communicates with a blood glocose sensor Im wearing on my arm (through Bluetooth). The app implements a web services API that can be used by 3rd party applications to fetch current blood glucose data.

The idea I had was to implement a custom datafield that would connect to the web service API (http) through BLE every 5 minutes or so, to get my current blood glucose and display it on my watch during the activity.

I know its possible to do in an Connect IQ app, but not sure its supported also for datafields. The problem with running an app instead of a datafield is that I really want to see the data from within the activity. Any feedback is appreciated, thanks!

jim_m_58 over 6 years ago

Yes, in a DF you can do comm, but you must do it in a background process. You schedule a temporal event for every 5 minutes. The one thing to consider is once you schedule the temporal event, it will keep running every 5 minutes, even if the DF is no longer running, but what you can do is in onStop() for your DF, delete the temporal event if that's called by the DF and not the background. I just posted in another thread how to determine that in another thread.

Fsallstrom over 6 years ago

Yes, in a DF you can do comm, but you must do it in a background process. You schedule a temporal event for every 5 minutes. The one thing to consider is once you schedule the temporal event, it will keep running every 5 minutes, even if the DF is no longer running, but what you can do is in onStop() for your DF, delete the temporal event if that's called by the DF and not the background. I just posted in another thread how to determine that in another thread.

Thanks Jim. Can you please share a link to your thread?

jim_m_58 over 6 years ago

Here's the thread about detecting main app/background
https://forums.garmin.com/forum/developers/connect-iq/1446909-how-to-recognize-if-i-am-currently-in-a-background-service

Here's a blog post I did about backgrounding in general:
http://developer.garmin.com/index.php/blog/post/guest-post-creating-a-connect-iq-background-service