App: Hiking

https://apps.garmin.com/en-US/apps/39d3b5e8-67db-4517-93a8-5ec485269635

For the vivoactive, FR230, FR235, and FR630 (I don't plan support for other devices)

Please use this thread for questions, etc!

"Hike" records an activity as a hike or walk in Garmin Connect. It also allows you to mark "waypoints" (they show up as lap marks in Garmin connect, so you can see them on that map).

When hike starts, it waits for GPS, and looks for an available HRM and Tempe. At this point, with the up/down key or a screen swipe, you can switch between "hike" and "walk". Then, press "start" to start recording.

The current time, HR and temp (if the sensors are available) is displayed on all screens. While recording, pressing "back" marks a waypoint. To pause or end, press "start again", and you are given the options of "resume", "save", and "discard".

When you hit the start button and get the resume/save/discard menu, you can hit the back button. The menu goes away, and the recording remains paused (it's indicated next to the clock time on all pages). But you can scroll trough the data pages at the time. That way, if you're taking a break, you can sit and look at the current data.

When "paused" is displayed with the time, pressing start again resumes the recording.

There are 5 data screens that you can see when recording (up/down button, or swipe right/left on touch devices) (some not shown here due to forum limits)

The first screen is basic recording info: The time for the activity, the time that recording was active (when paused, this doesn't increase), the distance, and the number of waypoints marked

The second screen shows pace, avg pace, speed, and avg speed.

The third page shows the waypoints you marked. They are shown 5 at a time, and rotate every 7 seconds. They closest waypoint is shown in green.

The fourth page shows elevation data. This is GPS based, and sometime may be off. Elevation, total Ascent, and total Descent is shown.

The fifth page is location information. Your current lat/lon and heading, as well as your starting location lat/lon and the direction and distance back to start. GPS quality is also show, both in text and colors (green is usable or better)

Changes in version 0.12: see https://forums.garmin.com/showthread.php?335082-App-Hiking&p=765691#post765691

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Askens over 8 years ago

With it "on", you may actually see more accurate data in GC/GCM.

On the screen where I display elevation, it says "(data is GPS based)" as kind of an indicator that it might not be accurate on the watch.

In Hike2 and with the va-hr, I don't show that message as it's got a baro altimeter.

I understand and I am aware, in this case I had references of altitudes where the watch were more accurate.

jim_m_58 over 8 years ago

I've heard of others that saw the same thing - that it looks better with correction off.

Some of may depend on where you actually are, and how good the correction data is for that specific area. I know for me, things like ascent and decent can be off by a factor of 5 or more without correction on in the area I do most of my testing in (ascent/decent will be way off - I'll walk up a 40' hill and my ascent will be shown 300' on a GPS watch, and the va-hr I wear at the same time is in the 40' range)

YMMV

obagot over 8 years ago

Translation

Hi Jim,

This is really a good app! :)
I used the app quite a bit this summer when hiking.

I would like to know if you plan on translating the app.
I would like to have it in French, and I can help translating the resource file.

Thanks!

jim_m_58 over 8 years ago

Thanks for the offer, but I don't plan to do translations.

topcaser over 8 years ago

Hi Jim, I am currently on vacation and doing photography is a really great hobby to me. Unfortunately my camera supports no GPS. What I am normally doing is logging the walk and synchronize the log afterwards with geosetter. This process works also with hike. Nevertheless, could you imagine to integrate a third mode, let's call it sightseeing. In this mode not every second a GPS tag is gathered but every 5 minutes or so or after a certain amount of steps. In the meantime, GPS is switched off. By doing this, battery life is hopefully increased. What do you think?

jim_m_58 over 8 years ago

Interesting idea, but if I do it, I'd probably make it a separate app. (starting and stopping GPS could be a bit "interesting" to get working correctly, as it would have to keep re-establishing the GPS lock).

With Hike, right now I see about 8 hrs on a full charge(va), and you can actually give the battery a quick boost while it's running, and also use waypoints to mark the specific spot where you take a picture. (They show up as a lap mark when uploaded to Garmin Connect)

topcaser over 8 years ago

Hi Jim, a separate app would be great to test whether the theory is correct (I mean, saving battery by switching GPS on and off). I got the idea today since we were so slow most of the time that gathering much less GPS tags wouldn't decrease the accuracy very much. Furthermore the GPS fix is really fast on new devices. I could imagine from a power point of view a GPS fix is negligible. But you are right, there may be some corner cases which have to be handled. IMO the algorithms to do this are already in your code. If this project would be realized and is a success, it would be better than Garmin's Ultratrac mode:-) if you will implement it in a separate app, do you give a hint here in this thread?

jim_m_58 over 8 years ago

topchaser - I'm actually trying an ultra simple app on a va-hr to see what's possible as I post!

topcaser over 8 years ago

Cool, I am excited about the results. If I can help you either with coding or with test planning (that's what I am doing at work) or with testing, don't hesitate to ask me.

topcaser over 8 years ago

PS: I will ask the developer of geosetter whether he can support the automatic GPS tagging of pictures by having a photograph of the watch which shows the time of the watch. By typing in the shown time geosetter could automatically adapt any time offset. By doing this one would have an easy way to tag accurately and conveniently all images of this series.