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App: Step Goal Alert

Sergey Seleznev
over 1 year ago

Summary: an app that shows adjustable reminders to reach the step and floor goals.
https://apps.garmin.com/en-US/apps/be49da19-0531-4dc7-b146-d3c89993b5a8

Hi!

A few times I felt really pissed off after failing my step goal streaks just because of... well, forgetting about that! I was pretty sure that after a good training, the step goal was reached. However, in the morning I was shown that yesterday I made some 200-300 steps less than needed. I decided I need a simple yet effective solution for that.

I have made a really tiny app that helps me to reach my daily step goals. It does so by showing configurable time-based notifications when the step goal is not yet reached.

The app is really simple — there's even no main view. Besides the settings, the only UI is implemented as an application wake request which contains the remaining steps count. Either accepted or dismissed, the wake request just closes the app.

The alerts are adjustable based on the time left before the watch sleep time. There are options of 0.5h, 1h, 1.5h, 2h, 3h and 5h. Enabling one or two suitable alerts can effectively remind of the step goal when there's still enough time for an activity.

In case an alert time happens during an activity, the alert is postponed until the activity ends. So the alerts don't disturb during workouts.

The required permissions are:

  • Run in the background when it is not active (potentially affecting battery life) — to allow scheduling the wake requests time-based and occasionally after activity ends;
  • Your Garmin ConnectTm fitness profile — to read watch sleep time.

I am happy to publish the application for everyone interested to try out and use:
https://apps.garmin.com/en-US/apps/be49da19-0531-4dc7-b146-d3c89993b5a8

If you have any questions, improvement ideas, issues or device support requests, feel free to post here.

 

  • 27 days ago in reply to achim

    Hi, thank you for the feedback! :) I have just published an updated version which allows setting custom step and floor goals for the alerts. I want to keep the on-watch settings simple, so those advanced parameters can be set in the ConnectIQ mobile app only. Please let me know if this works correctly for you.

  • 27 days ago in reply to Sergey Seleznev

    Thanks a lot for the direct implementation! The new override works like a charm. :)

    I only have one issue. Once I have configured the app, I'm not able to reconfigure the values using the app. Neither can I switch the events on or off, nor change the overridden steps. I've had that issue before the update, too, but then I simply used the watch to configure when to notify me. The overrides are not available there; I don't change that value often, so it's not a big issue for me, but I wanted to let you know.

    Thanks again for your work :)

  • 27 days ago in reply to achim

    That's interesting, thank you for letting me know! So, you change the app settings using your phone, save them, and after that you can't change them anymore again in the same settings page on the phone? Let's pinpoint the issue: can you open the settings page on the phone again, do you see setting groups (Alerts, Override goals), can you open a group, do you see the settings, are they enabled for editing, can you change the values, can you save?

  • 26 days ago in reply to Sergey Seleznev

    So I've fiddled around a bit. Here is what I've discovered: The settings can be changed the first time they are viewed in the app. After that, they can still be viewed and edited, but the values are not saved, so they are reset to their previous values when the settings are opened again.

    Examples (always after a fresh install):

    • Open the settings, don't go into the Alerts or Override goal categories, just save and exit. Nothing is wrong with that. Open the settings again, change Alerts and/or overrrides, save and exit. Open the settings, everything was saved. When you now change settings in the same category again, save and exit, open them again, they are in the state after the first edit.
    • Open the settings, open the overrides, don't change anything, go back, save and exit. Open the settings, open overrides, change the step or floors numbers, go back, save and exit. Open the settings, overrides, nothing was saved the last time, both numbers 0 (I assume because they were opened before). The alerts can now still be changed because they were not opened before.
    • Open the app on the watch, change the alerts. Open the settings in the app, change the alerts: alerts saved. Next time, they can't be changed in the app any more.

    Interestingly, the Connect IQ app always shows the toast message that the settings were saved, even in the cases where nothing was saved at all.

    I hope I explained the problem clear enough and you're able to reproduce that.

  • 19 days ago in reply to achim

    Thank you for the details! I was able to reproduce the problem. The thing is, that the settings are only defined in the application, and the rest UI and data saving is performed by ConnectIQ. And unfortunately, it seems to be a common issue with ConnectIQ application settings:
    https://forums.garmin.com/developer/connect-iq/f/discussion/287821/settings-not-saved-iq-store.

    It might be that this issue is fixed in recent Garmin SDK versions. The problem is that every time I published the app using the new SDK, some users reported that it stopped showing any alerts on their watches, so I had to rollback quickly. Moreover, the new SDK is not supported on some older watch models still in use by the app users. Anyway, I will check again if there's any difference with the settings saving.

  • 6 days ago in reply to Sergey Seleznev

    If you see that the issue is solved with a newer SDK version, maybe you want to provide two versions of your app in the future, one for older devices and one for current? Just an idea.