Data Field: Surf Tracker

[FONT=Arial Black]Surf Tracker[/FONT]

Version 1.20
https://apps.garmin.com/en-US/apps/ded87d46-5477-4ca7-a247-847b896393e0

Track your surfing sessions in real time! This data field estimates the number of waves ridden using a speed and time threshold to mark the start and end of a wave ride.

Info shown (from left to right):

  • your total number of waves ridden and the total wave ride time (min:sec)
  • for your latest wave ride: wave ride time (seconds), maximum speed during the wave ride (km/hr or mph) and the distance covered (meters or yards)
  • the numbers in red show the maximum values for the wave ride time, speed and distance during the activity
  • For square watches, the bottom line shows the time of day and elapsed time of the activity. For round watches and the Vivo HR, the top line shows the time of day and the bottom line shows the elapsed time.




Notes:

1) This data field must be used in a 1-field data screen and should be set up before starting the activity. I use an Activity > Other > Paddle, but any activity with GPS ON should work. Open water swim will work but the GPS tracks are noisier since the sampling rate is lower, but it may be the better option for surfing when your arm is in and out of the water. Some activities smooth the speed data more than others and will give less accurate results (eg. a walking activity will not work as well as paddling or cycling). Vivoactive users try the Cycling activity, the Run activity will smooth the speed values to much to even out the Pace and this won't work well with the wave detection.

2) The summary stats and a speed plot are saved to Garmin Connect once the Activity is ended and saved:


3) This has been tested many times with standup paddle surfing. It has taken a while to get the thresholds working accurately. The detection thresholds can be changed using the Garmin Connect Mobile app (see https://forums.garmin.com/showthread.php?332843-How-to-App-Settings for help):

There are four settings to mark a wave ride based on speed, time and distance.


An event starts when the speed is >= 9 kph, it must last at least 6 seconds (above 9kph) and have a max speed of at least 13 kph to be counted. The event ends when it falls below 9kph. The min distance is set to 0m, but this can be changed to avoid false detections. These thresholds work well for standup paddle surfing, but try changing them and post your results. It should work for: standup paddle surfing, surfing, kayak surf, surf ski and maybe standup paddle downwinding.

Threshold ranges and defaults:
1) Start/stop threshold: default 9kph, range 5-50 kph
2) Time threshold: default 6s, range 2-60s
3) Max speed in event has to be >= 13kph, range 0-50kph
4) Min distance: default 0m (disabled), range 0-1000m

Typical values:
Standup paddle surfing: general setting for all waves
9kph, 6s, 13kph, 0m

Standup paddle downwinding (Hood River)
10kph, 10s, 12kph, 20m

4) The stats from each wave ride can be saved to a text file using the instructions at the bottom of the page (advanced users only, unsupported).

----------------- Planned Updates------------------

1) none hopefully


----------------- Version History ------------------

0.2 datafield now updates even when not visible.

0.3 added min distance to threshold test (now min 9km/hr for 5s and 15 m) to avoid paddling out/false wave counts, especially for SUP (eventually these values will be user selectable).

0.4 more tweaks after on-water tests (now min 9km/hr for 6sec), 19 waves and only 2 false readings and that was when I was chucked over the falls...

0.5 changed totdist and elapsed time to use the last good point of the event, instead of first one below the threshold, since when falling in it might take a while to get gps fix again and this will add to the waveride time. This should only decrease the wave ride time. The threshold test is now: >= 9km/hr for >= 6 sec and maxspeed >= 13 km/hr, redesign screen, add total wave ride time in min:sec

0.6 add fenix support.

0.7 bug fixed- crash when data field is in view and GPS just becomes active

0.8 D2Bravo, Epix and Vivoactive (separate app) support, compile using SDK 1.1.4. Latest numbers are green during an event (shows green if above speed threshold, even if below time threshold).

v0.9 new SDK 1.2.1, support for fr230/fr235

v0.95 new SDK, 2.1.3, support for Vivoactive HR

v1.0 added GCM settings for thresholds, changed distance calculation (should be shorter and more accurate), added 1 field Vivoactive support (got rid of the separate version)

v1.20 Garmin Connect summary stats and wave speed plot output
_________
** Advanced user only+unsupported method to save each wave ride to a text file on your device:

Place a *.TXT file in the /GARMIN/APPS/LOGS folder on your device, where * is the name of the .PRG file in the /GARMIN/APPS folder. Look for a file that is ~12 kilobytes. On my device it is 69SI5820.PRG, so I would create an empty file in /GARMIN/APPS/LOGS/69SI5820.TXT

To find out the filename, uninstall Surf Tracker, make a note of the *.PRG files in the /GARMIN/APPS folder, install Surf Tracker then note which PRG file is new.

Sample output format:
Wave# TimeofDay WaveRideTime(sec) WaveRideMaxSpeed(kph) WaveRideDistance(m)
1 07:26 20 28.8 113.4
2 07:28 13 27.6 76.8
3 07:33 21 30.2 122.2

Copy the file to your computer after a few sessions. I copy and paste the details into the notes section of the activity on Garmin Connect. The file will be appended to until it gets too big (10KB), then it will be overwritten. I had 3 days of sessions saved and it was only 1.8KB.
  • Hi,

    Have you seen that your app is on the Garmin's blog:
    http://garmin.blogs.com/my_weblog/2015/04/track-your-surf-session-with-surf-tracker.html#.VTZZx_BxiPU

    You can ask them for a specific app ?

    I tried your work again yesterday (big swell with off shore wind).
    And took time to check the number of wave each time, and approximativly the speed and lengh: it works just perfectly. No more to say :)
    I will write a review.

    Here you can see my "work out":
    https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/752737338

    Longest ride: 180 meters
    Max speed: 31 km/h

    See you !
  • Former Member
    Former Member over 8 years ago
    Gave your field a try today regular surfing at my local spot. Worked great! I had 2 false waves that registered that I noticed but thats no biggie. How can we support you to get some more features! I think the ability to remove false rides from the data, and maybe change the color to separate rides from paddling would be awesome. I have zero idea how to code though so im extremely happy with what you have created as is. I just switched it from a paddling activity to an open water swim activity to see what kind of changes it makes in the data. I will let you know what happens after my next session. To be honest your data field was what sold me on the watch! Great work!
  • Thanks for the feedback. I'm hoping that eventually we will be able to have user selectable inputs. Then you can tweak the minimum time required to be considered a wave ride. Right now it's 6 seconds and it seems to work for most cases. For beach breaks with short rides it might miss some, and for others it might get some wrong. But hopefully the user will be able to tweak the values so it works for them. Let me know how OWS activity works. I've tried it a few times and it seems okay, but the data points are less frequent though.
  • Former Member
    Former Member over 8 years ago
    it seemed like the OWS activity had more random waves added with crazy distances. I switched back to the paddle other and its working great again! Sometimes i wish it would add some waves haha. Keep up the good work looking forward to any progress and really appreciate the time you put into the app.
  • Any plans to bring this to Vivo Activ ?

    In my community I know this would be appreciated :)

    [FONT=Arial Black]Surf Tracker[/FONT]
    Version 0.7
    https://apps.garmin.com/en-US/apps/ded87d46-5477-4ca7-a247-847b896393e0



    Track your surfing sessions in real time! This data field estimates the number of waves ridden using a speed and time threshold to mark the start and end of a wave ride.

    Info shown (from left to right):

    • your total number of waves ridden and the total wave ride time (min:sec)
    • for your latest wave ride: wave ride time (seconds), maximum speed during the wave ride (km/hr or mph) and the distance covered (meters or yards)
    • the numbers in red show the maximum values for the wave ride time, speed and distance during the activity
    • For the 920xt the bottom line shows the time of day and elapsed time of the activity. For the Fenix 3, the top line shows the time of day and the bottom line shows the elapsed time (as of yet it's untested on the Fenix 3).

    Notes

    1) This data field must be used in a 1-field data screen and should be set up before starting the activity. I use an Activity > Other > Paddle, but any activity with GPS ON should work. Open water swim will work but I found that the GPS tracks were a bit noisier.

    2) There is currently no way to save the values in this data field. The records can be viewed both during the activity and after finishing and saving it. When entering power save mode or starting a new activity, the field is reset. Eventually Garmin may allow saving custom values to a FIT file. A surfing app (instead of this 'simple' data field) would be best for this... maybe someone else will write one.

    3) This has been tested many times with standup paddle surfing and seems to work about 90% of the time. It may detect false events if you paddle too fast to return to the take-off point. Test it out and leave some comments.

    4) Firmware: for Fenix 3 you should be on fw v3.0 or above and 920xt fw v3.2 or above.

    ----------------- Planned Updates------------------

    1) when (if) it becomes available for data fields, change hard coded thresholds of speed/time/max speed to user configurable values. Then it could be used for more applications eg. sup downwinding

    2) save the data...

    ----------------- Version History ------------------

    0.2 datafield now updates even when not visible.

    0.3 added min distance to threshold test (now min 9km/hr for 5s and 15 m) to avoid paddling out/false wave counts, especially for SUP (eventually these values will be user selectable).

    0.4 more tweaks after on-water tests (now min 9km/hr for 6sec), 19 waves and only 2 false readings and that was when I was chucked over the falls...

    0.5 changed totdist and elapsed time to use the last good point of the event, instead of first one below the threshold, since when falling in it might take a while to get gps fix again and this will add to the waveride time. This should only decrease the wave ride time. The threshold test is now: >= 9km/hr for >= 6 sec and maxspeed >= 13 km/hr, redesign screen, add total wave ride time in min:sec

    0.6 add fenix support.

    0.7 bug fixed- crash when data field is in view and GPS just becomes active
  • Former Member
    Former Member over 8 years ago
    Surf and vivoactive

    I would definitely be interested. I just bought the vivoactive in hopes I could use it for surfing or ocean swimming. Guess I can't. I might try using the running or walking app and turn gps on. I figure this could give me some type of info.




    No plans right now for the Vivoactive mainly because:

    1) it seems like the vivoactive does not allow the screen to be set up for only 1 data field. It only shows 3 so there would be very little room for all of the info in 1/3 of the screen.

    2) the data field is nearing the max memory and adding another device would bring it even closer. I want to save some room to add some code for user input of threshold values when/if that becomes available.

    I suppose if there was enough demand I could do a Vivoactive only version that showed only #waves and current values (no max). I'm not sure how many people would use it...?
  • Garmin Epix

    Can I start the surftracker on Epix ?
  • Not yet, but I can add Epix support. For the Vivoactive I will have to make a separate app. I tried to add it to the main program but I get out of memory errors. So Epix and Vivoactive support coming soon.
  • Just wanted to say thank you for a great app. I tried it out for the first time today and was really happy when I got home and checked the data. My local spot is a beachbreak and I wasn't sure how the app would cope with quick closeouts (on a South swell this break is terrible!). But it did well and recorded all my waves. I think I had a couple of false positives (including an 18 second wave...supposedly) but I'm happy.

    As someone else posted, the ability to change the color of ridden waves to green would be really cool (i.e. red for paddling and green for taking a wave).

    And can I ask one question please? I can't seem to display the data properly on my watch while surfing. I chose the same option as you (activity - paddle and then added the BigWaveDave data option to data screen 1). The only trouble is that it seems to be stuck on 3 fields. I can't seem to change that. This means that when I start a session, your data is covered by the other options (distance, speed etc). Could you or anyone else advise how to change this?

    But thanks again for an awesome app!
  • Thanks for the feedback. I don't normally see false positives, but I have seen incorrect wave ride times like your 18 sec example. I'm wondering if it has to do with Garmin's speed filtering algorithm and how fast it responds to changes in speed. If you crash after a wave I wonder how long it takes until the speed drops. Or if you crash in the water and GPS is lost then the time might get messed up. Or possibly it has to do with wearing the watch above (better) or under (worse) your wetsuit. I'm not sure I can do much about the false time readings, but I wonder if using an activity like Cycling would have a faster speed response ...?

    >I can't seem to display the data properly on my watch while surfing.

    I'm not sure I understand, are you saying you can't set the Screen Layout to 1 Field? Which watch are you using F3 or 920? For the 920 go to the activity then Activity Settings > Data Screens > Screen 1 > Layout=1 Field > Field 1=BigWaveDave

    or can you take a photo of your screen and post it?