Watchface: Data Lover

Hi Peter,
This is my favorite Garmin Face by far. Nicely done. Since early August, with weather set to update every 15 minutes, I have been noticing that my city (on the Weather+City display) is changing to a nearby city (up to an hour away by car) randomly even if I do not start an activity. If I start an activity, the city syncs again but then drifts in the next few hours. This was pretty bad in Arizona when it decided to lock on to a mountain weather station which was 25 degrees cooler than where I was). Has something changed with the weather feed or is there something the Garmin app is feeding the watch that is changing the GPS setting in the watch without any action on my part?

It's a problem in the vivoactive 3 firmware that causes the gps drift so only people whom have a vivoactive 3 or vivoactive 3 music are affected. I'm hoping that Garmin will release a new firmware version that won't have this gps drift issue.

As a workaround for now you'll have to get a new gps fix (start a run activity, wait for gps acquired (gps green), exit the app)

I just got a Vivoactive 3 Music and this is by far my favorite watch face. It has as much information as I had on my old Pebble 2 (R.I.P.) watch face. I donated for more frequent weather updates and as a thank you for making the face and keeping it updated!

I have one concern. Sometimes I find that the screen doesn't reliably wake when I touch. I have to tap it 1-3 times to get the backlight to come on. I don't notice this when using the default watch faces. Is this a known issue, or is perhaps there a different factor? I have the "seconds" enabled on my watch face, in addition to live heartrate display. I understand that these are at the risk of lower battery, but is that possibly causing the problem?

It's the first time I hear about the tap issue and if it is indeed occurring it is something not under my control as watch faces do not have to ability to intercept (or disable) input, but I'll have a look at it.

I'm also using the same configuration as you (seconds always on and the active heart rate on) as I think it are 2 features which make the watch face great. The way "always on" works is that a small part of the screen is updated (only what needs to be updated), so in Data Lover this is the active heart rate graph and the area that surrounds the seconds. This update of the screen has to occur within a tight budget of 30ms/second, so even though there will be a bit more energy use when using always on, overall it should be quite ok since the maximum extra time bucket used is 60x30ms=1.8s versus 0s when not using always on features (sorry if this sounds too technical).

It's the first time I hear about the tap issue and if it is indeed occurring it is something not under my control as watch faces do not have to ability to intercept (or disable) input, but I'll have a look at it.

I'm also using the same configuration as you (seconds always on and the active heart rate on) as I think it are 2 features which make the watch face great. The way "always on" works is that a small part of the screen is updated (only what needs to be updated), so in Data Lover this is the active heart rate graph and the area that surrounds the seconds. This update of the screen has to occur within a tight budget of 30ms/second, so even though there will be a bit more energy use when using always on, overall it should be quite ok since the maximum extra time bucket used is 60x30ms=1.8s versus 0s when not using always on features (sorry if this sounds too technical).

That certainly makes sense to me with the extra time consumption. I'm going to leave seconds + heartrate enabled, as I've only seen a 30% drop in 24 hours and that it is with me playing with all of the settings and installing apps since I just got it.

Regarding touching the screen and it not waking, I tested several times and I got the same result even with Garmin's default faces. I now believe this could be due to my screen protector which I neglected to mention earlier.

One final concern: The battery meter on the watch face is sometimes off by 1%. For example, the Data Lover watch face says 72% battery, but the Garmin controls menu and settings screens both say 71%.

I would actually expect it the other way around. The battery percentage is a decimal value: data lover just truncates this downwards (to save a bit of memory) while native garmin controls round to the nearest whole number.

I would actually expect it the other way around. The battery percentage is a decimal value: data lover just truncates this downwards (to save a bit of memory) while native garmin controls round to the nearest whole number.

I was just about to clarify that it was the other way around, indeed you are correct. Okay, makes sense. Thanks again!

I have one more question, specifically about the city name. What happens when the city's name is longer than 8 characters? Is it truncated or does it go onto the next line?

The city name is truncated when it doesn't fit in the space. (Space depends on the width of the time, 12 hour vs 24 hour system setting)

I'm a new Fenix 5+ owner. I really like the watchface.

3 suggestions if I may:
* Larger seconds and smaller temperature (in weather element) - then they both should fit
* Wind speed in metres/sec - no-one in my country (Denmark) measures wind in km/hour
* Bottom graph to show other measurements than steps - and maybe as a graph and not columns (but the 2 first are much more important to me)

Nice work!