Lap+ data field

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TL;DR:

- Lap+'s visual lap alert supplements (not replaces) the native lap alert. It does not beep or vibrate

- Lap+'s split alert is visual, and it also beeps/vibrates (based on watch settings)

Tisztul_A_Visztula said:

so far I used Lap+ and its twins with disabled laps (=auto lap) on my watch.

What would happen if I set Auto Lap on my watch, my watch is set to have vibrations, but I alsk set in Lap+ to have visual alert for laps?

Does it mean that it suppresses the vibration and/or sound alert of my watch in case of lap alerts?

Lap+‘s lap alert feature is intended for watches like Vivoactive 3 which doesn’t allow you to customize the native lap alert screen. Since the native lap alert screen (and beep/vibrate) can’t be disabled:

- Lap+’s visual lap alert is purposely delayed until the Lap+ data page becomes visible after a lap is triggered. This is important because the built-in lap alert page cannot be disabled. So the sequence of events is:

- Trigger auto or manual lap

- Native alert is displayed (with beep or vibe)

- Native alert times out or is dismissed by pressing UP or DOWN

- Lap+ page is displayed (you may have to scroll to it) - at this point, the delayed visual alert appears, and stays on the screen for 8 seconds

- Lap+ will not beep or vibrate during a lap alert because your watch already does this (Lap+ does not have the ability to suppress any beep or vibration that your watch generates)

- Lap+ *will* beep/vibrate immediately on a split alert (since split alerts are only a feature of Lap+). Other than this, the split alert works just like the lap alert (it’s displayed as soon as Lap+ is visible, after an alert, and stays on the screen for 8 seconds).

TBH Lap+’s lap alert feature is not really very useful unless you have a Vivoactive, or there’s some metric you want to see which is unavailable natively (like Lap Max HR). It’s still not great because because it can’t replace real lap alerts.

Also, to be clear for anyone else reading this, these aren’t real “alerts” - they are only displayed if you are looking at the Lap+ data page at the time. However, for split alerts, you will hear the beep/vibe regardless of whether you are on the Lap+ data page or not.

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Hey, thanks for the feedback! I always appreciate when anyone at all finds one of my apps useful, as I know they're pretty niche.

Yes, I've noticed that the "tiny" fonts are a little smaller on some of the newer devices. I'll put the task of making the top and bottom "header/footer" fields more readable on the wishlist.

Tisztul_A_Visztula said:

2. My other question is that would it be possible for those who dont use Laps, just Splits in Lap+ either to reverse the positions of these two texts, or to hide “Lap#” as a setting?

I was thinking of making both the header and footer configurable. The only thing is that I wanted to be able to specify an alternate config if you don't have splits, but that seems a bit too complex.

Tisztul_A_Visztula said:

Again I dont want to nag, but I reallly cannot read the number of splits, even if I choose the best (=with highest contrast) background colours, which is dark red and dark blue, imho.

Do you think it would it help if the header and footer had a white background instead? That's one of the cosmetic changes I wanted to make.

I'm also aware of a couple of issues:

- Lap+ doesn't work properly on 945 LTE when the activity background is black, due to a garmin bug where CIQ apps think the background is still white. (You'll see that Stryd Zones will display a completely black screen in the same situation.)

- When the background is black (and the text is white), it can be hard to read numbers for HR/cadence fields, depending on the current zone color, due to poor contrast

In general I would like to improve the appearance of Lap+ overall, as well as provide some additional functionality, but I'm pretty busy these days. If I do find myself with some free time in the near future, I might take a look at some of the easier problems to fix (like changing the header/footer to use a white background).

The one concern I have with updating apps that you usually have to use the latest SDK (for various reasons), and unfortunately this often comes with a slight memory penalty, even for older devices which cannot take advantage of any new functionality. So I always have the fear that just by the act of compiling with a new SDK, I might be breaking the app for old devices.

Hi Flowstate,

would it be a hard work of  to make Lap+ running on not just the newer watches, but on Garmin Edge, too? I mean at least on 530/830?

It would be great to exploit that Lap+ is clever enough to show Lap HR and Lap Power etc. not just for actual and last finished lap, but all of them.

Thanks for your answer.

As a hint, for me it would be a fair deal if you converted the presently free Lap+ to a one-off fee based CIQ datafield, which in 2022 is not rare any longer at all.

6862362 said:

Hi Flowstate,

would it be a hard work of  to make Lap+ running on not just the newer watches, but on Garmin Edge, too? I mean at least on 530/830?

It would be great to exploit that Lap+ is clever enough to show Lap HR and Lap Power etc. not just for actual and last finished lap, but all of them.

Thanks for your answer.

As a hint, for me it would be a fair deal if you converted the presently free Lap+ to a one-off fee based CIQ datafield, which in 2022 is not rare any longer at all.

Thanks, I appreciate the interest from you and everyone who's left a review and/or direct feedback.

I will say that the overall interest in Lap+ seems a bit low, based on the number of downloads and reviews (compared to fields like Dozen Run or any popular watchface.)

This is understandable to me because:

- I freely admit the UX for the lap list feature isn't great (due to limitations in Connect IQ at the time). (Despite that, there's no Garmin watch that has a similar feature, unless you count the interval list on newer Garmins, which isn't really the same as it only works in intervals mode, and it only shows one non-customizable page of laps)

- The simplest and most obvious feature of Lap+ -- having six fields on the same page -- is now a standard feature in newer/high-end Garmin watches. I use Lap+ myself every day, but if I didn't care about the lap list, I wouldn't need it at all

- The original purpose of Lap+, to emulate the missing "auto splits which are distinct from manual laps" feature that some people missed from Polar, doesn't seem to have any interest/market at all. Which is fine, the UX for that feature is not great either. TBH, I never use it myself.

- Overall the UX and design of Lap+ could be improved

- I appreciate the idea of being open to a fee or to donations as others have suggested, but it's really not about the money for me. To be honest, there's no amount of revenue or donations that Lap+ could possibly which would make up for the development time (past or future), given the relatively low level of interest. Which is fine, as it was never about money.

Lap+ and my other apps were just fun projects for me, but to be honest, I don't have a lot of time to work on them at the moment. Also to be honest, Connect IQ development just isn't fun for me, because of various systemic issues which have lingered for years. I especially don't like the fact that upgrading to a new SDK usually results in increased memory usage for all devices, including older devices which can't even benefit from the upgrade, but the upgrade is also necessary to support new devices. So in order to support new devices, even if I didn't have to write a single line of code (although I certainly do), I would still run the risk of breaking support for old devices.

I think it says a lot that nobody else has made a data field quite like Lap+ (or AppBuilder, to name another fairly unique and very niche app of mine). If there was a significant market for it, someone else would've filled the gap already.

Having said all of that, I'm not opposed to updating my apps in the future. I just can't give an ETA for if or when I'll be able to get around to that.

Thanks again for the interest!

Understood.

Some short and one longer remarks:

First, 13K downloads is not a bad result at all.

I checked and the number of downloads of the standalone Lap Viewer is lower, appr. 3K, but maybe it is simpler in terms of potential breakdown. Maybe not, only Garmin knows. :-)

Finally an additional unique feature of Lap+ and Lap Viewer that you didnt mention: there is an option to see only the even and the odd laps/split. I have never ever seen any other solutions which provide it. You can use it for many purposes: 

- during a run HIIT either with auto or manual laps, where  odd  means warmup/rests/cooldown and even means sprinting,

- in cycling with auto lap by position (only Edges, watches not), when you climb the same hill repeatedly either in a loop or in an out-and-back, odd means ascending, even means descending,

- in trail running on a rolling terrain using manual laps, you can collect the data of dedicated climbs, like a special, additional ClimbPro feature, where odd means the data of own- selected climbs, and even means the data of all the sections between these climbs.

I forgot to mention that as I realized the number of future downloads is correlated to the features less than to the following two attributes: I. name of the datafield (almost everything is about searches and tagging) II. the number of past downloads, I mean Garmin uses the general approach, it favours what is already popular.

So if you let me give an advice:

maybe Lap+ and Lap Viewer should have more exciting names like “Fenix 8’s Lap feature” and “Edge 1050’s Lap Viewer” ;-)

But definitely you should put more words as tags, just check the laymen’s posts around and you can collect all the buzzwords.

Well I noticed search results are also based on what's in the description, so I tried to tweak that as well.

But TBH, Lap+ and Lap Viewer just don't add as much value as fields like Dozen Run and DWMap.

I also understand why a nice watchface gets more downloads than almost any data field. Most people I run with give zero Fs about Connect IQ, and I get why.