Acknowledged
2 months ago

CIQ documentation doesn't make it clear that "Edge 820 / Explore" is 2 devices with different featuresets (e.g. Edge 820 Explore lacks power meter support)

Everything in CIQ treats edge820 ("Edge 820 / Explore") as a single device (since that's how it's defined): the simulator, the documentation and the build system.

But it's really two different products: Edge 820 and Edge 820 Explore.

I'm not sure why these two products were combined into a single CIQ device, since Edge 820 Explore lacks power meter support (and other features from Edge 820).

This leads to issues like the docs for ActvityInfo.currentPower claiming that's available for "Edge 820 / Explore", yet a dev getting a crash on ""Edge 820 / Explore" when failing to gate accesses to currentPower with a has check. Clearly what's happening is that these users have an Edge 820 Explore.

Here's an example of a developer running into that very issue: https://forums.garmin.com/developer/connect-iq/f/discussion/340143/symbol-not-found-error-only-on-edge-820-how-to-fix

If I'm not mistaken, due to this design, it's impossible for a dev to release an app focused on power meters (for example) which targets all devices which support power meters, and only devices which support power meters, since you apparently can't include Edge 820 but exclude Edge 820 Explore.

Since this design won't change, it would be nice if this quirk were called out in the documentation. e.g. Anywhere that a certain symbol is documented as existing for "Edge 820 / Explore", there should be an asterisk which explains that it's not available for "Edge 820 Explore

"

FlowState
  • over 1 year ago

    I understand the issue here, and I'm not sure we have a good way to address it, but I'll raise it with the team and see if there's something we can do.

    Without getting into too many esoteric details, these devices are viewed as the same product by Connect IQ since they essentially share the same firmware. That's the reason they're grouped together in documentation and in the device configs (e.g. SDK Manager doesn't have separate device configurations that can be downloaded for each—there's a single configuration that is used by both products).

    Your explanation and recommendation to use 'has' checks in the thread you linked is the same thing I would suggest. Just the same, perhaps we can do more to clarify the differences between certain products in cases like this.

  • over 1 year ago

    Context for anyone else reading this bug report:

    https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2016/07/garmin-edge-820.html

    As for the Edge Explore 820, here’s how it’s different than the base Edge 820:

    – No WiFi
    – No Ambient Light Sensor
    – No ANT+ Power Meter or Shifting Support
    – No Structured Training Support (i.e. structured workouts)
    – No advanced metrics like performance indictor, FTP, etc…

    This is more information than CIQ API docs apparently give us...