Possible to connect to Garmin devices over Bluetooth from custom hardware, not mobile app?

Hey there, folks. I've been digging through the FIT SDK and other Garmin developer documentation and I'm still a little confused.

Is it possible to connect to a Garmin device over bluetooth and query data on it (after pairing/security handshake of course) from another piece of Bluetooth enabled hardware? We have a BLE enabled piece of IoT hardware and we'd like to get data from a Garmin device that tracks biometrics. I see the FIT protocol documentation, but it's pretty unclear about the transport layer there. Looks like it's abstracted and available over multiple transport layers, but I'm not sure.

I'm sure this is a 10 second question for someone who knows the Garmin stack, so I'm hoping I can short-circuit a long rabbit hole of getting Garmin hardware, digging through the SDK, etc., only to find out this is not possible.

Thanks!

0 Ben FIT over 2 years ago

The FIT SDK is a data storage format. It does not do any RF communication.

The two developer programs that you should look at are Connect IQ and its BLE capabilities

https://developer.garmin.com/connect-iq/core-topics/bluetooth-low-energy/

and the Health SDKs
https://developer.garmin.com/health-sdk/overview/

I would also search the CIQ forum to see if a similar question has already been asked.
https://forums.garmin.com/developer/connect-iq/f/discussion

0 7018790 over 2 years ago in reply to Ben FIT

hm. interesting. I dug into those a bit, the Connect IQ thing lets you build apps that run on the Garmin device, it doesn't seem to have anything about connecting to the device from other hardware, and the Health SDK seems to be about connecting to the device from iOS/Android mobile devices, but I'll reach out to them to see if it's possible to access from other hardware.

on the forum link, i did a search before i posted and didn't see anything.