Solar Surf Tide Data

Hi! First, I absolutely love this watch! Everything feels and looks great, no complaints whatsoever about the hardware of the watch. That being said, I do have some issues with the software, and coming from a developer standpoint it is completely understandable. I do see tons of areas for improvement and would be thrilled if these areas were on the roadmap.

1) My tide data seems incorrect based on NOAA's tide predictions. About +/- 40 minutes to be exact. Even punching in coordinates to bouy's gives wrong data. Is this a known issues? Where does Garmin collect tide data from? Will it be fixed?

2) Is tide data coupled directly to phone connection? As in, how does the surf download tide data? Via GPS then calculates tides or does it require internet connection via phone? Asking because if I were remotely sailing on some island with no internet connection I would still like valid tide data. If it requires internet connection, could there be a setting for manual tide data entry when no internet is present, then say 7-14 days of calculated tide data, its mathematical so should be fairly easy to add this feature. This would be a huge bonus!

3) Can these units store more data when disconnect from phone, say weather (7 days) and tide information (30 days), etc? The hardware is too great to be constantly coupled to the internet and civilization! The point of Garmin products is to get away from cell service ;) ...at least in my opinion.

I guess I'm asking if there are future upgrades in place to make the Instincts less dependent on internet connection and more free to explore remote areas of the world with lots of accurate data inside.

Thanks so much for making a great piece equipment. Your engineers definitely worked hard on this!

I truly hope some of these ideas are on the agenda, for the sake of all explorers. Or perhaps open up some sort of 3rd party widget developer center for Instincts. Then we could build whatever we'd like.

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0 3000610 over 4 years ago

I don't have answers on 1) and 3) but the way i think 2) works is:

- Tide request made on watch (either for current position, or saved coordinates).
- Watch sends request for tides at this location to whatever "tide server" Garmin uses (this would be your answer on question 1) through cellphone. This requires both bluetooth connection to the phone and cellular or wifi connection on the phone.
- Tides(+3 days ahead) are sent back via same route and displayed on watch.

My experience is that as soon as you have the tides displayed the watch will remember them. Until the moment that you either purposefully or accidentally request tides for another location when out of reach of cellphone (or cellular signal). Now it will only display something like 'phone connection required' or 'no tide data', WITHOUT the option of reverting back to the last known tides at a any location (which would most likely have been close enough to at least have an indication on tides). Especially this last bit bugs me a lot.

I wholeheartedly agree with all the suggestions you made for improvement, although the mathematical bit may be less straightforward than you think (diurnal tide, semi diurnal, tidal regime is different all over the world).

Also, why-o-why is 'Tides' an activity and not a fully fledged widget (just like weather, moonphase etc.)? As it stands right now I wish I'd saved myself 50 bucks and got a nicer color watch (admittedly personal preferences here) by buying the 'regular' Instinct Solar. Both things the Surf edition has extra (surfing activity and tide "widget") are repeatedly reported to not be working all too great. The rest of the hardware works marvelous. I really love this watch. Just think the Surf-bit is a bit of commercial gimmick...

Disclaimer: I haven't hung around beaches much since update tot 12.00. The changelog did mention some improvement with regards to tide function without much further elaboration. Fingers crossed it works slightly better now. By the time we get to software update 34.00 we probably finally have what this watch was supposed to be in the first place.

From the software update 12.00 Changelog:

[Surf] Fixed potential issue where watch face tide chart would be blank.

Edit: I do hope someone from Garmin can elaborate better/more on how retrieval of tide actually works. Even if it's not foolproof, by understanding how it works we may actually be able to work around the flaws and diminish the risk of the tide data disappearing just when you need it...

0 6103133 over 4 years ago in reply to 3000610

Awesome information! Thank you!

After messing with it your experiences on tide data seem exactly like mine. A bit of frustration when you lose tide data if no phone is around and you accidentally sync. I really was hoping to be less connected to my phone with this watch.

Agreed, 'Tides' should be its own widget and color of the pipeline ;(. And agree I probably glossed over the mathematical bit a little, but surely it can be done, if they wanted. Definitely, why they should allow 3rd party developers like Apple Watch Apps.

I'll need to update to 12.00 to see the new updates.

Haha, revision 34.00! I hope they get there and don't scratch the project. This thing has tons of potential.

Open source the code one day, let us play Garmin ;)

Thanks so much for the reply.

Cheers!

0 trux over 4 years ago in reply to 6103133

6103133 said:
Definitely, why they should allow 3rd party developers like Apple Watch Apps.

They do. It is called Connect IQ. Avaiable on practically all their smart watches but the Instinct. Strangely it is availble even on models much older and cheaper than Instinct, but for some reason there was apparenltly no room (or no will) for incuding the CIQ technology at Instinct too.

0 2375806 over 4 years ago

I'm also having the same issue with inaccurate tide data on the instinct solar surf - roughly ~20-40 minutes earlier than the actual tides and the tide height is also out, which can have massive impacts for tidal cut-offs, water heights over reefs etc. I've added the location manually by entering the coordinates, I've used GPS to set my location. Neither give me accurate tide data. The name of the location that the watch automatically saved by the watch is Cornwall, UK, which is a county with two different coasts and varying tides. The tide data that is provided by the watch is inaccurate for the entire county (not just my location) - I checked! I really hope Garmin sort this out - it's a huge disappointment and surely can't be that difficult to fix, especially since it is apparently a primary feature of the watch!

GARMIN PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE FIX THIS!!

I've surfed once since getting the watch, and although it registers more waves than I caught - it seems as though it registers waves paddled for as well as waves ridden but it is possible for me to spot the difference though I know others sseem to have an issue with this.

0 IanW1968 over 3 years ago

Same problem 9 months later v 15.1 c'mon Garmin!!

0 5838627 over 1 year ago in reply to 3000610

I have the same issue with my G1 Solar and current software is 11.21 but issue still persists.
Im in remote places a lot and dont have/want to connect to my phone/reception so updating after 3days is impossible. Tide calendar is mathematically easy.
Very disappointed about this tide issue in otherwise a great dive computer.