Vivosmart 5 not syncing robustly

6611572 3 days ago

Hi All

I recently bought a VS5 and it was recording sleep just fine, but now in the mornings, it says "No sleep data". I go to the Home screen and press the refresh icon, which spins round slowly then goes green and displays a tick, so Connect thinks everything's ok. Unfortunately the Sleep section for today still shows the No Data message.

A couple of hours later and the data and my score is there. I'm kind of thinking something is going to sleep somewhere, although if there was an issue, I'd expect the manual sync to fail, but it looks like it works to me.

It's the same for my wife's watch too. Both phones have unrestricted battery access set for the Connect app. Additionally, both phones have been rebooted a number of times as have the watches.

I'm guessing it's a bug in Connect in the sync process. Anyone else had the same experience and managed to fix it?

Cheers

Steve

0 6611572 1 day ago

Hi All I think I've found the problem - lack of Internet access at some times. I'd forgotten, I'd scheduled wifi to be off between certain times to save battery and was trying to sync the watch with no Internet.

From reading other threads, the Connect app needs to be able to contact a Cloudflare server in order to sync with the watch. Does my health data get sent to the Cloudflare server? I'm pretty techy about privacy and don't remember agreeing to this.

I can think of no technical reason for this as everything is possible to sync via Bluetooth, keeping all my data local, improving my privacy. I'm assuming if I'm on top of a mountain in Outer Mongolia with no Internet access at all, Connect won't work?

If I've got it wrong, please let me know!

Cheers

Steve

0 6611572 1 day ago in reply to 6611572

Ok I've been working a bit more on this. I went into Account management and found all my data. I hadn't realised I'd opted in to upload my data to Garmin Internet servers and got in touch with Garmin Data protection.

They told I had opted in and sent me a link on how to opt out and delete the data on my account, which I did as I'm no fan of a third party holding onto a plethora of my health data on their servers. Nothing against Garmin, I'm just not a fan of sharing such data.

Now I find I have NO DATA at all! The whole lot has gone. Connect says there is no data for any category for the past year, so yup, it's gone.

This implies the only persistent location for watch data is the Garmin Internet servers. Is this correct? I've deleted the remote data and as it was the only store, I've effectively deleted all data?

I'd very much like someone to confirm/contradict what I'm thinking.

Any takers?

Thanks Steve

0 6611572 3 hours ago in reply to 6611572

Ok, so I've pretty much come to the end of my understanding with this. I spoke to Garmin support who confirmed the central repository for data for the watch was not the watch or phone, it's a remote Cloudflare server.

This means that if there's no Internet, there's no data and no syncing. Of course, by Internet I mean wifi or mobile phone data which is in effect the same. Now, mobile phone data coverage has improved markedly over the years, so that's less of an issue, but if you're on the top of Kilimanjaro with no cell tower coverage, you won't be able to see your data until you come back and get some coverage. Additionally, depending on where you are, mobile data may be stupidly expensive while roaming.

A different solution would be for Garmin to implement 'local mode' even as a temporary option. You have a network enabled watch and phone (Bluetooth) so everything is there and is possible. It seems a little crazy to me that a device that is designed for people that like to go to the middle of nowhere has a single point of failure (no internet), but then again, I don't work as a Garmin developer, so what do I know? . The other issue with this is privacy. I'm fairly paranoid, which I think is a healthy stance these days as companies try to scrape every bit of your personal data for marketing purposes, (yes it's you I'm thinking of, Google!). I'm sure garmin's security is top-notch, but also sure pretty much anyone can be hacked, and my pulse/breathing/spo2/sleep/stress 24/7 really does qualify as personal data to me.

After establishing these facts with support, who were very helpful, I asked to return the watch for a refund and they agreed, which was pretty good service I thought.

After whinging, I should point out that I liked the watch. The good bits were:

I thought it looked good and was comfortable.

The battery life was good.

I found the various scores were pretty accurate when compared to how I felt eg sleep/body battery/stress

Tech support at Garmin was free and very helpful.

So the upshot is, despite what I said about Google above, I've bought a Fitbit Sense 2 watch which should arrive today. A couple of things I like about it are that it checks for afib and as at 66 and a stroke survivor I'm keen on that. Also it has a speaker and microphone so will be handy for phone calls in the car. The only down side I see before playing with it is that some features are only available by subscription, so will use it for a while and decide.

Ok I'll stop banging on, this being a Garmin forum!

Keep Smilin'

Steve