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Connect IQ AppBuilder 5 : Almost nothing works on Forerunner 945 LTE

NormalGarminUser
over 2 years ago

Yesterday I installed the data field "AppBuilder 5" on my Forerunner 945 LTE. Somehow the watch (or app) then also automatically installed "AppBuilder 5+ (C)".

I configured the 6 data fields of "AppBuilder 5+ (C)" and the one data field of "AppBuilder 5" with very simple formulas in the Connect IQ app, as shown in the screenshots:

AppBuilder 5:

    

AppBuilder 5+ (C):

        

I then added two data fields to the walking activity, I started a walk activity and navigated along a pre-planned course with two course points on it (one "Aid Station" and one "Distance Marker").

The result was more than disappointing:

  

So only the formula Heading and distance_raw worked as expected.

As for CourseOverGround, Bearing, BearingFromStart, and distanceToNextPoint_raw, they failed completely, it just shows !Name everywhere, as if the AppBuilder does not know these variable names. But they are documented in "https://ciq-appbuilder.blogspot.com/p/variables.html", so they are supposed to work for the Forerunner 945 LTE!

What am I doing wrong?!

And one more question: The "quick profile select hotkey" in the AppBuilder 5 does not seem to work. I chose "Double click START once" in the settings, see very first screenshot above.

As far as I understand, the START is the top-right button. But when I am clicking (i.e. pressing) START during an activity, it just pauses or re-starts the activity - so how can a "double click" (i.e. two quick presses of that button I suppose) switch the display of that data field?

  • 0 over 2 years ago

    I'm the dev of AppBuilder 5. Thanks for the feedback!

    - It isn't possible for one app to install another app, so if AppBuilder 5+ (C) was somehow spontaneously installed after AppBuilder 5, that sounds like a Garmin store bug

    - As for variables like CourseOverGround being unavailable, that sounds like a bug that could stem from the fact that support for 945 LTE was never explicitly added by me, but the app was auto-migrated by Garmin. There are multiple versions of the app code -- code for older devices like FR235 doesn't support CourseOverGround, so it's possible that somehow the 945 LTE version of the app uses the older code when it should use the newer code which does support CourseOverGround.

    - The "double click START once" action works by detecting exactly what you said -- when the activity is paused or restarted (quickly). The way it works is you have 10 seconds to do so at the start of the activity. This is a pretty niche feature and I admit it's pretty user-unfriendly, but at the time there was no way to do on-device settings. Seems that this could be broken for the same reason that CourseOverGround is unavailable.

    I think the way to fix this would be to update AppBuilder 5 with proper support for 945 LTE, but at this time I can't say when that would happen. It is somewhat disappointing that Garmin's auto-migration would fail in this manner (if that's what actually happened).

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to FlowState

    Hi FlowState (coincidentaly I am about to start working with Matlab Simulink "StateFlow" on my job these days - funny coincidence),

    thanks a lot for the prompt reply, and thanks for this work as a whole. Is there a way to donate something, by the way (also BTC address or so is possible)?

    I am having, by the way, another question - which goes more in the direction of a feature request - and I hope I do not come across like somebody taking the whole hand if he gets offered a finger... but let me share my thought:

    I understand that the variable "Bearing" (on the watches were it works) provides the direction towards the route's end-point (=final destination), right? I can think of many use-cases where the bearing to the next waypoint (=course point) would be of higher interest - because these course points may serve as intermediate destinations of a longer route, and they could also be used to indicate the turn direction (left or right) - by evaluating such a new variable "BearingToNextPoint" together with "CourseOverGround" appropriately, like checking the sign of (BearingToNextPoint-CourseOverGround), or more precisely (to take account of the 360° wrap-around problem):

    ( (BearingToNextPoint-CourseOverGround+180) mod 360 )-180 --> depending on its sign I should turn left or right.

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to NormalGarminUser

    Unfortunately Connect IQ apps don't have access to information about bearing to next point. The way AppBuilder (and other CIQ apps) work is that the API gives them access to information such as CourseOverGround. They can't access the course directly and calculate things of that nature.

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to NormalGarminUser
    NormalGarminUser said:
    Is there a way to donate something, by the way (also BTC address or so is possible)?

    Thanks for the offer, but I'm not taking donations at this time. I always appreciate feedback!