I know my vivoactive 3 doesn't do open water swims, but what is the go to choice "cardio" "other" when I am going to swim. I guess all I can really ask for is that the screen is locked so it doesn't jump around with the water touching it, and it gives me an overall time.
I did a known open water swim (OWS) it is a 200 yard buoy line.
I set my VA3 to "Auto Lock during activities" and I started an "Outdoor rowing" activity.
I swam three loops around the buoy line, each lenght is 200 yards so the whole thing should have been around 1300 yards, or 11K meters.
I started it and it did pretty well with me getting to the buoy line and then doing the first length. I stopped at the last buoy to collect myself and start back. GPS stopped at this point.
So, I did really well for the first length and then stopped. The timer worked, I'm not sure about the strokes, and the GPS/distance worked for a little while.
I think a straight timer would have given me the same level of useful information.
It did great until it stopped at the first turnaround point.
I manually edited the activity changing it from "rowing" to "Open Water Swim" in GC. Then I edited the distance from the GPS created 550 meters to a pretty good estimate of 1300 yards. After I changed the distances, the stroke counts it kept started to look correct. It matches pretty close what I've been doing in the pool. So in sum:
Using a VA3 for an open water swim, set it to autolock the screen and then outdoor "Rowing" It will keep track of the time, and give a pretty good count of arm strokes. It gives some unreliable info on heart rate and GPS distance.
chris_in_cal did you have the watch on your wrist, or somewhere else? I haven't yet rigged the VA3 for open-water, but I've done it with the VAHR, and I simply put it on top of my head under my swimming gap so as to keep GPS continually above water. No issues with accuracy at all, just a bit of a PITA to start and stop the activity. VA3 introduces rep counter and a couple of other features, so it would be interesting to see if your "rowing" fix works with the swimming cap method and produces a more or less accurate GPS track.
In the name of science I'm going to try it again tomorrow. I am going to swim with Vivoactive 3 under my swim cap. At least I'm going to try, it sounds weird and uncomfortable, but I'll give it a go.
I wonder what "activity" to run.
1) Rowing: has stroke count, timer, and GPS distance ----But under my cap I don't think there will be any stroke count. 2) Walking: also has step count, timer, and GPS distance ----- no steps to count under a cap 3) Bicycling: it is just timer and distance ---- seems like a candidate 4) Run: it is timer and distance --- another candidate 5) Navigate: ? no clue, is this timer and distance too?
Additionally I want to try it on my wrist again with "Connect IQ" Swimming App Professional -- I just downloaded it as it support VA3, anyone try this yet?
So the App did get my heart rate, and the time correct. It made a full GPS map, and the Map it created actually has me doing three laps, which is accurate. But the GPS is all over the place so it makes my distance 100% off.
I used a Swimming App Professional app for open water swimming. It has a cool data screen, won't count strokes, shows pace and heart rate over time or distance, as well as elevation in Garmin Connect. The latter metric is not useful at all as could be expected, varying from minus 200 to minus 135 m for me. It also provided no CIQ data, just showed zeros under Total Distance IQ, Average Speed IQ and Average Pace IQ. I ultimately deleted it and reverted back to using a native Rowing app.
I use swimming app professional and find it pretty good, the data screens are all customisable from the settings, I have it showing time, elapsed time, pace/100 average and last 10secs, heart rate current and average and total distance. The author was also pretty responsive when the lock screen bug came in and was pretty responsive and quick in putting a fix in place. The calculated distance shoes up under connect iq fields in the activity just fine on my Garmin connect.
I have now tried out "Swimming app professional" on my VA3 and it works good. But as the optical HR sensor is not designed for under-water measurement, the results for HR are not accurate. Is it possible to automatically disable HR sensor when starting "Swimming app professional"? The workaround is to disable the HR sensor generally and re-activate it after swimming, but this is not optimal. Thank you!
Ol' Jim has been telling me to get off his lawn for a couple of years now. Anyway, I used the app again last night. Second time. GPS tracking and and the distance were more accurate.
