Currently building a garmin version of the app. There’s a dazzling number of garmin watches to support with crazy variations in both screen size and shape (octagonal with a punched hole in the upper corner, wtf?). To make my life less horrible I’ve decided to focus on the slightly more modern watches. Besides not making me want to jump off a cliff, it also lets me build something that matches the polish and features of garmin’s own modern apps. Fully customisable screens just like the native apps, submersion detection, algorithms using the gyro, accelerometer and compass, the works. Pretty much feature parity with the watchOS version. In practice that means the app will run on premium garmin watches going back ~4 years, mid-range ~3 years, and budget ~1 year.
For older watches there will be a connect IQ data field. Drop this into any of garmin’s sessions (surf or windsurf are probably the best fit) and you’ll get automatic sync with foil sessions on your iphone. No fancy algorithms, but you still get number of runs/starts, tacks/jibes, and a bunch of other stats right on the watch. The nice part: it’ll work even on that old garmin watch that’s been sitting in the bottom of a drawer for 10 years. Once the session lands in the iphone app, the normal algorithms take over and do their job analysing the track.
Looking for people with garmin watches willing to test this out. Send me a dm if you’re interested.
Not a native app for now. Maybe in a far future where I can tell an ai to port the entire ios/watchos app to android.
What’s on the roadmap is a web interface to the app. Will work for ios, watchos and most importantly garmin. That lets you use foil sessions on a garmin watch even without an iphone. Doesn’t solve recording on a pixel watch in any meaningful way, but you’ll be able to upload gpx tracks and view them.
Hi, I already subscribed for foil sessions on my apple watch ultra3, but I like my garmin forerunner 255s more when I don’t need the satellite SOS. happy to test it out!
Great, and thanks for subscribing! Happy to have you test it.
The forerunner 255s won’t run the full garmin app, but I’m building a connect iq data field for watches like it. The data field analyzes runs, tacks and jibes, and then syncs the session to the iOS app. the app then runs its full set of algorithms on the gps track and fills in the rest.
My goal is a garmin app on par with the native apps garmin ships on its latest models. Lower screen resolution and fewer colors on the older watches make it hard to build one interface across the whole range. That leaves two options: build what are in practice two separate apps for the two classes of watches, or only support the recent models with the full app. As a single developer I don’t have time for the first, so the older watches get the data field instead. One of me, many garmins.
and thanks for the link to the garmin thread, will read through it.
Quick update. I’m doing the final tuning and testing of the pump detection algorithm. Besides that, most of what goes into the first version is implemented. with some luck a first beta goes out to testers next week.
This is the destination screen. The green dot is your destination. The entire compass rose rotates as you move your arm, like a physical compass. Time to go is calculated from your vmg towards the destination over the last 20 seconds. X-track error is how far you’ve strayed off the line between your starting point and the destination. In this case the line is 152 meters to my left.
And to keep expectations in check: this is the full app, so it needs something like a forerunner 165 or newer. That said, I’ve tested the connect iq data field on an instinct 3e. No fancy destination screen there, but it turned out a lot better than I expected.
The plan was to release the public beta before the weekend, but some unexpected app and backend issues popped up. Sharing a few screenshots of the current state of the app instead. I think it’s shaping up to be a pretty nice looking garmin app.
The customizable screens are garmin only for now. as is the design. You can add and delete screens and change every data field, so you end up with exactly the screens you need.
That said, the version after next of the ios app gets customizable screens too (turns out not everyone agrees with me about which fields to show for each session type, what a surprise). the design gets an update as well, but takes cues from apple’s training apps, so it won’t look like the garmin app. Or at least that’s the plan. Only implemented the screen editor so far and will start design work next week.
And with the pace of ai development, an android app is probably doable by next year.
Been working on support for lower resolution watches, and the forerunner 255s just joined the roster. Going much lower than this will be hard due to cpu and memory limits, but those watches still get the connect iq data field.
am I right that these are ~$100 used? that would be pretty cool to see your app on it. I tried my small Apple watch again, the screen is so crap I can hardly imagine bothering
Yeah, you could probably get a used forerunner that the app supports for something like that. Brand new forerunner 70 is only $250. Problem with the forerunners is that they’re only rated waterproof to 5atm so I have no idea how well they’d hold up on the water.
If I were to choose a budget garmin I’d try to get hold of a used Instinct 3 amoled, or just buy a new. That’s a really sweet watch with a nice screen and a bit more waterproof. It’s on sale for $299 right now so a bit pricier but I think that would be a much better watch for foiling.
And regarding your tiny apple watch, next version of the watchOS app will have fully customisable screens so you should be able to configure it to show only the data you’re interested in and in big enough text to be usable.
Cool thanks for the info. BTW the small Apple Watch was a general comment not your app specifically. It’s very small and the dead zone near the edges makes it even worse. Basically I turn on tracking and then don’t use again. I bought it to go under a wetsuit but it’s not very comfortable. Dud!
