Just pushed an update for the Apple Watch app on the App Store. In this version, prone foil sessions now come with an extra screen. You’ll get stats for the last set of waves: longest wave, total time and distance on foil, number of linked waves, and your longest wave of the session, so you can compare to your past self.
For paddle ups, you’ll now see the same info as for dock and beach starts—time, distance, max and average heart rate. Also included: the total number of successful paddle ups and your success ratio (great for bragging rights or quiet reflection). Over on the iPhone app, you’ll find a full summary of all your attempts—both glorious and not-so-glorious.
I prone foil nearly every day (unless it’s too big/stormy) and wear an Ultra basically every session. Would love to test if you’re open to another beta user.
New version available on the App Store with the following changes:
The dock start row now only sums the distance while pumping, ignoring any movement around on the dock. Session duration has also been replaced with average start duration — way more interesting when dock starting!
Tacks and jibes where you exit at a slightly lower speed are now correctly identified and counted (thanks, Steve!)
The water lock button is back in action (cheers, Oleg!).
If the watch failed to fetch the weather at the end of a session, the Tacks & Jibes detail view would also fail. This is now fixed for future sessions. If it’s affecting a past session, you’ll need to set the weather manually (once again, thanks Oleg!).
Finally, I’ve been learning to dock start, and this release improves the algorithm — making it slightly less likely to count failed starts as proper ones. (I’ve had a lot of failed starts…)
A feature that could be very useful for downwind bump technique drills - use the gyro to measure how much you are pumping. I think learning to glide without pumping might be the best drill for improving bump skills, and this could be a way to measure it.
Yeah, I need to look into what’s possible with the gyroscope and accelerometer on the Apple Watch. I’d love to get some stats for my downwind foiling too. It’s on the (pretty long) to-do list.
No prone-related improvements this time, but I just released a new version of the app with some nice upgrades for dock starts on the Apple Watch. I’ve also levelled up my pumping game a bit.
Tried the app, very neat UX. Would like to share to Strava which I can’t figure out. I also can’t edit a session (it was prone, but flat water so mostly pumping, would like to see what the pump feature would make of it)
Strava integration is on the to-do list, but proper (automatic sharing) support is quite a bit of work. Would exporting a GPX track for manual import into Strava be enough to start with?
Editing a session after it’s been saved is possible to implement, but also a bit tricky—much of the metadata is stored in Apple’s HealthKit and linked to the workout created there. To be honest, the list of requested features is long, and I suspect this one would end up fairly low in the queue.
I forgot to mention—you can actually use an app called HealthFit to export just about any other app that uses Apple’s HealthKit (including mine) to Strava. I believe it’s subscription-based, but it’s reasonably priced and well made.
I guess so, seems Strava makes it quite hard to upload GPX files for some reason.
Editing is something that I end up using quite a bit, typically end a DW run once home or back at car, or want to trim out a section at the start that skews the stats. I can imagine the specific implementation would be tricky!
Will look at Healthfit, seems likely filling the Strava GPX track issue.
You mean the “oh shit, I forgot to end my session” type of editing? Seems like a lot of people struggle with that—myself included—so it’s actually pretty high up on my to-do list. It won’t be fixed tomorrow, but it’s coming in the next couple of months.
Hey I’ve used it for about 6-8 sessions so far. All prone in kind of funky conditions. Wave recognition seems a bit all over the place if there’s a lot going on (I often have to deal with multiple different swell directions simultaneously)
One thing that isn’t clear to me while setting up for a session: how am I supposed to be orienting the “wave direction” section? If I know the dominant swell is at 221 deg, but there’s another at 270 deg, do I just set the compass to 220-230 ish? Or, should I be thinking about the actual visual direction of the waves as they bend and refract towards the beach?
Also possible I’m overthinking and it really doesn’t matter.
The wave direction is just the average heading you’re traveling while actually surfing the wave. I’m still fine-tuning the algorithm, so if you’re up for it, I’d really appreciate if you could share your session tracks. Just open the session’s detail view, tap the hamburger menu, and choose “share debug track.”
I just got out and had a really good (for me) prone session and will for sure share that one. There should be clear instances where I connected waves that are obvious above the noise. Happy to sit down and pick them out if there’s a way to graph things like heart rate, speed, heading, etc.
This update brings a few new features — your heart rate now appears alongside your speed in the timeline. I’ve also upgraded the position indicator to an arrow showing your current direction, and added wake thieving as a new discipline.
The Ultra has significantly better battery life, which makes a big difference if you surf in colder climates or during longer sessions. It also features improved GPS, so tacks, jibes, waves, and dock starts are detected with greater accuracy. On the other hand, the current Ultra is two years old, and a new version is rumored to launch after the summer. Personally, I’d probably wait a few months for the new version—or maybe go for the Series 10 today. Not an easy call.
Edit: gave it a bit more thought—if I were looking for a watch to track foiling sessions, I’d probably pick up a used Ultra (and maybe upgrade to the new version once released).
Latest version of the app comes with some pretty nice updates for parawing and downwinders. A new algorithm analyzes your session and picks out downwind runs (and upwind if you’re on a parawing). A run is counted as a consecutive swell foiled for at least 100 m. On the watch you’ll now see stats for your latest run — distance, duration, and average speed. Back on the couch, phone in hand, you can step through the runs in detail. There’s also a summary view that shows overall downwind stats and lists all your runs to scroll through.
Plenty of other goodies in this release too. One of my favorites is the replay feature — hit play and watch your track animate across the map, complete with speed and heart rate graphs. The prone surf algorithm also got an almost total rewrite and should behave much better now (thanks steve!). Oh, and swell rides are also detected in towed jet ski sessions.
XTE helps because while the arrow points to where you want to go, it doesn’t tell you if you are improving on your course. If you only check the arrow every 10 minutes, you don’t know whether you’re on a better line than you were, and could be pointing in the right direction but not actually converging..
I’ll try this out, but something for your distant roadmap ideas on this feature is cross-track error
