A sphere that, as of this morning, now encompasses just shy of 5 million Connect IQ capable devices and over 1,000 developers with 3,000 apps in total. The summit is aimed at developers wanting to build apps on Garmin’s wearable and related devices. The recent launch of Amazon Music on all-new Garmin wearables gives broad options to users to listen to music from the wrist.Curious as to everyones favorite 3rd party watch face Battery drain is of course a concern Right now I bounce between the Garmin native watch faces and the EuroPilotPlusDiet by s0dhi and Crystal by PixelPathos on my F6 Sapphire Titanium.As many of you know, today kicks off Garmin’s first Connect IQ Summit, held in Olathe, Kansas. The whole library has now packed with apps, widgets, watch faces & extensions from various categories. After the Connect IQ store, more third-party developers have launched their best apps on Garmin watches.
For example all the big names if the fitness platforms realm are here – from Strava to Under Armour, and Training Peaks to Xert. Nightscout advanced 3rd party monitoring Nightscout advanced 3rd party.And of course the conference is just as much about the attendees as is the technology that’s being announced. This is one of the easiest ways to get new watch faces on your watch. Given these numbers, it was logical to eventually progress into having a dedicated conference, just as many other software technologies do.This watch face is FREE by entering code 'SPORTSMART' promo code after the trial finishes (please ignore message on watch which shows previous cost of 1.99).
Easy to read modern digital watch face with weather and all the stats you could ever want Includes steps, active minutes, heart rate and battery level.
Included FREE with our Ultimate Lifetime bundle of all our.
Or rather, development pieces. Nonetheless, this post is about the specific technologies being announced today. Apps like like WikiLoc and DWMap are all present.The point is, in it’s first year it’s a bit of a who’s who. Which isn’t to say that smaller developers aren’t here, there are plenty of those that make just as many cool apps (in fact, far more in terms of sheer numbers). Those being companies like Uber, Nest (of Google), Southwest Airlines, SmartThings (of Samsung), and countless more.
Inversely there are certainly plenty of things that competitors like Apple and Android Wear have introduced in the last year that Garmin has had for years. But like much of this post, it’s about those features coming to Connect IQ. Of course this isn’t terribly unlike other wearable devices that have done semi-similar things. Netflix and Chill time was not an option I could demo, due to the mostly PG-rated content of this blog.Within about 1-3 seconds of pressing that button on my watch the lights turn on.
But in reality the version of Connect IQ that your watch supports will directly impacts down the road what kind of apps you can get. Connect IQ 2.3 Platform Enhancements:For many folks, they might not care much what Connect IQ version you’re on or what that means. The best part here is that unlike the remainder of this post, the SmartThings app is available now…and not limited to one particular app platform.
3Rd Party Garmin Watch Faces Update More Frequently
But in talking with Garmin developers yesterday the testing they’ve done shows no impact to battery life at all with the new platform. Garmin has even tested down to 25ms (1/40th of a second) – without any degradation of battery life.And that was really the previous concern – was that by allowing watch faces to update more frequently it could impact battery life significantly. Now watch faces can display not just the second hand but any data they darn well choose at much higher refresh rates. With Always Active Watch faces that changes though. Always Active Watch Faces:One of the biggest complaints of 3rd party watch faces via Connect IQ in the past was the inability to show the seconds on the watch face, or for that matter any updates more frequent than every minute. In other cases it’s simply because Garmin isn’t updating those older platforms.There are four specific major changes/enhancements coming to Connect IQ 2.3, which are as follows.
That app can then be acted upon, just like you would interact with any other app.Triggers can be functions like sensor data, updates from a web platform, or other ANT communications. For example an app can pop-up to remind you of a particular thing to do, like taking nutrition or even medication. Connect IQ 2.3 supports the ability for apps to run in the background and then enumerate updates to the user based on all assortment of triggers. Background Services:Next we’ve got what is clearly the first iteration of multitasking apps on Garmin’s platforms.
It just doesn’t exist.Some apps like Xert and others have been able to somewhat work around those limitations by requiring login to a 3rd party platform for the app to work, but there were always limitations in that, and it wasn’t necessarily something that was clear to the end user upon downloading the app.With trial apps though, Garmin will now allow 3rd parties to authorize users to use an app on their devices. There is no monetization directly within Connect IQ in that you can’t ‘buy’ a Connect IQ app with hard cold cash. Trial Apps:One of the biggest criticisms of the Connect IQ platform has also been it’s biggest asset: Everything is free. Of course your wearable lacks Candy Crush, but the basics apply here.Certainly there will be applications people find in the sports/fitness realm, but as I alluded to at the beginning of the post – much of these changes are about appealing to apps outside that realm. While this might be a bit obsessive, it shows the potential of not just a background service/app, but the idea of being able to interrupt or augment what your down on the watch to provide you timely updates that would otherwise have to wait.You might be asking – how is this different than smart notifications then? Well, it’s much like on your smartphone – sure, you’ve got notifications, but when you’re in the middle of playing Candy Crush it allows your friend to call you – all without existing Candy Crush.
Action Intelligence:Next we’ve got probably the feature with the most potential, which is Action Intelligence. Managing currencies and points and such in an app store model reaches the height of sucky things that app ecosystem have to deal with.Still, by at least making the process easier here for 3rd party developers it should simplify their ability to manage consumer expectations a bit, as well as offer themselves a more economical model. A piece that Garmin (like most companies) wants approximately nothing to do with. Now, the devil is still in the details here because all this really does is offload the payment processing piece more clearly onto said 3rd party developer.
All of which can be recorded and potentially processed elsewhere on a 3rd party platform. The idea being that a developer could target just the exact accelerometer data they wanted for their specific application. That’s a simplistic example, but it worked reasonably well when demoed to me.The feature allows companies to gather 3-axis accelerometer data, but also to leverage Finite Impulse Response (FIR) and Infinite Impulse Response (IIR) filters which and then filter out noisy day (or include such data). As well as recording of those movements.For example Garmin had a simple pitch counter app, that would allow someone wearing the watch to enable the app to count how many baseballs they threw as a pitcher. The idea behind this is to enable apps to start to do more gesture sensing and control.
0 kommentar(er)
