Unleashed + Garmin watch

Here you can post all things you think are missing within in the app – we really appreciate your input.
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marcin
Posts: 29
Joined: February 4th, 2020, 8:37 am

February 6th, 2020, 8:30 am

Hi,
I'm happy user of Garmin Fenix.
It is probably dreaming, but... Wouldn't be nice to leave the phone at home and use only watch to obtain a GPS coordinates and trigger the shooter?
Best regards,
Marcin
Oliver
Posts: 1127
Joined: October 9th, 2018, 4:17 pm

February 7th, 2020, 11:26 am

We have actually thought about it.
But Garmin is not very helpful - they've ignored my many requests for Developer information entirely...
So we would have to reverse engineer everything, and currently don't have the capacity for this...
Founder & CEO of Foolography, Hardware & Firmware developer.
reginalb
Posts: 5
Joined: February 19th, 2019, 6:57 pm

December 15th, 2020, 10:04 pm

Oliver wrote:
February 7th, 2020, 11:26 am
We have actually thought about it.
But Garmin is not very helpful - they've ignored my many requests for Developer information entirely...
So we would have to reverse engineer everything, and currently don't have the capacity for this...

Uh...they provide an API...https://forums.garmin.com/developer/con ... -the-world

I, too, would like to see this feature added. Since you had feature loss from the '09 with its Bad Elf my Unleashed has just sat in my closet completely unused. Adding Garmin support would make it useful for me. Note that the API, which is publicly documented, has had BLE support since April of 2019. Give me an SDK and I'll do it.
Oliver
Posts: 1127
Joined: October 9th, 2018, 4:17 pm

December 15th, 2020, 10:41 pm

Hi Reginald,

I had a quick look through the Garmin Connect IQ Forums and Garmins documentation about this, to make sure I hadn't missed something.

Unfortunately, the Garmin SDK is only for connecting to sensors to use the data in an app on your Garmin device. In other words: The Garmin device needs to be the central, and whatever you want to connect to, needs to be a peripheral device. To connect to the Unleashed, we'd need this to work the other way round, as the Unleashed acts as a central to connect to accessories:

You can scan for devices that are advertising, but you can't advertise with CIQ BLE. It's mainly intended to connect to BLE sensors and not have a watch act as one..

We implemented both roles in the Unleashed, but at the moment, the peripheral role is meant only for our App to connect to. The Unleashed can connect to accessories using it's central role, as any other kind of device we've wanted to connect to has been a peripheral. It might be possible to allow a second connection to our peripheral role, but this would be a huge change on our side, which is not on our to-do list at the moment.

I don't know if you saw, but we added support for multiple external GPS receivers quite a while ago, including the Transystem GL-770, which is the only GPS I know of that supports the Standard "LNS" Service, as described in the Bluetooth Low Energy Specification. If Garmin would simply implement this, it would require virtually no change in our firmware to support it.

Have a look at our Blog entry about this: https://www.foolography.com/2019/11/28/ ... unleashed/


That said, I would love to support Garmin devices, so we might look into it some more in the future!
Founder & CEO of Foolography, Hardware & Firmware developer.
reginalb
Posts: 5
Joined: February 19th, 2019, 6:57 pm

December 15th, 2020, 11:12 pm

Oliver wrote:
December 15th, 2020, 10:41 pm
Hi Reginald,

I had a quick look through the Garmin Connect IQ Forums and Garmins documentation about this, to make sure I hadn't missed something.

Unfortunately, the Garmin SDK is only for connecting to sensors to use the data in an app on your Garmin device. In other words: The Garmin device needs to be the central, and whatever you want to connect to, needs to be a peripheral device. To connect to the Unleashed, we'd need this to work the other way round, as the Unleashed acts as a central to connect to accessories:

You can scan for devices that are advertising, but you can't advertise with CIQ BLE. It's mainly intended to connect to BLE sensors and not have a watch act as one..

We implemented both roles in the Unleashed, but at the moment, the peripheral role is meant only for our App to connect to. The Unleashed can connect to accessories using it's central role, as any other kind of device we've wanted to connect to has been a peripheral. It might be possible to allow a second connection to our peripheral role, but this would be a huge change on our side, which is not on our to-do list at the moment.

I don't know if you saw, but we added support for multiple external GPS receivers quite a while ago, including the Transystem GL-770, which is the only GPS I know of that supports the Standard "LNS" Service, as described in the Bluetooth Low Energy Specification. If Garmin would simply implement this, it would require virtually no change in our firmware to support it.

Have a look at our Blog entry about this: https://www.foolography.com/2019/11/28/ ... unleashed/


That said, I would love to support Garmin devices, so we might look into it some more in the future!

As I am sure you can imagine from our previous backs and forth, the idea of buying yet another device to get functionality I expected out of the box isn't something I'm super stoked about. I have also moved mostly to the Z system. My D3s (which I have the USB cable for) doesn't get used. By D500 took a bath and might not be repairable (but I never bothered to buy a USB cable to use the Unleashed with it anyway as I have found it useless for my needs). So, unfortunately, I'd have to buy an Unleashed N2, and one of these, haha.
Oliver
Posts: 1127
Joined: October 9th, 2018, 4:17 pm

December 15th, 2020, 11:28 pm

Oh, no, sorry to hear about your D500!

Well, I wasn't saying you have to buy one, but rather wanted you to know about it, so that if it's important enough to you, that there are options already available. Also, so that you know we do add features like this sometimes, and are continuously improving the Unleashed.

I understand that many of our customers are hesitant to buy a separate GPS device, which is one of the main reasons we made the Unleashed with an app in the first place: while it's not a perfect replacement for a dedicated GPS receiver, it does give you a decent position for free, and added so many more possibilities for other features!
But if you're not happy with the location data coming from a smartphone - you're going to have to get a compatible GPS. Now I know, we've talked about this with you and many others - we also wish we could have made the Bad Elf GPS devices compatible, but it was simply not feasible. Same with Garmin - due to lack of an API on their part, it was also not feasible all this time. It's looking a bit better now, they seem to be heading in the right direction, but we're still not quite there yet.

We really do our best to make all our customers happy, but cannot fulfil every wish, and especially not by Christmas (or any other deadline that's just around the corner) ;-)
Sometimes our hands are tied by incompatible technologies, sometimes it's economic factors where we have to weigh the effort (and associated cost) against the gain, ie how many additional Unleasheds do we expect to sell if we add a certain feature? Usually it's just the length of our backlog...
Founder & CEO of Foolography, Hardware & Firmware developer.
reginalb
Posts: 5
Joined: February 19th, 2019, 6:57 pm

December 15th, 2020, 11:57 pm

Oliver wrote:
December 15th, 2020, 11:28 pm
Oh, no, sorry to hear about your D500!

Well, I wasn't saying you have to buy one, but rather wanted you to know about it, so that if it's important enough to you, that there are options already available. Also, so that you know we do add features like this sometimes, and are continuously improving the Unleashed.

I understand that many of our customers are hesitant to buy a separate GPS device, which is one of the main reasons we made the Unleashed with an app in the first place: while it's not a perfect replacement for a dedicated GPS receiver, it does give you a decent position for free, and added so many more possibilities for other features!
But if you're not happy with the location data coming from a smartphone - you're going to have to get a compatible GPS. Now I know, we've talked about this with you and many others - we also wish we could have made the Bad Elf GPS devices compatible, but it was simply not feasible. Same with Garmin - due to lack of an API on their part, it was also not feasible all this time. It's looking a bit better now, they seem to be heading in the right direction, but we're still not quite there yet.

We really do our best to make all our customers happy, but cannot fulfil every wish, and especially not by Christmas (or any other deadline that's just around the corner) ;-)
Sometimes our hands are tied by incompatible technologies, sometimes it's economic factors where we have to weigh the effort (and associated cost) against the gain, ie how many additional Unleasheds do we expect to sell if we add a certain feature? Usually it's just the length of our backlog...

I understand all of that, and it's all fair.

It fails to mention that the reason that you had to talk to myself and many others about the Bad Elf, is that you were misleading during the crowdfunding, and never corrected the record publicly, your Indiegogo page still shows a photo of a Bad Elf next to a camera for goodness sake! Anyway, this is a very dead horse I'm beating. Worse things have happened than wasting $190, and as you know, I did end up finding a second use for my Bad Elf.
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