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I was so disappointed to find out this isn't already a feature! Such a basic concept for a fitness watch, I assumed. Just the name of the street and the arrow showing turn direction would be all it needs. Please hurry!
You could try Waypoints, the standalone Waypoint/Navigation app for the Ionic. Waypoints lets you enter 4 routes of up to 20 waypoints each. Once configured you can leave your phone at home and get directions from your wrist.
Hmm, a companion app could make HTTP calls to google map's static maps service then push static images to the watch. Not really a responsive navigation app but might be the closest we'll get for this phone since it has no internet connectivity or GPS
It doesn't need to display a map, just distance to the next turn. Everything is in the phone. The Pebble had this ability, there is no reason the Versa should not be able to do this if the devs would just provide some minimal APIs.
There needs to be some way of sending a message from the phone to the watch instantly with guaranteed delivery or a failure response. As it stands an app on the phone can send a message but it may take 5-10 seconds before it actually gets to the watch with a disturbingly high probability of never arriving at all with no feedback saying that it didn't.
Like I said in a previous comment, 5-10 seconds between your phone receiving an email and your wrist getting that notification is not a big deal; 5-10 seconds between "turn right" and actually seeing that means you've missed your turn. And if for some reason it lost connectivity and the message never arrived the phone app happily carries on unaware that it's screaming the next step into the void and the watch wearer keeps driving straight, unaware that they're not getting updates.
Hmm, I'm buying the versa today. I'm looking forward to playing around with the developer sdk. I find it hard to believe that a TCP websocket silently fails. I totally could see it taking 5-10 seconds at times in order to save battery. A watch wouldn't have a 4 day battery life if it didn't take aggressive steps to save battery. From what I've read, when in tracking mode at least, it's getting a gps location update message from the phone every second
The Ionic gets a GPS update every second if you run the GPS constantly. However, apps like Waypoints, only request a position every 15, 30 or 60 seconds then the battery drain becomes very small.
The Versa doesn't have a GPS so gets it's position from the phone, but the position would/could be requested at the same interval. Power would still be used by Bluetooth to send the directions.
The big problem is writing a companion app for the phone to get the Google turn by turn navigation, actually sending it to the watch would be quite straight forward. I am not sure how complex the companion apps can be.
There is another option, the Ionic and Versa can access the web, using the phone as the gateway, this is how the weather and news apps get their data. Perhaps there is a way of getting turn by turn directions from Google directly on the Watch (using the phone as a simple gateway), but it needs someone to write an app and it is probably fairly complex.
I don't know about their TCP API but that's irrelevant to the problem. The request is about getting navigation on the watch: you start google maps on the phone, start navigation, get the next step out of the navigation app and display it on the watch. The watch itself should not need to make any TCP calls.
On the Pebble this was accomplished with a companion app that read information out of the navigation app (including the next step and a continuous update of distance to that step) and sent it as a message to the watch where the actual app would display it. To the best of my knowledge this is impossible.
Like, I guess the companion app could act as a server, open a socket and the watch could connect to it but that sounds like it'd consume even more battery than an actually functional push service.
>> The big problem is writing a companion app for the phone to get the Google turn by turn navigation, actually sending it to the watch would be quite straight forward. I am not sure how complex the companion apps can be.
The developer of the Pebble app said they looked into rewriting it for fitbitOS and claimed it was absolutely not straight forward sending the message to the watch.
Why bother with your watch, if you are driving you will get more info on your phone? The watch would be useful when you are walking.
The Ionic's GPS will loose GPS position easily when in a city (tall buildings) and unless you turn the GPS to 'always on' it can take 15 seconds just to get the position from the position request. If you leave it 'always on' it takes a fair amount of power. The Versa works the same, but uses the phone GPS, which might be a bit quicker, but still using power in the Bluetooth.
Because reading distance to the next step on my wrist which is conveniently right in front of me on the steering wheel will always be easier and objectively safer than turning my head to look at my phone on the dash.
All this talk about where the GPS is located is irrelevant, the watch doesn't need a GPS, all it needs is to be able to get a realtime stream of data.
The companion app is written in Javascript and complied by Fitbit Studio. BTW you can start developing apps now you don't need to wait for your watch as they have an online simulator.
You could probably access the Google API directly from the watch, you would need to parse the response, but they biggest problem would be entering a location to route to? I am not sure you could code a Google Maps companion app in JS?
'All this talk about where the GPS is located is irrelevant, the watch doesn't need a GPS, all it needs is to be able to get a realtime stream of data.'
Unfortunately if you get in to developing apps where the GPS is located and it's performance is relevant.
"Unfortunately if you get in to developing apps where the GPS is located and it's performance is relevant"
Maybe for other problems. Not this problem. This problem doesn't actually need the GPS. It needs the GPS in that it needs directions, but the request is for getting directions off the phone into the watch. The phone needs the GPS, the watch just needs to get the directions. That is the extent of the request. And it's been closed as "existing feature" when it absolutely, 100% does not exist.
Just to clarify my request, I want to be able to do the following:
- plot a running route on my phone using Google Maps
- Choose the walking option on Google Maps and hit "Start". My phone will then notify me (vibrate, tone, etc) when I have a turn coming up. If I look at my phone, it will tell me the street name and the direction I should turn. I want these messages to appear on my watch.
I am ok with carrying my phone on runs so this should be fairly easy. I can already get traffic update messages on my Versa from Google Maps. Now I just want to get the turn-by-turn notifications. From what I have heard, the Pebble has been doing this for quite some time. It seems like the Versa has all of the hardware needed to do this.
Does anyone know if Fitbit will roll this out for Versa? It would sure be nice for runners who don't want to constantly look at their phones while running new routes!
Josh, I am 100% on board with what you want. I'm trying to contact the developer of NavMe for the Pebble again, see if the websocket API would be sufficient to convince him that a port is possible. I think only the messaging API existed at the time.
WizardStan and Josh, the app you want doesn't exist and I am not sure it is possible to integrate a Fitbit [companion] app to another app running on the phone (Google Maps).
I am not sure how much use an app developed for Pebble will be, these are developed using C and Fitbit uses JavaScript. It might be straight forward to port across although to date I haven't found anything easy developing for Fitbit.
This is marked "existing feature" but is not the true. The proposed "solution" is useless and is not what the users want. I wonder how many developers works for FitBit... I started use my Versa a couple of month ago after a whole year without it because of the lack of an important feature to me (light up the screen every time the watch receive a notification, added with the release 3.0 ).
As far as I know there is no "existing feature" to get turn by turn navigation instructions from [E.g.] Google Maps on the Fitbit.
Most app developers don't work for Fitbit, same as any other platform, they are independent.
I suggest you visit the 'Feature Suggestion' Page and propose or vote for a 'Turn by Turn Google Maps Navigation App', perhaps someone will develop one.
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