The Run Exercise App

[SunsetRunner]

I am sure there have been similar posts to this, but here goes:

I can build an application that provides additional metrics not provided by the default exercise applications, and also to ping out current location over the companion app.

First question: If I run my own application, do I assume correctly that the exercise app will not automatically detect I am running and therefore not log the metrics required to perform a later analysis?

Second question: So if my assumption is correct, Does it really mean we all have to "start from scratch" and keep reinventing the wheel for each of our similar applications?

Third question: If my second question is true, then why are Fitbit not releasing the code for the exercise apps, or are Fitbit holding out on hidden api's that we could be utilising?

I apologise in advance for the directness of question 3. I do realise this is an evolving platform, but it does seem a nonsense having to code/hack our way to solutions where something already exists (for example collection of gps data and onward transmission to the host platform). 

This may seem like a negative post, but it really isn't meant to be. I really like the watch and I believe the direction of travel is good. I am sure with time the api's and companion app will become more settled and reliable. But please throw us more of a bone by opening up the code to the current applications, even if they are not fully documented.

[SunsetRunner]

I can see that other posts have had responses from members of the Fitbit team, but for some reason no responses to my post.

Can I assume that my post was just over looked?

[SunsetRunner]

Apologies to the community for the Bump.

Is there really no response to be had from FitBit?

[gaperton]

I can barely remember the similar question and an answer from the fitbit that you should use Web API to create an exercise.

https://community.fitbit.com/t5/SDK-Development/Developer-app-as-an-exercise-sport-activity/m-p/2315...

https://community.fitbit.com/t5/SDK-Development/Create-a-new-Excercise/m-p/2339572#M1860

But I would like to hear from Fitbit as well. It would be great if will be something different to "we don't have a public roadmap this time".

[SunsetRunner]

Thank you for your response gapertron.

Whilst I would like to develop an exercise app I understand the early nature of the platform and is not currently possible. 🙂

I also understand the possibility of using the web api to log activities to Fitbit.

As I understand it, if you are running your own app, the run app can’t / won’t run and therefore log metrics such as gps route etc for later analysis. So if you want additional metrics the the Fitbit app doesn’t provide, you can’t just add them to the already existing code - you have to start from scratch.

There are components in the Fitbit apps that are quite cool, for example the time selection in the alarm app. Already coded but to my knowledge no code examples.

Fitbit haven’t responded to any of the posts in this thread.....please throw us a bone

[SunsetRunner]

Yet again, I am shamelessly bumping this topic.

It is only members of the community who have responded on this topic so far.

Have I asked for the impossible?

Is this topic not worthy of a response @JonFitbit or @SunsetRunner? I apologise for tagging you both directly in - but, as I am also reading in other posts, their is a growing sense of frustration in the development user(customer) base. It would be very much appreciated if you would please read and respond to the OP.

A frustrated user who wants to get a reliable app running

[SunsetRunner]

First Question

The "Auto Recognized Exercises" feature is always working unless you deactivate them in the companion app. If you talk about the exercise app, you cannot quit the application until you end your session.

You can test this easily by running for the time (a little more to be sure) you set up in the settings while having any other application open.

Second Question

You can use the Activity & Exercise Logs Web API to retrieve the information.

Third Question

We have no plan for now to release source of Ionic Fitbit applications. If you feel there are some features missing, it's still a new platform and we are welcoming any suggestions.

All posts are worthy of getting a response, but since it's a forum, it's also community-based, which is the goal of these platforms. Unfortunately, we cannot answer all questions even if we would like to, but we do our best to help developers in many ways and on different media. Hope that help.

[paperinik]

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Unfortunately, we cannot answer all questions even if we would like to.

 

[SunsetRunner]

Sorry @paperinik, we are two Developer Advocates on the team right now and the SDK forum is not the only thing on our plate, but we try our best and we hope people understand. It's also why we strongly believe in the power of a community!

[paperinik]

Fred, I hear you, and at the moment you have one of the toughest jobs I can imagine. You and Jon get all my sympathy.
At the same time, when I think about Ionic platform, the only feelings I can express are sadness and frustration. I ran out of hope unfortunately.

I can only wish things get better in 2018 and in a fairly quick way. Nothing would make me more happy to see this being brought at full potential.

[SunsetRunner]

@SunsetRunner I know you guys have a difficult job. When you see more posts that require a non community answer being posted than replies it does make for concern. It is not like we have spent £25 on a cheap knock off product.

As previously stated I really like the Ionic.

Now to your responses:

Question 1: So if I run my app, the auto recognise activity feature will recognise my run and log all the gps data accordingly for future analysis? I could be doing something wrong but it didn’t do this for me. Is there a setting somewhere?

Question 2: Can you point me towards to the API where I can log GPS data against an activity (own app) please.

Question 3: The reason I asked this is that clearly in the run exercise app Fitbit have a mechanism for getting all logged data regarding a run out of the Ionic and onto the centralised server. Also the alarm clock time selection interface has been produced - which is very nice by the way - again are there apis that provide that functionality that I have overlooked, or have they not been made public yet?

With regards your final post, I understand this is a community forum, but in response to that, some information and responses can only be provided by Fitbit ambassadors such  as yourself. Hopefully you can see from my (limited) posts on this forum, some are attempting to support others by providing explanations and code.

As I have posted elsewhere, would it not be a good idea to have a pinned post that provides a listing of known bugs, their status and expected resolution time frames. At least by doing so you can save a lot of people(also read customers) a lot of time and frustration pawing over code trying to work out what they have (not) done wrong.

[SunsetRunner]

Question 1

It should be the case for all data usually recorded during an activity. I don't run, but let me check with someone else if it's the case.

Question 2

Right now there is no Web API to update activities information: you can add and delete only. I agree it would be nice to have something like this, so feel free to suggest this feature for the Web API team.

Question 3

Everything public is in the documentation, so as you guess, there is probably something in the pipe right now, but I would defer to my answer on question 2. I'll ask someone from the Web API team to jump in this thread as my focus is on the SDK, so my knowledge on that side is limited.

Thanks @SunsetRunner

[ChrisMFitbit]

Hi @SunsetRunner,

I am part of a team that helps to support the Web API. Thank you for your interest in developing with the Fitbit API.

As Fred mentioned, we do not have a web API to update telemetric data associated with an activity. I know that is probably a frustrating answer to hear, so I will provide more context: It is important to protect the integrity of data that comes directly from our trackers. Exposing a web API to manually edit or create such data without a way to tell that it came from a trusted source would compromise that integrity.

Please feel free to let me know if you have more questions or would like to talk more about your use case - I think it is a very interesting one.

Thanks,

Chris

[SunsetRunner]

Hi @ChrisMFitbit,

I very much appreciate your response, and understand the importance of accurate telemetrics. I get that completely. 

Let me explain my situation. I am training for a marathon, never even run a half marathon let alone full. I have an ambitious target time of 4 hours so need to make the most of my training. I need reading glasses so I need a very easy to comprehend interface as I really don’t want to run in reading glasses. My family is concerned at my running so one of the principle reasons for buying Fitbit was its open world connectivity to ping my current location whilst out training.

I like playing with technology. So a nice project for me.

Building in a visual gauge behind the visible metric is important to me for average pace to date for the distance being run - which is easy. Same again for heart rate.

All the metrics for me need to be slightly bigger than the built in apps.

Pinging my website with current location, speed and direction every 5 minutes will be easy with a more reliable set of apis .... but we know Fitbit currently has issues with this reliability.

So as soon as I run my own application, as I understand it, I lose the gps logging of the auto recognise activity.  If this were not the case and auto recognise exercise apps recorded gps data, have an api to interrogate current auto recognise app metrics to read into my own app, and the reliability fixed to getting web calls through the companion app, then that would cover most of what I need.

My frustration is I am 14 weeks out from the marathon and the weeks waiting for fixes are passing by VERY quickly.

[agsurf5]

@SunsetRunner It has been very clear from the beginning that Jon was doing his best, and you came in as an additional help.

It is also very clear that you guys are doing your best, yet you are spread very thin. We appreciate the help.

Said so, you should go to your bosses and let them know that their strategy is not working.

- Instead of hiring developers to develop apps, they wanted to have free developing by enthusiasts. That was a questionable strategy.

- Building a community of developers, on a platform that is not fully developed and buggy, it was a big fault in the plan. 

- Hoping that developers would help each other was a nice plan, and it happened to as much as it is possible. We are all at the point where we do not know if it is a bug, a limitation of one of the API, or an actual programming mistake. So nobody but Fitbit programmers is qualified to answer at the moment. That is why we are all waiting for answers from Jon or you.

And as you stated, sometime you cannot even answer..

Whichever way you look at it, Fitbit is coming short somewhere. Either you hire more developers to develop stuff and hope that people will tag along, or you hire more people to support the community of free developers. 

Right now you are losing developers and not gaining them.

I am traveling for few months, otherwise my Ionic would have been on craigslist and I would have moved  on. But since I have it, I am just hoping to be able to fix my apps and have a functional watch, not just a nice one.

@SunsetRunner sorry to hijack to rant. We are all in similar boats. Apart from the fun of it, for your own running purpose, have you looked at other platforms for your running statistics? Garmin seems to be doing what you need.

[SunsetRunner]

@agsurf5 Your not hijacking the topic buddy so no problem 🙂

I have an aging Suunto Ambit with a VERY robust and reliable transfer mechanism that also has customised metrics, so my analysis continues. That however should not detract from the fact we are not only in a buggy environment, but an environment that is falling far short of the competitors out there. The Ionic was a Christmas present, and a very expensive watch at that, as really, for me, that is all it is fit for just now.

Whoever decided to use stride length as the distance covered where there is built in gps? Seems absurd.

Whoever decided to not allow external sensors (foot pod, cycle cadence, heart rate). What was the thought process? Again seems to be either complacent or arrogant.

I really like the style of the watch. I like the potential. It’s time for Fitbit to start treating us as customers rather than just a resource.

Having had a little look on this forum (SDK Development) on Jon and Fred post counts on a daily basis, knowing it is a) part of their job and b) knowing it is only a part of their job, a couple of posts each per day seems low compared to customer demand/requirements. Having a resource title that is designed to encourage and engage developer interest and then not providing sufficient online time to do so also seems to be falling short. 

When I tagged in Fitbit staff into this topic on 03/01/2018 after posting the op on 18/12/2017, I felt that only the opening post was read, and a muted/minimal response provided. Along with a pointer that this is a community forum when a) members of the community had already responded and b) indications that Fitbit should be responded again seems short sighted/overlooked. That could sound harsh and not intended - but that’s how it came across.

Dont get me wrong, I appreciate Jon and Fred’s input, I really do. We just need much more of it. Again apologies if this sounds rantish, but we natives/customers are growing restless.

[gaperton]

> - Building a community of developers, on a platform that is not fully developed and buggy, it was a big fault in the plan.

There was a cherry on the top of this plan. “We don’t have a public roadmap this time” was truly a spectacular answer to community questions about high-priority bugs and feature requests.

Let me explain the problem with that answer. Long story short, it practically means “we don’t care and won’t take any obligations”. Speaking about building the community, why anyone should care about FitBit products if FitBit don’t?

[Gondwana]

I too would like to be able to develop an alternative UI for an activity app. My idea is to display a time-series graph of HR (and/or other metrics) during an activity. (I know this would be messy without a canvas equivalent, but it could still be done.)

I would prefer not to have to rely on activity auto-detection to get activity logs to the server because auto-detection isn't as accurate as having the user explicitly indicate the start and end of activities.

Re the telemetry integrity issue, I would prefer not to get involved in meddling with the data. I'm happy for the watch's telemetry to be passed directly to Fitbit's servers by the device itself; I'd actually prefer it because it would save me the trouble of doing so. I suspect this applies to the other proposals in this thread; at risk of speaking for others, maybe we don't need to reinvent the wheel, but just be able to change the paint on it.

Another (minor?) issue is that the built-in activity app increases the HR sampling frequency (as recorded in the telemetry available from the server). A home-grown app may not be able to do this. It may be able to display more frequent HR readings, but the underlying reporting rate would presumably remain unchanged until auto-detection eventually kicks in.

Perhaps all I'd need is startActivity("run") and endActivity() API calls. The telemetry pipeline can remain as is.

[SunsetRunner]

@Gondwana Your post is full of yes from me.

Great post. Thank you. Mirrors a lot of thoughts but your contribution of start and end activity calls is spot of for me.

[Gondwana]

@SunsetRunnerThanks.

I suppose, to be thorough, the arguments to startActivity(...) should probably include the non-UI options/settings available in the built-in activity app ('use GPS', etc), but that's no biggie.

I might submit this as a formal suggestion, pending others' thoughts.