Some problems (gadgetbridge/GPS related mostly) and ideas

I spent two months with the watch and got a bit of observation of how they are for daily usage. And I'd appreciate any help regarding some of them. I could overlook something.

1. (Problem here) I use my watch with a Pixel 2XL and Gadgetbridge. The watch has a tendency to disconnect from Gadgetbridge occasionally and connect back after a while. It doesn't happen sometimes at all and I have to manually click on the plus button in the app then reconnect the watch. So basically these periods of missing connection skip all gathered information including steps, distance, and heart rate. Basically, I cannot get statistics of the whole day. To be fair I cannot understand why it happens. The watch connected properly just in the Gadgetbridge app, not in the Bluetooth settings. In These periods of time, the watch is useless because I cannot rely on the received information nor receive notifications.

2. (Idea). Regarding the weather. When Gadgetbridge established a connection information on the widget is shown correctly. It disappears once occasional disconnection accrues. Would it be possible to keep the last weather reading on the widget even when disconnection occurs? It is just an idea I won't be able to introduce it to the code because I have no clue in coding at all :)

3. (Limitation) Actually, I don't like this mechanism when I have to manually disconnect from the Gadgetbridge then connect to the page with the app loader. I know it is a limitation at the moment but it is better to have a proprietary app to make this experience more seamless (automatic uploading information from the watch). It refers mainly to .gpx files.

4. (problem here) I have one more problem. I am struggling to get any useful GPS information to use the watch like a tracker for cycling or running. The watch sees satellites and records information but when I try to upload tracks to Osmand (have not tried strava) it shows up very strange distance and speed. These readings make the information completely useless. It is a bit sad because it was one of the key reasons to have GPS in the gadget. Could you please help to troubleshoot this?

I am on the latest firmware and gadgetbidge. I have also uploaded the AGPS information and the watch find satellites with no problem. I even tried to spend a significant amount of time connected then start recording to eliminate this strange jump-like behavior. An example of a recorded track is included in the message as well as screenshots of what it looks like in the app. How should I use the recorder to get a proper track?

1. (problem here). I cannot replicate this problem but sometimes the watch freezes completely. The reboot helps but they boot up from a few attempts. It happened on the previous FW. I hope after the update it won't happen again but we'll see. It is probably started when I clicked "сompact storage" to improve the speed of menu loading. I helped but...lol. I am not sure if it is the case. What can I do to eliminate this behavior in the future? Just make a reset?
   
   
   

Thanks!

4 Attachments

• Bangle.js Track 2.gpx
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That GPS problem seems to be because route includes extra zero coordinates (0°N 0°E) for some reason.

(Coordinate 0°N 0°E is near Ghana, about 600 km off the coast of West Africa, and about 6500 km from Minsk as the app correctly says.)

Hi, thanks for the feedback!

The watch has a tendency to disconnect from Gadgetbridge occasionally and connect back after a while.

Have you been into your Android OS settings and made sure you disable 'Power Saving' for Gadgetbridge? That seems to be one of the big causes.

When Gadgetbridge established a connection information on the widget is shown correctly. It disappears once occasional disconnection accrues. Would it be possible to keep the last weather reading

We could do pretty easily I imagine, but I guess really the best bet is to fix the disconnection :)

I don't like this mechanism when I have to manually disconnect from the Gadgetbridge then connect to the page with the app loader

yes, I know. We should hopefully soon have a Gadgetbridge app modified specifically for Bangle.js and the plan is for this to have the app loader hosted inside it.

Initially it'll just solve the pain of disconnects, but I'd hope that eventually things like automatic GPX downloads (or at the very least the ability to import direct to Strava) would be implemented.

I am struggling to get any useful GPS information to use the watch like a tracker for cycling or running. Could you please help to troubleshoot this?

It seems what happened is the GPS lost signal at some point during your run. The Bangle kept storing values for heart rate, but did so without including track values. When exporting the track entries for lat/lon just got left empty - I think some track viewers are ok with this but obviously Osmand isn't.

I just fixed the 'Recorder' download app so it doesn't create entries with no GPS coordinates, so if you try re-downloading your tracks again I think you'll find they are fine now.

How should I use the recorder to get a proper track?

What you're doing is fine - and it should be sorted with the new updates.

I cannot replicate this problem but sometimes the watch freezes completely. It is probably started when I clicked "сompact storage"

Well, the good news is this is fixed in 2v12 - compact should no longer cause you any issues.

But the freezing may be due to a file that's got corrupted on the Bangle. You may be able to fix it by going into the app loader and then uninstalling and reinstalling every app, but probably the best solution is to 'Install default apps' on it as you say. Once you've done that you should be in a position where you don't have to do it any more.

Sorry for the intrusion...

We should hopefully soon have a Gadgetbridge app modified specifically for Bangle.js

Could you elaborate? The new app will be a Gadgetbridge without non-Bangle stuff?
I'm a Java/Kotlin developer (although not an Android expert) and I'd like to help in my free time.

and the plan is for this to have the app loader hosted inside it.

That's what I was hoping for, great! :-)

@Gordon thank you so much for such a detailed explanation. Seems like a problem with the gadgetbridge connection is finally gone. I had to dig deeper into settings for energy saving on the pixel phone (there are a couple of different options one of them was turned on by default). The GPS tracker works much better and the recorded track looks correct at the moment.
I appreciate your help.

Could you elaborate? The new app will be a Gadgetbridge without non-Bangle stuff?

Yes, so basically Gadgetbridge has a big core value of not needing the internet for anything. They will not ever allow any part of Gadgetbridge to directly access the internet - one of the reasons why even getting Weather on it is a pain. They also don't like the Play store, which sucks for most people that just want to get it from a 'safe', easy place.

So for the KickStarter I said I'd do a new app, but then I got talking to Andreas who is the creator and one of the main maintainers of Gadgetbridge, and we came up with something which I think works well for everyone.

We agreed that I'd do a new build of Gadgetbridge for Bangle.js, but will try and merge most of my changed upstream so we're working from the same codebase. I'll probably leave all the support for other devices in there anyway, but it'll be on the Play Store, and it'll have internet connectivity and will also be able to host the app loader so you don't have to do a Gadgetbridge disconnect thing to upload apps.

I currently have my changes on https://codeberg.org/gfwilliams/Gadgetbridge - which are pretty basic at the moment. I do have some more serious non-public tweaks that I will eventually merge though, but even now you can fetch pages from the internet from the Bangle which is pretty cool.

@Alessandro actually if you're able to help, I'm currently having a hard time just with gradle. I created a new productFlavor for Bangle.js (https://codeberg.org/gfwilliams/Gadgetbridge/commit/2a53219a14accdf5c78e02cc3af57f3940baf008) and it builds fine and includes a different icon, but I'm damned if I can get app_name or anything else in the main app to be overwritten by the info in strings.xml. As far as I can tell I'm doing everything that's suggested online but it's just not working for some reason.

Thank you for your answer.

(I moved the discussion in a http://forum.espruino.com/conversations/373035/ ;-))