Messages

For everyone - if you encounter any Locus Map crash especially with the new version or new functionality it would help us immensely if you could capture and then send an Android bug report to us after such event.

@robuk Hi,
thank you for helpful input and for the confirmation of the "Please initialize ..." bug! I could not unfortunately reproduce it with Galaxy S7 and Gear S2. I am on vacation right now so I will try to dig around some more after New Year.

@SmiCH Hello,
there is nothing to set up really. The versions of LM and the add-on that you use should communicate correctly. The message you see should only be displayed when the user tries to use the add-on without running LM on the phone even once (there is some one-time initialization that needs to be done by M during the first start after the installation).
Can you confirm that both LM Pro and Free is starting correctly after the update? And that the watch is communicating normally except the LM add-on? Which watch are you using to run the add-on?
Thank you

P.S. Oh I have just noticed there might be a bug (at least on my Gear S2) and that message might appear for a while when you start the add-on, but it should really disapper in a second or two if the communication is allright.

Hi,
I just wanted to let you know that the closed beta will stop working with Locus Map Pro afte the today's update.
I will probably release a new beta version targeting LM Pro because I expect that most of the testers are using LM Pro and not the free version.
Anyway sorry for the delays, I am kind of swamped now right before the holidays with some higher priority work that I need to attend to instead of the add-on.

By the way have you tried the add-on lately with the latest versions of Locus Map? The add-on should be able to connect to the phone practically any time now and the notification (foreground service) should appear in the Phone's notification area with the information that the watch is using Locus Map.

Best Regards
Milan

Hello Testi,
thank you for the feedback! There is a serious communication bug in this beta but it is manifested only when the phones screen is off for some time, so you might not have noticed it yet. This should be fixed in the next Locus Map version.
Regarding the map and track recording switching - could you please describe what exactly is the issue or what you would like to improve? Do you miss quicker possibility how to switch between map and track recording screens? Or would you like map view to be part of the track recording dashboard?
Otherwise you can switch between track recording and the map freely, the track recording is running in the phone so you can even exit the watch application and it has no effect on track recording until you explicitly stop the recording using the watch again or your phone directly.

Hello @JohnCNA @3am
thank you very much for the thorough testing. As I feared you have confirmed the connection issue on Galaxy phones when the screen is turned off. This issue and GUI issues on Gear S2 will now be a priority to solve.

As for other feedback
- map icons/cursor too big: Yes I also have that feeling, Menion and I will try to tweak the sizes so the map looks more optimzed for the watch screen

- compass screen: would be nice, won't probably be in the first version though

- widgets for the app: Also nice idea. Probably not usable for the map, but the compass could work very well. I will research the widget possibilities later.

- laggy map: well the map should refresh only once every 5 seconds if it is not being interacted with in any way. Of course when the map screen wakes up or is shown it should feed the data immediately (at least "Loading" or "Initializing" label should show up in the center). We will try to tweak it more, maybe the issues are caused by the unreliable connection issues.

- watchface shown instead of Locus Map on watch wake up: There is a logic in the app that Locus Map app should show automatically when the watchface shows up if the app was not closed explicitly by the HW back/home button. If this does not work then there might be some bug. Of course other application with the similar logic can force its way up to the top but you should not see watchface only.

The add-on will be targeted for the Locus Map Free first because of Locus Map Free Beta versions which we can release more easily and more often than standard Locus Map Pro version. Of course we will want to also support the Pro users as soon as possible (when the add-on is stable enough).

[There are two main screens available:]

Hello,
this thread is for general feedback and testing of new versions of Locus Map Watch add-on for Samsung Gear and Galaxy Watch.

Currently only closed beta version for registered users is available and is distributed only using Galaxy Apps (on both phone and the watch because of Samsung limitations). Registered users should be able to install and transfer the add-on to their watch by opening this link directly on their phone (Galaxy Apps should capture the link and open add-ons store page)

The closed beta version should communicate with the latest Locus Map Free or Pro versions directly. When the official "public/open" beta comes out it will be only available for Locus Map Free (again due to some Samsung companion app policies, we will probably have to make separate Locus Map Pro Gear add-on even though both add-on versions will be practically identical).

The add-on requires Locus Map phone app to run, it is not (at least yet) stand-alone.

There are two main screens available:
- Map screen: features zoomable and scrollable map with autocenter/rotate function button.

- Track recording screen: Offers function to select one of your tracking profiles and start the track recording. Then there is multi-page dashboard when the recording is active. You can pause/resume/stop the recording or add waypoint. Dashboard values are configurable by long-pressing them directly and choosing a value from the displayed option list.


Not yet available features:
- navigation directions: partially implemented but not available. Navigation directions will be available directly on top of the map as an overlay when the navigation is active.
- heart rate measurement: something we would like to add, but the implementation has not even started yet.


Known (serious) bugs:
- screens might not display correctly or at all on Gear S2 (seems to be mostly the case right after installing the add-on. On second or third run the things seem to sort out themselves for some reason)

- the add-on refuses to connect to the phone if the phone is in "sleep"(i.e. has had the screen turned off for a while). Just turning on the phone screen makes the add-on suddenly reconnect. Confirmed with Samsung S7 (Android and Gear S3 - if you are also affected by this problem please let me know.


I don't have access to the latest Galaxy Watch so any kind feedback from that watch would be helpful.

Please share with me any bugs, crashes or any other feedback which would help me improve the app for you.

Thanks a lot and hope you will enjoy

Milan

@sbouju Hi,
Wear OS and Android are practically identical and share a lot of APIs, but generally the answer is no because the Wear OS part is also using some features and components that are not present in normal Android. Significant parts of the code from the add-on could be reused to make such "slave" add-on for normal Android but it is unfortunately not that trivial and the Wear add-on cannot be installed to Android OS as is.
The Wear for Locus Map add-on's code is open-sourced so anyone could try to hack the existing code and port it to make a new Android add-on. But neither Menion nor I plan to make such an add-on in any foreseeable future unfortunately.

Btw. I am curious what your use case would be - could you please send me a PM? Is it because of Android OS watch or for some other reason?

@Danjel Rojka
Hello, sorry I have forgotten to answer your last question. Dashboard presets depending on the selected track recording profile is a good idea and it could be really useful. It is not planned at the moment (I will be focusing mainly on communication issues in the next update) but some time later I think this could be doable.
Dashboard configuration without (i.e. before) active track recording would be a nice to have feature but I think it is not exactly a deal breaker. I will definitely keep this in mind though.


Anyway, for you all guys, there is a new 1.1.7 version for the watch (phone version remained at 1.1.6). There are only minor fixes i.e. there was a problem with opening the menu on some older watches and some crashes or weird behavior during track recording start. I also added "wake lock" to the track recording service on the watch so now the service should really be running in the background reliably but it will not probably solve issues with HRM caused by communication problems.
So maybe just try the new version out and see if it helped in any way or if it is the same. Any other feedback or reports of problems are also very welcome

Also sorry that there is once again kind of less activity with the Wear add-on but I am pretty busy with writing a new Locus add-on for Samsung Gear/Galaxy Watch at the moment. We are hoping that we will be able to unify parts of the Gear and Wear add-ons later so both add-ons could benefit from the development.

Have a nice weekend!

Hello Gynta,
thank you for spotting the issue with LT statusbar, looks really odd. I will be fixing this promptly.

Have a nice day,
Milan

Hello Majka,
I am using MIUI 8.5 and can confirm that without disabling battery optimizations Locus Map quickly loses GPS in the background or gets terminated. Wear add-on surprisingly runs even without disabling optimizations at least on my phone. I might try to update my MIUI and see if it gets worse in the newer versions. But disabling the optimizations is basically required for Xiaomi devices in order for GPS to run correctly in background, seems there is no way around that unfortunately.

As for the watch it is really a mystery. I do not understand why would your watch just kill the foreground Locus HRM service. When I prepare the next beta I will try to show popup toast messages on service start and stop and also reenable HRM debugging so that we could see if HRM sensor is really not feeding any data for you even with the app in the foreground.

Best Regards
Milan

Hello,
@H Ifang I see you too have a lot of "fun" with Wear OS platform I myself cannot copy my accounts to  Google Play on the watch so Google Play is not working for me at all. Clearing accounts & clearing caches on the phone & watch factory reset didn't help @Marie here also has some general Wear OS connectivity issues if I understand correctly. I really don't understand what is Google doing with the platform but it is not so great so far :/

@Marie
Thanks for a lot of info and nice graph to show what is going on. It seems you actually have 2 separate problems. The first one is a problem that fera and a also sometimes Danjel have which is that a lot of data is missing from the recording so the HRM is dropping to zero way too often. That is something I will try to fix.
The second problem seems to be that your watch is probably killing of the foreground HRM service when you exit the app. That is something I will check but honestly don't think I will be able to fix. The OS should not be killing off foreground services under normal circumstances and I am not sure why your watch is so mean to do that to the Locus app.
Definitely thanks for the feedback though and I will be glad if you help with beta testing later because your watch seems exceptionally buggy with our app :/

@Danjel @fera
Well the app and HRM is working for me as well, which is very unfortunate for a developer Though I can confirm that those drops to 0 BPM seem to be an issue with the app which I will be working on to fix it later. I will try to use more light-weight communication API from watch to the phone to send HRM

@fera
I am a bit surprised that the rest of the APP is working normally though without a lot of "connection lost" error screens in your case if HRM seems to be so unstable, really a mystery :/ Really weird that various phone/watch combinations behave so differently and definitely not helping with the debugging...

Anyway thank you for all the feedback I need to work on something else for a couple of weeks but I have been talking with Menion and fixing these Wear OS HRM issues is quite a high priority for us so I am hoping to return to working on Wear OS very soon and start releasing some experimental Beta versions with a bit different communications handling. Sorry for all the trouble in the meantime and I hope the rest of the add-on is working correctly for you.

@fera
Hello,
wow, your measurement is pretty bad, I am sorry. I wonder why that is :/ Locus Map will have some increased tolerance (10 seconds delay) but we won't increase it any more because it would only cover up this buggy behavior and you would still be missing the real data.
I will try to switch to newer communication API and use more light-weight messages for HRM synchronization with hopefully lower overall latency in the next version, maybe it will help.
By the way do you have any battery optimizations enabled on your phone? If so, could you try to disable them for Locus Map, Wear for Locus Map and Wear OS apps and see if that helps or if it is the same?
Thanks!

@fera
Hi, yeah you are right but there is nothing new in it really at least not for you guys, it is just previous beta version with disabled debug mode and with some new translations added. I have released it to all the users so it is not beta anymore.

I will be rewriting some connection logic for the next release (though there will be probably no activity for a couple of weeks now after this release). I will also try to decrease latency of HRM synchronization in order to avoid those 0 BPM readings in between samples.

Anyway thank you guys for testing I really appreciate it and it has helped a lot. If you stumble across any problems in the latest stable version please let me know but it should work the same as the last version.
And I will definitely give you a heads-up the next time there is a new beta so we could improve the add-on even more.

Have a nice weekend
Milan

@alter Rentner1

Hallo,
können Sie mir bitte mehr über das Problem sagen? Locus Map sollte im Hintergrund nichts im Internet tun, aber wir hatten ein paar Berichte über verdächtige Datenverbrauch, also vielleicht ist es eine Art seltsamer Bug.

Zuerst entschuldigen Sie mich, aber ich kann die Tabelle nicht wirklich verstehen, was ist Ko Einheit? Über wie viele Megabytes oder Gigabytes der Daten sprechen wir?
Haben Sie Locus als Service option aktiviert?
Haben Sie Live Tracking verwendet?
Verwenden Sie Offline- oder Online-Karten?

Vielen Dank,
Milan

Hello guys,
sorry I was off for a few days ...

@gumka
Hello and welcome to the forum. This topic is intended mainly for beta testers so if you continue using the Wear add-on you are very welcome to also test and post feedback on recent add-on beta version and propose new tips on how to improve the app.
Currently the add-on does not have the option to use watch GPS and is built more like a companion to the Locus Map running on the phone which uses its own GPS. The stand-alone add-on operation would be possible but that brings a whole lot of other problems to solve and logic to implement and it is not planned in the near future.

@H Ifang
I completely agree, Wear OS is much better than original Android Wear 1.x but there are still various bugs and quirks in the platform itself and with each watch possibly behaving slightly different than the other.
For these kind of connectivity problems try to clear data and cache for Google, Google Play Services, Wear OS app on the phone and maybe clear data of Google Play app on the watch. Hope it will start working soon without a need for factory reset.

@fera @Danjel
Thank you guys for testing, I am glad it is somehow better. I will release the application in this state to see how many people are affected by this problem. It could be also a problem with sensor accuracy but the more likely cause as have been suggested is that the watch is not fast enough in providing the data for Locus Map for some unknown reason.
I will try to improve this behavior in next version since I need to redo some communication logic anyway thanks to ever changing Google APIs...
You can also plot a HRM graph(y axis) in time or distance(x axis) in Locus Map in track details and post it here or send it to me via email so I could see how often these drops occur and how serious they are.