Wear for Locus Map beta testing

[milan.cejnar]

@sbouju
Sony SmartWatch3 is not Android Wear watch, but it might by supported by a different add-on which Menion made, but I would have to ask. Anyway we would like to concentrate our support to Android Wear for now, so for Locus I would recommend Android Wear instead.

Sorry, my mistake. Menion pointed out that Sony SmartWatch3 is running Android Wear actually. I checked our device compatibility list and Sony SmartWatch3 should be supported by the Wear for Locus Map add-on.

Maybe please start another topic here at the forum if you want to recommend some watch by other users.

You can find some AW watch here
https://www.android.com/wear/
or here
https://www.amazon.com/b?node=15203391011

Android Wear tends to be a bit more expensive than the watch you have posted unfortunately. Depending on your region, these AW watches might be quite affordable - Moto 360 2gen, LG Watch Sport, Huawei Watch 2, Asus ZenWatch 3 (not so much outdoor/fitness)
But there are many other, please see links above and feel free to start a new topic to get some more recommendations from other users.

[skwal]

i´m usung the sony sw3
working great. and you can get it really cheap when you buy used

[sbouju]

made a short test...

Made a short test too, with my fresh Sony SmartWatch3, so I just begin to discover this "Wear for Locus Map beta application", and Android Wear itself !   

[strandedeuropean]

Hi there, first of all thanks for the addon, finally a reason for me to buy a smartwatch 

My main use case for locusmap is mountain biking. What I heavily use is the Strava Heatmap Biking Map as an overlay to an offline map.

Sadly this overlay isn't working properly with the wear addon. The overlay disappears as soon the map get's refreshed (phone->watch) while the phone display is turned off.

Is that a bug or do I need to change some settings?

Phone: oneplus 5 with Android 8.0.0
Watch: Fossil Q Control

[Menion]

Hello,
this definitely looks like a problem in Locus Map itself, not an add-on. I'll check it, thanks.

[skwal]

Hello,
this definitely looks like a problem in Locus Map itself, not an add-on. I'll check it, thanks.

yes, the overlay in the app is also not correct
on some positions it shows the correct overlay, on other positons lines which are to thick to see anything and on other positions it shows nothing.

tested the wear app 18 hours this week. not only one problem.

[sbouju]

It's quite magic to can see the moving map of Locus map on such a small thing than a wrist watch But is it so useful, finally?

If I had to choose, I think I had probably prefered a repeater of the dashboard, may be...

[H Ifang]

All of a sudden, my interest in an Android wear watch is back.

However, can the little 4-element dashboards shown in the screenshots be custom configured?
I would like very different values to be displayed if..
.. running (dist, km-time avg, heartrate)
.. mountains (dist, altitude, ..)
.. skiing (dist, max-speed, altitude, alt-lost..)

And I wonder if having Bluetooth on at the Smartphone constantly will drain a lot battery.. (tracking a ski-day usually gets very close with battery anyways.. even if one will have a few less looks on the display thanks to the watch).

[sbouju]

Where can I see the screenshots you are speaking about...?

[H Ifang]

There are a lot of screenshots in the Play Store app page:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.asamm.locus.addon.wear
The third shows a 4-element-mini-dash..

You can also see some profile selection..

[sbouju]

Oh yes, OK, thank you ! 

I may be wrong, but for me, this screen seems to be a simple "numeric snapshot" of a recorded track, far from a real time info as is what we can see in a dahboard data field.

[milan.cejnar]

@H Ifang
Hello, the 4-element mini dashboard is currently not configurable, but we plan to extend it and allow the configuration in the future.
The bluetooth energy requirements are actually not that bad depending on the usage and assuming your phone has Bluetooth 4.0 or newer. I would actually expect only a couple of percents of a phone battery used by bluetooth, but again it depends on your specific usage. Of course keeping Wear for Locus Map visible on the watch all the time will indeed keep communication between the phone and the watch on and with the screen also on, even if dimmed, will drain the watch battery quite fast. My personal opinion is that for hiking and/or running disabling the ambient mode (i.e. "always-on screen") might be preferable if you are concerned about battery life.

[H Ifang]

@Milan
Thanks for the reply - I am very much looking forward to that (configurable dashboard - hopefully multi-page to get more than 4 values).
For me it is at least as important as having a little look onto the map. Most time I have to open the phone is when I want to see certain dash info like speed (but km-time not km/h), how high am I and gain (mountains), was there a new max-speed (skiing), how much distance behind etc. This of course only makes sense if all available info from the phone can also be viewed on the watch.
At the moment when running I use the audio coach mostly, but that of course is not nearly as flexible as if you can have a look whenever you want to (and sometimes surroundings are so loud you miss the coach speaking).

As for the battery drain, sounds reasonable, we will see. At the moment I still have a S6 with first battery, certainly has seen better times. BT4 is available, sure.

[H Ifang]

I had a first ski day recently. For this activity (skiing) the map is not too very helpful. It simply is very small - but at least it was mostly too close (zoom) for me. Or is the default zoom according to what was last selected on the phone? Then I think it should not be the "same pixels" as on the phone, but about the same area covered (with less resolution) - so you have the same overview. But other people may think different, so it should be configurable.
Zooming out was quite tedious, often not recognized, or activating the wipe-down (maybe locate them left and right?) (I have a Fossil Q Explorist). And of course is not too fast - maybe the reason why the usual pinch-to-zoom is not supported?

More than the map I would have liked the dashboard - but as said would be interested in some more/other values like absolute altitude, max speed or (when wearing belt) HF rate.

So looking forward to tap more of the full potential soon 
Thanks for reading.

[H Ifang]

I tried to use it twice for running now.
Sorry to have to say that but.. current state is pure disaster, not usable.

Next to the info I am missing, the numbers are far too small to be easily read while running (if you do not have Eagle's eyes). My watch has not the biggest screen you can get, but definitely not a small one either. There is room to make them bigger, and alternatively one could only put 3 or 2 values on one page.

While in that economy mode (ambient or not ambient, I never got that) there seem to be extremely slow updates of the values shown - when "activating" the distance jumped by nearly a km. If the app goes into that mode, it should still be a bit more dynamic, at least if a recording is active.

But the real big problem is, that the track recording was constantly stopped, restarted or paused..
In the end, I had a lot of single track fragments and also missing track parts (and of course no usable track progress while running).
While the hardware might play a role in this, and my sleeves (and even my sweat), this definitely must be implemented in a much more robust way.
Perhaps the stop button should not wait to be canceled by another tap, but auto-canceled if a constant-tap is interrupted. The pause button needs the same.
Perhaps it would be a good idea to not put the buttons on a page with values you want to watch while running, but on a separate page only opened at begin and end - so they cannot get toggled by accident (as long as the page ist not opened by accident..)

Hope there will be considerable improvements, will not use again until then.

Sorry again, but that was my experience.