Live location S+ app

Nikolai Simonov

That’s no secret right now I’m not monetizing the app at all.

It won’t chang at least the next 2–3 months. After that, I’m going to introduce a few subscription options. There will be a free kinda “core” plan, which includes everything that’s already in the app today and other features coming soon. In addition, I’m planning to launch a premium plan with extended functionality. It will likely include things like a extended SLA, team support ant other advanced things, aimed at more demanding or professional use cases. Nothing exact at this time, I’ll share details later.

I’ve thought about other monetization channels too, but for now I’ve decided to go with this model keeping the basics free and building optional premium features on top.

Thanks a lot for the warm words really great to hear!

Nikolai Simonov

@isazi That’s strange, it should be available as an early access version.
In the meantime, could you try joining the early access directly via this link? - https://play.google.com/apps/testing/one.athletica.live

isazi

@Nikolai-Simonov it is available in the Netherlands from today

Dušan Ković

@Nikolai-Simonov I did another test while climbing in the mountains. Disconnected:99 happened again, although I didn’t have any interruptions. I am not sure what is the cause for this, but when it happens it doesn’t reconnect. My phone is Pixel 6.

Antoine

@Nikolai-Simonov said in Live location S+ app:

@Francesco-Pagano @Miroslava @SergioB

I’ve investigated the issue that, when Suunto App (SA) is running, a Live.τ session on the watch may unexpectedly disconnect and immediately reconnect every 60-90 seconds. also the same issue if SA lost connection with watch.

TL;DR: Unfortunately, this is a limitation we cannot fully solve from the Live.τ side alone.

⸻

The root of the conflict (without diving deep into tech):

The watch can hold only one “live” Bluetooth link to the phone at a time.

When SA wakes up in the background to sync, the watch switches that link over to SA.

Live.τ also needs the same Bluetooth link to stream your track in real time. When SA grabs the link, Live.τ’s session is dropped.

This happens only on Android. On iOS, Suunto App is far more restricted in the background and doesn’t run a permanent service, so the conflict doesn’t appear.

Together, these points explain the periodic disconnect/reconnect behavior you may see.

In practice this shouldn’t break your recording: the S+ app on the watch reconnects in about a second—essentially one event-loop tick—so no data should be lost. Still, the reconnection is a little annoying and does cost a tiny bit of extra battery.

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How can we ease the conflict?

Because Suunto App (SA) and Live.τ vie for the same Bluetooth connection, the real limitation lives inside the watch’s BLE firmware.

Temporarily stopping SA’s background service would prevent the clash, but Android doesn’t allow one app to shut down another; In addition I’ve not found any way to stop this service via SA UI, if somebody know how to do that, please let me know it could be a basic recommendation.

Disabling “Discovery” on the watch probably won’t help: SA already has a bonded connection to the watch, and during an active workout the watch generally doesn’t advertise itself anyway, so SA can still reclaim the link.

Ideally we could cooperate with SA e.g., send it an some kind intent that saying “Live.τ is taking the connection now; please pause sync”, however that would require close collaboration with Suunto’s app team.

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What we’ve done so far

In the latest release, Live.τ now shows silent reconnection notifications so the pop-ups are less distracting. For now that’s all we can do.

Does it mean that if sync is very long (with many routes to sync for example) we can have the disconnected message 99 ?
Is there a workaround to avoid this temporarily ?
Using an another phone without SA solves the problem?

Nikolai Simonov

@Dušan-Ković Oh that’s unfortunate to hear!

It’s possible that Suunto App is causing some kind of conflict, but I can’t say for sure yet. I’ll definitely try to reproduce this on a similar setup to see what’s going on behind the scenes, however… Let’s see what I can do…

Thanks a lot for pointing it out!
I’ll let you know if I find anything useful.

Nikolai Simonov

@Antoine

As far as I understand, suunto app shouldn’t be doing any heavy syncing during a workout, just light background comms, like notifications or smth. So in theory, that shouldn’t cause a disconnect:99, but I can’t fully rule it out yet.

So, I’ll need to investigate deeper to understand what might be triggering this.

Nikolai Simonov

Meanwhile…

Live.τ has been live for one week!
Thanks to everyone who has already tried the app and shared impressions!

To decide where to focus next, we’ve put together a short survey that takes just a couple of minutes. Your answers will help us:

spot the most useful features;
gauge interest in premium options and see which ones matter most;
settle on a fair price for advanced plans.

Survey: https://app.youform.com/forms/2z4hpvm1

Huge thanks and happy training!

Sebastian Wagner 0

@Nikolai-Simonov thx for the live Location App. Great Feature. One of the few i missed from my garmin. I could only test shortly the Connection. A run or bike activity will follow.

Keep up the Great work

Nikolai Simonov

A little update announcement:

This morning we rolled out an update (1.0.9) for those using the app via TestFlight or who downloaded the APK (you need to download the new one) directly.

In this update, we’re testing email sending functionality.
You’ll find a new section under:

Settings → Emergency Contact → Email Settings

it will be available in play and app store later

Antoine

@Nikolai-Simonov said in Live location S+ app:

A little update announcement:

This morning we rolled out an update (1.0.9) for those using the app via TestFlight or who downloaded the APK (you need to download the new one) directly.

In this update, we’re testing email sending functionality.
You’ll find a new section under:

Settings → Emergency Contact → Email Settings

it will be available in play and app store later

Very good functionality !
Idea: add up to 5 email contacts instead of just one

Nelson Adão

Thank you for your hard work to put this to work.

I was thinking to switch to Garmin watches because of livetrack functionality, but now I don’t think to change

Finally I can share my activities to my loved ones when I go alone on the trails

brechtvb

@Nelson-Adão a 1 on 1 example how Suunto should keep up with Garmin on such things.

Egika

@Nelson-Adão I still don’t get it.
There are dedicated apps for this on phones alone.

Have not seen a side by side comparison of those regarding phone battery…

Nikolai Simonov

@Nelson-Adão Thanx so much for warm words! feedback like this is incredibly motivating!

So, I hope Suunto will thank me someday for saving a loyal user!

Nikolai Simonov

Happy Sunday everyone!

Here’s a little developer diary update:
I’m currently working on track loading and display on the built-in map. You’ll be able to upload tracks from GPX/KML files.

Once a workout starts, the current track will be drawn on the map, and the app will show deviation from the preloaded route, projecting your position onto it.

In the future, this feature will also include:

Alerts when significantly off-route,
Customizable checkpoints and geofences with notifications if you don’t reach them in time,
And many other improvements!

Here’s a short preview of the new feature in action:
https://drive.proton.me/urls/1ADRB81188#wZAcJ1AGp877