Live location S+ app
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Hi Suunto community!
I’m excited to share a video with technical demo of a SuuntoPlus app I’m currently working on. This app is designed for live tracking: the geolocation data from Suunto watches is transmitted via a connected phone to a remote server and then made available through a web app.
This method was chosen because, unfortunately, Suunto watches don’t have radio modules for WAN connectivity. However, this option is far more energy-efficient, using significantly less power than sharing geolocation via the phone’s GNSS module.
I started this project after hearing some unfortunate news where having even approximate last-known coordinates of a lost person could have made the search much easier. Therefore, the primary goal of this app is safety. In future iterations, I plan to add an SOS button and possibly crash detection.
For now, here’s the demo, and I’d love to hear your feedback and comments!
Suunto Race
Suunto Wings
Suunto 9Baro -
@Nikolai-Simonov congratulations for you work, seems promising !!
Is it designed to work « all the time » or do you plan something like ? :- « send position only every X minutes/hours »
- « send position only when user press a button »
My thoughts are :
- network is not always available
- even if available, on long activities saving battery of phone is precious
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@Nikolai-Simonov that’s really cool, well done! I think people having been asking for this for ages, me included (I had a post years ago asking if a Strava beacon could be triggered).
One of the problems I’ve had using live tracking, across Garmin, Strava, and Wahoo is when the device stops sending the location. This has happened due to connectivity issue, either between the device and the phone (BT, or the app ceasing to work), or the phone and the internet.
Can your server indicate the following?
- Position information last received at
- Speed graph
- Connection health, eg ‘connected to phone and watch’, ‘connected to phone, watch connection lost’, ‘no connection to phone’
- Activity status (active, manually paused with pause duration timer, automatically paused with duration timer)
This would help the user’s overwatch have better situational awareness. Not moving, activity paused = having a break, not moving,
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@Nikolai-Simonov That is amazing! I would use this.
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Fantastic! As a nearly 20-year veteran of wilderness search & rescue, I am very excited to see this become available.
Wishing you the best of luck on your progress!
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Hey, what a f… good news.
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I am a little nostalgic that this post might be resolved
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Eager to test it.
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Thanks, guys, for the feedback!
Let me answer some of the questions:@Tieutieu
Currently, I’m sending data once per second within the Suunto watch’s event loop. I plan to make this interval customizable via the app. But first, I’ll be doing more field tests to measure battery consumption, as it might not be the actual bottleneck in terms of energy usage. However, energy efficiency is a top priority!
Sending data on button press is a great idea—I’ll definitely consider adding that option.@Ze-Stuart
Yes, the server currently stores the starting position of the activity and tracks the route. It also receives some activity events like pause/resume, and these are reflected on the route. At the moment, I’m just sending GNSS connection health as metadata, but thanks for suggesting that more connection health information be added.
Regarding connection stability, I’ve managed to establish a pretty stable connection between the phone and the remote server. However, the watch connection is a bit trickier due to the nature of BLE and limitations in the Suunto SDK. For example, I haven’t yet found a way to reconnect the watch while the workout is still active smoothly, but I’m working on it!
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@Nikolai-Simonov Magnificent.
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Wow, Great work
@Nikolai-Simonov -
This is pretty awesome! Considering it’s developed outside of Suunto and by using your own server infrastructure - it’ll most likely be a paid S+ app. Do you have any pricing strategy already?
S9PP 2.40.38
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This is great to hear @Nikolai-Simonov. I would definitely use this feature.
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@Łukasz-Szmigiel Yep, it’s developing outside. It’s a good question about the monetization. I’m trying to keep it free as much as possible, and some features don’t need any infrastructure, e.g., the Feature I’m currently working on is sending SOS messages on Android phones. It doesn’t require any infrastructure.
It uses tiny data packets (only 15B for the location message), so it will be relatively inexpensive to maintain this infrastructure for real-time tracking. If we store it, it would be a bit expensive, but there are many things to consider. I guess that some extra features could be subscription-based or something.
anyway, thanx for a reasonable question.
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@Nikolai-Simonov said in Live location S+ app:
Hi Suunto community!
I’m excited to share a video with technical demo of a SuuntoPlus app I’m currently working on. This app is designed for live tracking: the geolocation data from Suunto watches is transmitted via a connected phone to a remote server and then made available through a web app.
This method was chosen because, unfortunately, Suunto watches don’t have radio modules for WAN connectivity. However, this option is far more energy-efficient, using significantly less power than sharing geolocation via the phone’s GNSS module.
I started this project after hearing some unfortunate news where having even approximate last-known coordinates of a lost person could have made the search much easier. Therefore, the primary goal of this app is safety. In future iterations, I plan to add an SOS button and possibly crash detection.
For now, here’s the demo, and I’d love to hear your feedback and comments!
Very cool. I‘m thrilled that there is finally someone who takes care of this. If you manage to implement Crash detection I can stop looking at garmin watches and stay with a beautiful Suunto watch.
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@Nikolai-Simonov Do you need any help with documentation etc? I had done some experiments with the s+ and ble in the past.
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@Nikolai-Simonov
Thank you ! This is so great ! I’ve asked this functionnality in every survey Suunto sent.Are the locations (and consequently the course, the start, the end of the course) sent to a remote server (outside Suunto scope) ? If yes, who is in charge ? How long does the date stay on the server ?
If you need user test/feedback, do not hesitate.
Regard
X3
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I’m looking forward to it. Because I usually train alone in the mountains and in a possible bad situation I have nothing to do. It looks good at first glance. A web map using Google Maps would be better.
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@Nikolai-Simonov Hi, is there any news? How is the development going? This is a function that I miss very much. By the way, Coros has already implemented this really well. I find the live location in the mobile phone very helpful for orientation. Even if this requires a data connection, this is super helpful… Hope your project works out.
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Hello @Nikolai-Simonov, do you plan to open source it at some point? I guess this would accelerate the developement thanks to contributors
Have you thought about using https://www.traccar.org/ as a backend server? This an open source GPS tracking platform with many interesting features like live tracking, alerting, a REST API to interact with, etc… -
Hello Community!
Sorry for the silence; there were some personal issues, such as moving, changing jobs, etc.
Now everything is well.And I’m bringing some updates about the plans:
Currently, it’s working within the MVP boundaries.I’ve asked Suunto how I can provide an app for the testers, and currently, there is no way I’m able to install it only from the development machine. It’s quite disappointing because it drastically limit the possibility of testing outside.
However, recently, I realized that I can actually try to publish an app. but restrict access for testing purposes on the smartphone side. (like a testing account or smth.)
Also, there’s a knowing issue on the watch side. I’m still trying to figure out a smooth way to reconnect the watch to the phone if the connection is lost. Unfortunately, SDK doesn’t allow us to handle this thing manually. An issue like this would be annoying, but it still is.
Anyway, I’ll prepare the infrastructure, and it should be done this weekend; after that, I’ll send the SuuntoPlus app to the Suunto store.
Because it’s a process, they have a manual review, etc. It took time. I don’t know how much exactly, no guesses.
After that, I’ll share the app here. At first, it will be an Android downloadable APK because it’s much easier; lately if everything goes smoothly, I’ll share the iOS app as well.
Suunto Race
Suunto Wings
Suunto 9Baro -
@Emile Hi! Yep, this is in my plans, but not at the first stages of development. At least after the MVP or smth.
about the traccar, it’s not really suits my needs.
and currently BE side works pretty well and data efficient (it’s cruccial for mobile environment), on geo package costs 13byte.
