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Comment by pflenker | Hacker News Reader

One thing is missing and can’t be done with a web app, and that is automatic tracking of activities recorded by smart watches. The work around here seems to be auto-importing them to Strava and connecting Strava to Endurain.

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A webapp can definitely import activities from Garmin smartwatches automatically. Garmin provide a REST interface to Connect to import FIT activities.

https://developer.garmin.com/gc-developer-program/activity-a...

Theoretically, practically, the Garmin connect developer programm is only open for businesses and not hobby projects. From my past experience this is also enforced, no hobby projects.

I have also experienced this. It’s very frustrating that my own data, while available for download on the site, is not available via API

There are a few usable libraries now from folks who have reverse engineered it. I've used https://github.com/matin/garth successfully, there should be libraries available in most other popular languages

That’s really handy, thanks

From my past experience (during COVID when everyone was trying to get access to do hobby projects) they were providing access, you just had to email nicely and ask. Maybe that's now changed again, I've not tried since.

Wait, the smartwatches don't upload activities directly to Strava, do they? They connect to their manufacturer's cloud service (Garmin Connect etc), and Strava has API integrations with them, doesn't it?

So what's missing are the integrations from Endurain to the big manufacturers' platforms (if they are missing, haven't checked the code).

Not sure about others, but for Apple Watches:

Apple Watch -> Health App <- Strava

Strava can directly import workouts from the health app if you don’t like using their app to record your workouts

I don't think that's how Strava on Apple Watch works

It works like this if you're simply using the Apple Workouts app on your watch, instead of the Strava app. If you use the Strava app, it'll upload directly, as well as, write to your Health data. If you use Apple Workouts, it'll detect the workout for Import (if you don't automatically import), and read that from Health.

Could be that they do that directly now, but some years ago you had to "route" the data through their (Suunto's and Garmin's) servers, yes.

I guess I’m tangentially working on doing that for Apple Watch for some personal stuff. I can do a blog post on it sometime.

I use the WorkOutDoors app on Apple Watch. It uploads workouts directly to Strava.

Has been quite a while since I used one, but you could configure custom data uploads in Suunto's app (that's also how you would uploads to Strava back then). Garmin could do the samé IIRC. Don't know about the modern versions though.

One path forward could be integration into RunGap which integrates with tons of services.

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