Living in London, the year end period ended up in new strict lockdown with very few options but to spend a lot of time at home, and skip the traditional visit to my family in France and Switzerland. Luckily me and my family stayed safe so far.
I took the opportunity of being at home to make quite a few changes to ConnectStats both internally and externally…
A new look
The biggest external change is that ConnectStats has now the beginning of a new look for the first time since its start in 2011. I supposed it’s fitting for a 10 year old anniversary…
The new look is not yet the default as it is early and likely to have some issues, but you can try it by switching in settings to the new theme “2021”. Please try it and share feedback (and bugs) so we can hopefully take it to become the main and default theme for the app.
The design comes from discussions with one of the app long time user, Gilles Papain, who became a friend now. While I am more of a science geek, as the app look easily reveals, he is definitely a more artistic person, as you can tell from his show case web site. He has been sending me a lot of suggestion and mock up, and patiently commenting on my “design effort” and I am very grateful as I think this will take the app to a new place. I learned a lot about the art of aligning numbers, caring about pixels size and alignment and how it affects the overall look of an app, which I’ll write about shortly.
The relook isn’t finished, but please preview the early design and let us know what you think.
Modernised internals
For a lot of the internals of the app, I had been using third party open source libraries, a lot of which have now been deprecated and not in sync with the times. And the methods I used to get the code of these libraries is quite obsolete by now with the latest packaging of libraries that the latest development tools like Xcode provide. Not to mentioned Apple now promote a whole new language for app development: swift.
It all started when a user asked me about easier sharing via modern packaging of the fit parsing of ConnectStats and FitFile Explorer. Always eager to learn some new tools, I obliged and got both so impressed and enthusiastic about the new approach that I decided to move all my own libraries and the third party I used to the new approach, which will meant getting rid of obsolete one and moving on to more modern one.
I think this will pay in the future as it makes ConnectStats more modern and easier to maintain going forward.
As a side effect the Fit Parsing of ConnectStats and FitFileExplorer is now an easy to integrate package for any app in swift.
Improved Authentication for Garmin and Strava
As part of this I upgraded the old authentication package I used for Strava and because for some interesting coincidence the authentication with Garmin stopped working with Access Denied error this week for Garmin, I upgraded that one as well! Special thanks to tapiriik, a synchronisation service, for having an open source of the logic used to connect to Garmin, as it helped me figure out how to adapt my logic to get it working again
Latest Version Released yesterday
So yesterday’s release is actually quite a major one, with a lot of changes. The issue with Garmin authentication forced me to release it quicker than I wanted. So please let me know if there are any issues, but hopefully now ConnectStats has a good foundation to continue for its second decade…
I cannot access garmin by connectstats app since Jan 5th.
App shows messages “Error Updating Garmin Access denied”
Please fix those bags as soon as possible.
Do you still get the error with the latest version? It should contain a fix, version 6.7
Hi Brice, next time you are in Switzerland (and Corona allows it), we should meet for a run (close to Zurich). Cheers
I can’t wait to come again! But travel very hard right now. I need to go around Zurich (schindellegi). will let you know!
Hi Brice, first thank you for all the work that goes into ConnectedStat. My GoTo App for a long long time… Here a couple of observations post the new release:
– download from Strava seems delayed (might be unrelated to the release)
– ok messages are displayed (say when attempting download or other)
– on my iPhone X Max the graphics in the activity overview is displayed somewhat strange (maybe by design but on the left there is no line closing the date/activity box)
Anyhow: Again so many thanks for all of this!
BR, Hans Martin (BtW also from Switzerland, between Zürich and Schindellegi…)
Yes for sträva I made a mistake in 6.7, but 6.7.1 should be available and fix the issue (though it will force a login to strava to clear it)
Cool. I miss Switzerland, hopefully travel will re-open soon.
Already fixed! Great.
Also on iPhone X Max, if you rotate phone into landscape mode, the Activities view show as stretched, then switching back to portrait it appears overly compressed (ie does not return to original format).
Just noticed if you scroll up and down, this issue corrects itself, so maybe this just needs a screen refresh/redraw after rotation.
PS. Keep up the excellent work Brice!!!
Hi there. thanks. Yes I just see that as well, hadn’t notice. Looks as you mention as a need to refresh, will fix for next version.
Hi Brice – overall a nice update to the graphics but it’s definitely looking better in light mode than dark – the shading to highlight different activities is present in light mode but not dark, and overall it feels like the design hasn’t really been made with dark mode in mind. The original ‘dark’ themes had a better balance of colours (if that makes sense?) in my opinion.
Thanks. I agree I need to improve a bit the dark mode, will look for next version
Thanks Brice – it definitely doesn’t detract from the app in any way – it’s still awesome!
This morning the app shuts down in about a second after opening on my Ipad and is connected with Garmin. I tried to update via the appstore but that did not work. I’m an enthousiast early user of the app (since 2013 I believe) what can I do to repair without lossing my early data?
Hi there. You should not loose your data, it’s all saved on Garmin Servers anyway, and ConnectStats should pull it back from there. I didn’t receive any crashes report from apple yet, they take a few days. I assume you are using 6.7.1 (latest). Feel free to send bug report to iterate via email
Unfortunately, I can’t access the new versions since I have an iPhone 6, which doesn’t support iOS 13. Is there any way to fix the Garmin download bug?
I can’t test as I don’t have older device, but I think if you switch your garmin source to “ConnectStats” only then it is possible it works.
No, I still get a parsing error. Fortunately, I have a iPad and can run the new version on that
Like it. Not sure I like the year behind the date. While I know it’s 2021 it’s a bit messy IMHO. Love the app though, couldn’t do without it.
Yes, I got the same comment from my son! I will try to change it, I have some other thought but require a bit of coding: the year would be an overlay as opposed to part of the cell, the same way in statistics page sometime you have the category as section header overlay
Hi. I’m running 6.7.1 and it’s been my favourite run app for years. Since the latest change I’ve noticed that the activity name remains as the Location name and not the text I entered into the ‘Name’ field on Garmin Connect, which I routinely change before updating Connect Stats. I’m not receiving any authentication errors and I’ve change some of the config settings on both Connect and ConnectStats without success. Any suggestions?
Can you send me a bug report, it maybe easier for me to see what is happening (with an email so I can reply to you)
Hi Bruce,
After the last update you will always see the same screen with this message in the middle:
error updating
Garmin: invalid name or password
————————————————– –
Enter
I checked my password at Garmin and there was no problem. Every time I hit Enter I get the same thing again. Do you know a solution for this?
FYI: I deleted the app and put it back on my iPad, but that also gave no results
What happened to Withings integration? How to import the weight on an iPad without Health app?
Good point for iPad, I had removed it because health app I thought was enough and the Withings service was giving me trouble. I didn’t think of iPad, so I’ll put it back for a later version.
Trying to rename a rise by tapping it does nothing I really want differentiate between road bike activities and gavel bike activities but can not get it to allow for any changes. Is there a way to do this? Thanks loving the details.
Any chance of getting my calories spent during work out to populate, I know it is in Strava which you are already pulling into stats.
Any chance of an integration with MapMyFitness to pull in my consumed calories for the day to get a consumed vr calories spent on workout.