Apps New version of WorkOutDoors, the Workout app with a Map

[cfc]

Had a quick test of the new app yesterday, everything seemed to work ok and the scrolling the screen is excellent. One thing that did happen afterwards (only on the AW4 my wife has), is the iPhone WorkOutDoors app did not show the workout that had been saved. It was showing up ok in Apples Activity app as a WorkOutDoors workout, just not in the WorkOutDoors app itself.

Mine was fine, showed up in all the right places. Might just be a one off!

I have seen that happen before when there was a problem with the installation of the watch app. The best thing to try is to uninstall the watch app (not the iPhone app), reboot both devices and then reinstall the watch app.

Sorry about that. Occasionally iOS and watchOS seem to have problems communicating, but it is usually fixed by reinstalling the watch app.

 

[oeagleo]

Sorry about that. Occasionally iOS and watchOS seem to have problems communicating, but it is usually fixed by reinstalling the watch app.

Most likely cause is that one, (either WatchOS, or iOS) is male, and the other is female.... Happens all the time. *sigh*

 

[RednBlue]

Had a quick test of the new app yesterday, everything seemed to work ok and the scrolling the screen is excellent. One thing that did happen afterwards (only on the AW4 my wife has), is the iPhone WorkOutDoors app did not show the workout that had been saved. It was showing up ok in Apples Activity app as a WorkOutDoors workout, just not in the WorkOutDoors app itself.

Mine was fine, showed up in all the right places. Might just be a one off!

This happened to me too on an earlier version of the app, but, it seems to have been a one-off, and like you, the info still appeared in the Apple activity app, so nothing was lost.

 

[Tomsm121]

When Apple Watch is connected with iPhone during workout, does the app work as full standalone AW app, or does it uses some iPhone functions?

I also see sometimes jumps in elevation when app is paused/resumed

 

[cfc]

When Apple Watch is connected with iPhone during workout, does the app work as full standalone AW app, or does it uses some iPhone functions?

I also see sometimes jumps in elevation when app is paused/resumed

The app can work completely standalone if the iPhone is not connected. If the iPhone is connected then it will use the iPhone GPS and data connection. This is enforced by Apple and cannot be changed by any 3rd party watch app.

Are you using the latest version of the app? The previous version had a strange bug with elevation when pausing (due to a problem with watchOS 5) but the version released last week included a workaround for that.

 

[Tomsm121]

Thanks!
Yes I’m using version 3.1 of the app.

 

[cfc]

Thanks!
Yes I’m using version 3.1 of the app.

What is the problem you are seeing with elevations when paused? It should be fixed in version 3.1. Sorry about that.

 

[Tomsm121]

What is the problem you are seeing with elevations when paused? It should be fixed in version 3.1. Sorry about that.

After 1h of workout (everything perfect), I had a pause. The elevation dropped with 40m when resumed. It keeps on this new height till next pause (0.5h). After resuming the height increased again with same value. Overall profile is good, just the Total height between both pauses dropped with 40m

First time I see this issue. Also first time I used app while connected with iPhone.

 

[cfc]

After 1h of workout (everything perfect), I had a pause. The elevation dropped with 40m when resumed. It keeps on this new height till next pause (0.5h). After resuming the height increased again with same value. Overall profile is good, just the Total height between both pauses dropped with 40m

First time I see this issue. Also first time I used app while connected with iPhone.

Thanks for the details. Did you keep your phone in your pocket and did you take it out during the pause? I am wondering if the phone's barometer was being used and was affected by different air pressure due to something that happened during the pause.

Also what model of Apple Watch do you have?

Sorry to ask so many questions!

 

[Tomsm121]

Thanks for the details. Did you keep your phone in your pocket and did you take it out during the pause? I am wondering if the phone's barometer was being used and was affected by different air pressure due to something that happened during the pause.

Also what model of Apple Watch do you have?

Sorry to ask so many questions!

No problem. ☺️
I used my phone during first pause, but not during second. I have an AW series 3.

 

[cfc]

No problem. ☺️
I used my phone during first pause, but not during second. I have an AW series 3.

I think I know the reason and it is not a bug as such. It's a long explanation so apologies in advance!

The app uses a combination of the GPS elevation and the barometer. The barometer is more useful for calculating ascent and descent because the air pressure values are smoother than the more variable GPS elevations. However the barometer only provides relative elevation, so the app uses the GPS elevation to determine an initial baseline and then applies the relative elevation from the barometer.

When the user pauses and then resumes then the app recalibrates with the latest GPS elevation as the baseline.

What I think is happening is that there is a discrepancy between the barometer's estimate of relative elevation over the first hour and the difference between the two GPS elevations (one at the start and one after the resume). This could either be because the GPS elevations are less accurate or because the barometer has become affected by changes in air pressure due to weather over that period. This is the downside of using the barometer: air pressure is affected by more than just altitude.

So my guess is that the changes you saw on pausing and resuming were due to the app recalibrating the altitude. It should not affect the ascent and descent calculations because these are based on the relative elevations whilst the app is not paused. It only affects the absolute elevations, and these should generally be more accurate because of the recalibration (although it depends on the accuracy of the GPS elevations).

So basically it is due to this recalibration of the absolute elevation when resuming the app after a pause. The recalibration is necessary because air pressure can change during a pause (as can altitude). I hope that makes sense?

 

[Tomsm121]

Thanks for the explanation and quick help! To be clear, I really like your app! Best out there atm in my opinion.

If this is the case, I think the recalibration after the pause was NOK. It went from height 40m before pause (which is good) to -2m height after first pause. The Second recalibration corrected this back to 40m.

 

[cfc]

Thanks for the explanation and quick help! To be clear, I really like your app! Best out there atm in my opinion.

If this is the case, I think the recalibration after the pause was NOK. It went from height 40m before pause (which is good) to -2m height after first pause. The Second recalibration corrected this back to 40m.

Good to hear it sorted itself out. I guess that the second GPS elevation was possibly a poor signal - GPS. I think that the ascent and descent figures are usually the important things, and they are derived from the relative elevation rather than the absolute.

I'm very glad that you like the app! Thanks for the feedback.

 

[oeagleo]

I think I know the reason and it is not a bug as such. It's a long explanation so apologies in advance!

The app uses a combination of the GPS elevation and the barometer. The barometer is more useful for calculating ascent and descent because the air pressure values are smoother than the more variable GPS elevations. However the barometer only provides relative elevation, so the app uses the GPS elevation to determine an initial baseline and then applies the relative elevation from the barometer.

When the user pauses and then resumes then the app recalibrates with the latest GPS elevation as the baseline.

What I think is happening is that there is a discrepancy between the barometer's estimate of relative elevation over the first hour and the difference between the two GPS elevations (one at the start and one after the resume). This could either be because the GPS elevations are less accurate or because the barometer has become affected by changes in air pressure due to weather over that period. This is the downside of using the barometer: air pressure is affected by more than just altitude.

So my guess is that the changes you saw on pausing and resuming were due to the app recalibrating the altitude. It should not affect the ascent and descent calculations because these are based on the relative elevations whilst the app is not paused. It only affects the absolute elevations, and these should generally be more accurate because of the recalibration (although it depends on the accuracy of the GPS elevations).

So basically it is due to this recalibration of the absolute elevation when resuming the app after a pause. The recalibration is necessary because air pressure can change during a pause (as can altitude). I hope that makes sense?

Yes, it does, at least for me. Same thing for virtually all of the devices (ie. Garmin, Suunto, Polar, etc) that use both altimeter and baro for elevation changes.

 

[OMouyau]

Hi @cfc
Using your app is almost a motivation to get out !
I brought 2 more runners in the WorkOutDoors tribe

Couples of feedbacks and questions. Sorry for chewing up your time !

- Today I tried the GPX route feature on a long run on some unknown trails, it perfectly did the job. The hollow feature should be an industry standard ! Thanks for this.

- Somehow I managed to set "hiking" as the first activity type on the watch, don't know how. I can't change it back. On the phone, running is still first ... help. See pics below.

- I have read a few replies on the forum, people are mentioning "inverted text". Can't find/see/activate. Where is this ?

- Cadences. I toggled it off on the phone app, but Strava still shows data ? Do I do something wrong ?

- Exported file. In Strava, there is a field on the activity page that will show which device was used to record the activity. (see pic below). Is it something you can do ?

- lastly, the HR reading is not very consistently good. It is Apple related, not you guys. I will try with external HR monitor next time. But no app (including native from Apple) is telling you which HR monitor you are using when external is paired.

 

[cfc]

Hi @cfc
Using your app is almost a motivation to get out !
I brought 2 more runners in the WorkOutDoors tribe

Couples of feedbacks and questions. Sorry for chewing up your time !

- Today I tried the GPX route feature on a long run on some unknown trails, it perfectly did the job. The hollow feature should be an industry standard ! Thanks for this.

- Somehow I managed to set "hiking" as the first activity type on the watch, don't know how. I can't change it back. On the phone, running is still first ... help. See pics below.

- I have read a few replies on the forum, people are mentioning "inverted text". Can't find/see/activate. Where is this ?

- Cadences. I toggled it off on the phone app, but Strava still shows data ? Do I do something wrong ?

- Exported file. In Strava, there is a field on the activity page that will show which device was used to record the activity. (see pic below). Is it something you can do ?

- lastly, the HR reading is not very consistently good. It is Apple related, not you guys. I will try with external HR monitor next time. But no app (including native from Apple) is telling you which HR monitor you are using when external is paired.

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Thanks for spreading the word about the app. No worries about asking lots of questions - they help me to understand what people want from the app.

- The activities are ordered by last used time, so just start a running workout and that will go to the top next time. The hiking workout was probably so short that it was ignored and didn't make it to the phone to affect the order there.

- The export toggles (including cadence) on the iPhone app affect whether or not fields are included in the exported GPX file, but not what gets sent to Strava. To be honest I assumed that people would want to send as much as possible and only included the toggles for services that might not be able to handle some of the fields. If you don't want cadence then you could export the GPX and then manually upload it into Strava.

- I will see if I can add the device to the Strava upload. Strava say that they extract it from the "creator" tag in the GPX file (which currently says "WorkOutDoors") by looking for a set of known devices, so I will have a play and see what works.

- The accuracy of the HR is, as you say, down to the hardware. I will see if I can determine the name of the sensor from the data given to the app.

Thanks again for the feedback. It's great to hear how much you like the app and how well the GPX routes helped you to navigate.

 

[cyklo]

Hi, new Apple Watch owner, absolutely loving this app so far - completely validating my decision to switch from my old Garmin! I've a couple of small questions:

a) What do the "Use watchOS4 Workout Api" and "Intelligent Distances" options do? Haven't been able to find any reference to them in the documentation on the website.

b) Is there a way to start workouts in a paused state? I'm thinking in terms of races, where you can prep the device and the correct screen before you start, and then press "resume" at the moment you cross the start line.

 

[cfc]

Hi, new Apple Watch owner, absolutely loving this app so far - completely validating my decision to switch from my old Garmin! I've a couple of small questions:

a) What do the "Use watchOS4 Workout Api" and "Intelligent Distances" options do? Haven't been able to find any reference to them in the documentation on the website.

b) Is there a way to start workouts in a paused state? I'm thinking in terms of races, where you can prep the device and the correct screen before you start, and then press "resume" at the moment you cross the start line.

Glad you like your new watch and the app! Apologies for the less than clear descriptions of those 2 options.

The "Use watchOS 4 workout API" option is a "just in case" option that will hopefully never be necessary. With watchOS 5 Apple introduced a new way for third party workout apps like WorkOutDoors to run workouts. It doesn't make much difference to users but makes things easier for coders by automatically doing a lot of stuff that previously had to be done manually. The latest version of the app uses this new "API", but I decided to include an option to switch back in case there are issues with the new approach, either due to bugs in watchOS or in the app. So far things seem fine, so there will hopefully be no need to use that option.

The "Intelligent Distances" option allows you to choose between using Apple's "Intelligent" estimates of distance and a simpler estimate based purely on the GPS route. The intelligent option does things like use the other sensors when GPS accuracy is poor (e.g. the pedometer when running), and also ignores sections where the speed doesn't seem feasible (for example driving home after a run). In the past users have found that Apple's estimates can be unreliable at times, so I have made it possible to switch to using the raw GPS. So far only one person has reported issues with Apple's distances in watchOS 5, so I am hoping that they are more reliable now. But if your distances look odd then consider switching intelligent distances off.

There is no way to start in a paused state at the moment. However I will be improving the start procedure in a future version to allow for options other than open workouts, so I will look into it then.

Thanks for buying the app!

 

[rbart]

Maybe, for a better user experience, you can move this "experimental" options to an advanced menu ...
The idea is to have a cleaner interface...

 

[cfc]

Maybe, for a better user experience, you can move this "experimental" options to an advanced menu ...
The idea is to have a cleaner interface...

An "Advanced" menu does sound a good idea. Although to be honest I think some users tend to look through all the menus and sub-menus (which is a good thing), so I would still get the same questions wherever the options are.

I probably need to describe those settings better in the app. Although, as you can tell from my descriptions here, they aren't easily summarised! I will have a think about some sort of brief additional text for those options.

 

[rbart]

I have no idea on "how to summarize that" ...
For a developer, one of the most difficult thing is to decide what to put and what to eliminate in an app.
If an option is useless for 99% of cases, maybe it's better to hide it to avoid confusion ...

 

[cfc]

I have no idea on "how to summarize that" ...
For a developer, one of the most difficult thing is to decide what to put and what to eliminate in an app.
If an option is useless for 99% of cases, maybe it's better to hide it to avoid confusion ...

Both options are there for "just in case" situations to overcome changes that are out of my control. The "watchOS API" option will hopefully not be necessary in the future but I wanted to leave it in whilst the changes for the new API are still recent.

The intelligent distance option has been handy several times in the past because Apple's distances were sometimes strange or almost too clever. For example one user occasionally jogged during walks, and the Apple distances ignored those periods because the speed was considered too fast for walking. I haven't heard of this for a while so maybe they now allow that, but it was good to be able to give that user the option to switch off intelligent distances to avoid that problem.

Maybe I should deliberately hide the options and require some special gesture to access them? I do something similar with the ability to send me a debug file with the complete workout details (3 quick taps on the Export button instead of 1 tap), so I may do something similar with these options.

 

[skinnee]

Both options are there for "just in case" situations to overcome changes that are out of my control. The "watchOS API" option will hopefully not be necessary in the future but I wanted to leave it in whilst the changes for the new API are still recent.

The intelligent distance option has been handy several times in the past because Apple's distances were sometimes strange or almost too clever. For example one user occasionally jogged during walks, and the Apple distances ignored those periods because the speed was considered too fast for walking. I haven't heard of this for a while so maybe they now allow that, but it was good to be able to give that user the option to switch off intelligent distances to avoid that problem.

Maybe I should deliberately hide the options and require some special gesture to access them? I do something similar with the ability to send me a debug file with the complete workout details (3 quick taps on the Export button instead of 1 tap), so I may do something similar with these options.

Hi mate

I’m a triathlete and hobby iOS developer, currently designing my own triathlon app. I have added in an accuracy check on the gps accuracy and then default back to the pedometer for outdoor workouts. I am using the new API but using gps for distance and speed, and as an autopause for on the bike.

When starting the workout the user can’t start until GPS accuracy is considered good. Sort of like the Garmin 935 I have that you wait until you get a green circle.

Happy to share my code as it’s just a hobby for me , I have implemented protocols to avoid subclassing. Have also built interval training where you design on the phone and send it to the watch where it stays there permanently , much like the Garmin and suunto sports watches.

Have bought your app and think it’s great and impressed by the mapping on the watch, I wish apple gave us access to mapkit on the watch, keep up the great work

 

[cfc]

Hi mate

I’m a triathlete and hobby iOS developer, currently designing my own triathlon app. I have added in an accuracy check on the gps accuracy and then default back to the pedometer for outdoor workouts. I am using the new API but using gps for distance and speed, and as an autopause for on the bike.

When starting the workout the user can’t start until GPS accuracy is considered good. Sort of like the Garmin 935 I have that you wait until you get a green circle.

Happy to share my code as it’s just a hobby for me , I have implemented protocols to avoid subclassing. Have also built interval training where you design on the phone and send it to the watch where it stays there permanently , much like the Garmin and suunto sports watches.

Have bought your app and think it’s great and impressed by the mapping on the watch, I wish apple gave us access to mapkit on the watch, keep up the great work

Wow - that sounds more than just a hobby project! Intervals and auto-pause for cycling are still on my To Do list.

Many thanks for buying the app and for the offer of your code. I really appreciate that but I am fine at the moment.

I have something similar to your GPS accuracy check at the start. The app shows the signal strength before you start, but it doesn’t require a good signal before starting. I may offer an option to enforce it in the future.

I actually hope that Apple do not make their maps available to third party apps but that is purely selfish because then WorkOutDoors would not be unique in having vector maps!

 

[OMouyau]

Just keep on using the app.
Will you implement a way to see the last workout stats on the watch ? Right now, you can see it just after saving and before you hit "done".
But then there is no way to see it again, until you get back to the phone.
How did I came across this ? My wife went hiking with the kids. Got back to the car and the kids asked how long they walk ... she couldn't tell, she had saved the activity and the screen was gone. Just a little thing .

Also in the field where you give a name to the activity before you export it, each word wants to start with a capital. Like hitting space automatically setup the keyboard in capitals. And also it does accept character such as "&" .. weird.

Anyway, know that I keep on spreading the words. Recently post a small tiny review on two big Apple users groups on FB, not sure if it helps, but the moderator was ok ... so I posted.

Accuracy of the HR. We discussed this and you proposed to show the source of HR (strap of apple watch sensor) in the app, so user can see what he is relying on but I'm not sure it is necessary. It seems as soon as you pair another source, it will take that one over the Apple Watch. Tried it on a ride the other day, had my strap paired with my Garmin edge as usual and the HR value on the watch was always exactly the same as on the edge at all time.

Thanks for spreading the word about the app. No worries about asking lots of questions - they help me to understand what people want from the app.

- The activities are ordered by last used time, so just start a running workout and that will go to the top next time. The hiking workout was probably so short that it was ignored and didn't make it to the phone to affect the order there.

- The export toggles (including cadence) on the iPhone app affect whether or not fields are included in the exported GPX file, but not what gets sent to Strava. To be honest I assumed that people would want to send as much as possible and only included the toggles for services that might not be able to handle some of the fields. If you don't want cadence then you could export the GPX and then manually upload it into Strava.

- I will see if I can add the device to the Strava upload. Strava say that they extract it from the "creator" tag in the GPX file (which currently says "WorkOutDoors") by looking for a set of known devices, so I will have a play and see what works.

- The accuracy of the HR is, as you say, down to the hardware. I will see if I can determine the name of the sensor from the data given to the app.

Thanks again for the feedback. It's great to hear how much you like the app and how well the GPX routes helped you to navigate.