Forums >General Running>Do you want Garmin Connect API integration for RunningAhead?
old woman w/hobby
The money I've sent to RA should be used for any and all RA related business, however RA sees fit, including paying its owner and developer for his time.
Yes.
steph
I want to start by saying that I agree with everyone else, spend the money on whatever RA needs it for. However, if the only problem is a clause that Garmin can terminate the agreement for any reason, then it seems to me that you are not risking more than the $5000. I say pay the fee and see how it goes. If they terminate the agreement sometime in the future, I would be willing to donate more money. And I think that if Garmin arbitrarily terminates the agreement, they will get nothing but bad publicity out of the action so it is not in their best interest to do that.
Consistently Slow
Only if', the $5000 comes from donations.
My 405 works on RA.
My 310XT will not upload to RA or Garmin Express.Emailed G support 3 times. No response.
I say pay the fee and see how it goes.
Run until the trail runs out.
SCHEDULE 2016--
The pain that hurts the worse is the imagined pain. One of the most difficult arts of racing is learning to ignore the imagined pain and just live with the present pain (which is always bearable.) - Jeff
http://bkclay.blogspot.com/
Agreed. But as I said, I am willing to donate more to mitigate the risk of paying the fee. I am able to import my workouts from my 910XT, Edge 1000, and Fenix 3, so it is more of a convenience than a need for me. RA and the community here has given me motivation to keep running many times over the years, so I am happy to help.
I think you should really consider integrating with tapiriik instead of Garmin.
To me Tapiriik seems, by far, like the best choice.
You get everything you get by integrating with Garmin, without the hassle. And you get Tapiriik to do most of the work for you and you get sync with a ton of other services for free. What's not to like?
Best Regards /Magnus Lidbom (Software Architect with 15 years of experience. Figuring out the most cost effective and beneficial strategy for dealing with problems like this is what I do for a living.)
not lazy, just tired
I agree with everyone else; use the money for whatever you need it for. If it works out with Garmin, great. Otherwise I'll just keep plugging my watch (Fenix 3) into my computer and uploading data that way.
Not if it makes sense.
So, If I understand correctly, the primary concern is that garmin can terminate the contract and leave RA without Garmin support. $5000 plus the time of configuration will be lost, which isn't trivial. Currently RA is without Garmin support so if it were lost we'd be no worse off than we are right now. I'm comfortable with my small contribution towards this project being risked on the Garmin API. I'm also comfortable if my contribution went towards anything else.
What really concerns me is RA's continued and longterm viability without GPS integration. While I'm committed to using RA as my primary running log, I dabble in the other logs and see this is becoming an increasing competitive space. A key part of this is seamless upload. While all of us crumudgons will be posting our runs via browse and upload, new users won't even consider RA and eventually it's market share could diminish leaving not enough business to support it for the rest of us. For us to continue to enjoy this website it must be healthy and meet new users expectations.
Personally, I'd love to see integration with Tapiriik. This could open up integration to more watches than just Garmin. I'd love to seem some partnership with a shared subscription and some integration. A premium RA subscription that included automatic Tapiriik sync would be great. RA could bring users and income to Tapiriik and Tapiriik could bring users and income to RA.
We have had a few people suggest Tapiriik. My question is whether Tapiriik has entered into an agreement with Garmin to provide this syncronization. Garmin is clearly "protecting" their cloud service by charging for API and making it a one sided agreement that they can terminate at any time. I'm wondering if Tapiriik has entered into this agreement or if Garmin might take steps to cut off Tapiriik.
+1
Done. And as a bonus, an ad-free site is delightful.
While I agree that integrating with Tapiriik seems like a good idea, I wonder if it will continue to be an available option. It sounds to me like Garmin is limiting access to its cloud by charging $5000 for the API when it was previously free and by forcing developers into a one sided license agreement. So will Tapiriik have to pay the $5000 and sign the one sided agreement too?
I was wondering the same thing...
And you can quote me as saying I was mis-quoted. Groucho Marx
Rob
Had wondered the same thing myself, but then if they're advertising they can sync all those apps with your garmin, I'm sure they already ponied up, i'd be shocked if they didn't, don't use them myself but have been looking into it.
I look at Tapiriik as being the lower risk option.
If RunningAhead goes the route of purchasing the Garmin API, then if Garmin pulls out for any reason, RunningAhead is right back to square one.
If RunningAhead goes with support for Tapiriik, it has more options to stay connected with Garmin devices. If Garmin stops doing business with Tapiriik, then I can think of a couple of connection paths already available to continue to receive your data into RunningAhead:
- I use Sporttracks which uploads directly from my Garmin. It is on Tapiriik so I could get my information into RA that way. I know this is a paid service (for the online portion), so it may not appeal to everyone.
- TrainingPeaks and Strava both connect to Garmin with auto-sync so all activities in those would transfer over to RA from Tapiriik.
- Or if a user wants to skip using Garmin Connect altogether, they could upload their data to Strava and TrainingPeaks directly from their Garmin and connect to RA through Tapiriik.
Plus it may also open up RA to a larger base of people from the exposure it would get from Tapiriik linking from other sites.
RunningAhead is by far the best online running log. I use other social sites to log runs with friends/family, but my true online log is RA. I only see the Tapiriik solution as making it a stronger presence on the web.
I donated to help make RA a better site. How that's done, I will leave it up to those who know best. Thanks again for all the work you put into the site. Much appreciated.
Garmin came back with a slightly modified contract. I doubt they'll budge anymore so I'm planning to finalize the deal. The integration should be ready in a couple of weeks. Once deployed, the workouts you upload to Garmin Connect will be pushed to RA automatically.
I skimmed through Tapiriik's code last night, since it's open sourced. It interacts with Garmin Connect through Garmin Connect's REST interface. In other words, it is pretending to be a web browser. This could be why Tapiriik breaks every time Garmin makes a change. Garmin's API program ensures it would not happen to RA. If Tapiriik has a large enough user base, Garmin might take notice and force it to sign up for the API program.
Tapiriik is welcome to integrate with RA via RA's API. I don't have the resources to work on another project at the moment.
eric