Https://forum.urbandroid.org/t/garmin-cant-connect-with-the-app/4909

Bug reports
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1

Garmin VIVOACTIVE 3

Everything worked as you said until Sept. of this year (2020). There was a change in the software which changed the info on the watch from white to brown.
This update broke the connection from “starting the app on the watch then opening up the sleep app on the phone”
Further more, there is no way to stop the app on the watch!!! The only way is to shut the watch then reboot!!!

2

Got it to work a little bit by using the following sequence:

  1. run sleep on watch
  2. open “Garmin add-on” and open the app and turn off the Garmin watch then turn it back on.
  3. open" Sleep…"
    With this sequence it works 3 out of 4 times. When it doesn’t work , must shut the watch, then turn it back on, to escape from the “Sleep…” app.
3

I have a similar experience.

My steps:

  1. I open SAA on my phone (and check my alarm settings for the next morning)
  2. I start SAA on my Garmin Vivoactive 3
  3. SAA starts tracking (with a defined 5 minute delay)
  4. After ~1-3 minutes the Garmin starts vibration and showing a white screen. I guess this is a wake up alarm that is supposed to be displayed in the morning.
    But I never see this white screen any other time.
  5. I have to restart the Garmin watch to exit the white screen
  6. I start SAA on the Garmin
  7. Everything works as expected for the rest of the night

This happens like 30% of the time in the last weeks/month.

4

Don’t know what happened but it stopped working. No matter what combination of starting Sleep Garmin, it no longer syncs with the VA 3 ???. It was working reasonably well until last week.

5

I think I can confirm it.

I could start tracking from the watch as usual.
But there is no pulse tracked for last night…

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Could be another problem, of cause.

You might also ave a look at the issue tracker on github.

I am not sure it it would be better to discuss the issue there…

6

Hello, sorry about the late reply. If the watch is not connecting, please force stop the Garmin Connect app on your phone and start it again. There’s a long standing bug in the Garmin Connect app where it often stops sending messages between watch and phone. There’s a workaround in my mind but haven’t yet gotten around to implementing it.

7

Hello folks,

thank you for your feedback. There is a large bug in the Garmin communication API which Garmin refuses to fix for years. Occasionally the Garmin Connect Mobile app clogs up the communication between our app and the watch. In that case, we’ve found out that force stopping and then starting the Garmin Connect Mobile app will refresh the comm queue and then it should work normally.

We tried to contact Garmin on this several times but they just ignore this issue. So our patience just run out now and we have moved to a quite nasty but hopefully fuctional workaround.

We’ve just finished an update of the Garmin integration which uses a different method of communication between the app and the watch, which is apparently working much better than the direct method we used before. We use both of those methods simultaneously and if the old one fails, we switch to the new method. From our tests, this has good results and we haven’t had any missed data in any night we’ve been testing with this.
On Vivoactive 3, we’re also seeing around 15% battery drain per 8h of tracking (with HR/HRV on).

If you want to try this, you’re going to need two things - a new Garmin addon for phone, and a new watch app. Both of these are currently labeled as beta and not published for general availability. So to try it, please follow the steps below.

  1. Get beta of the phone addon:
  2. Register for beta testing of the Sleep as Android Garmin addon here >> https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.urbandroid.sleep.garmin
  3. Make sure the beta update gets downloaded on your phone.
  4. Get the updated watch app
  5. First uninstall the Sleep app from your watch using the Garmin Connect app ( Garmin Connect > tap on your watch > Activities & App Management > Activities & Apps > Sleep > Uninstall )
  6. Download the .prg file for your watch model in the list here: https://sleep.urbandroid.org/garmin-beta-watch-app.
  7. Connect your watch to your computer via USB. Put the .prg file on your watch in /GARMIN/APPS folder (just like you would put it on a USB drive).
  8. Run Sleep on your watch!

Please let me know any thoughts or feedback you’d have about this.