I’m thinking about this whole syncing/storing/naming thing, again (partly due to intervals.icu having to move to GC) and have not found a good solution yet. Seems to me the following features would probably be desirable for most:
Name activities only ONCE (before they get synced to the various sites… Strava… etc.)
provide some kind of cloud storage/sync with export/backup-feature, so the data is safe and can be synced/migrated to other sites/services if need be
GC is probably a “safe” place for .FIT files- if you ignore last years cyber-attack at Garmin that is But it immediately pushes data to connected accounts before any review/naming etc. and I just learned: It does not pass activity-naming on to interval.icu. It’s also by default not good for bulk-download.
TP is pretty comprehensive, allows for bulk download, but AFAIK does not sync to external accounts. Naming, tagging are also proprietary.
GoldenCheetah does some syncing (to Strava for example) but it’s probably too much of a hassle to deal with for a lot of people and sometimes sync might not work for quite a while if protocols change. It’s also not in the cloud, so the backup strategy is up to the user and naming/tagging are in the JASON format or in it’s own database. There is probably some way to make it work with dropbox.
There are various (mostly paid) syncing services that sometimes work, sometimes not…
I would love to know: Does anyone have a practical and tried workflow that’s been working well with a minimum of renaming, moving, manual syncing?
I’ve been naming up-front through Intervals.icu workouts pushed to Garmin for the majority of activities, even when not really structured (which may be just a simple heart rate range and target duration, but using “press lap” so not fixed). Then, Garmin Connect and Intervals.icu will both keep the workout name as the activity name (it is stored in the FIT file).
Doesn’t flow through to Strava, but since it is in the FIT file any other service would also be able to use that as the default activity name if their user’s requested them to and they implemented it. Unfortunately I don’t think any other services are as responsive to user feedback and suggestions as David is with intervals.icu!
I am busy with Dropbox support now both for download of activity files to Intervals.icu but also upload of files from Intervals.icu to Dropbox. This is to create that “cloud backup” you mentioned. Manually uploaded files, files from Garmin Connect etc. will all be pushed there if enabled. Note that this won’t work with activities from Strava (they don’t give the raw file and it is against their API terms of service).
I am also considering implementing upload to Strava from Intervals.icu.
Yes I forgot to mention that if the .fit file contains a “workout” record with a “wkt_name” field then this is used for the activity name. This happens when you do a workout on a Garmin computer.
Thanx for for the input!
I’ll have to revisit Garmin-workouts it seems. I fiddled with those a few years back and stopped using them. I really loathed how those were implemented on a FR935. Beeping, unhelpful screens, ending workouts when hitting the wrong (lap?)-button…
I ended up just doing the workouts by heart and pressing the lap button when needed…
But it would be really nice if I could avoid the post-workout renaming-festival
I think Strava-Upload would be desirable for many. Strava sucks for analytics (except for the sauce plugin) but it’s probably still the go-to place for sharing activities with your buddies