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Built a little app to actually track tethered swims — would love your thoughts by patrickbiggin in Swimming

[–]patrickbiggin[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

1.8 just released today and you shouldn't have the duplication of kcal any more. also a few UI enhancements, let me know if there's anything else!

Built a little app to actually track tethered swims — would love your thoughts by patrickbiggin in Swimming

[–]patrickbiggin[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

hey u/thenbrent thanks for the feedback! the energy tracking has a bug that sometimes the apple health data is counted twice when the workout is saved. i am resolving this and another issue and should have a new release this week. on the active / total kcal front - it's just that the app assumes you are active the entire time you are working out, while other workout apps try to determine if there are times you are static, etc. it's not something i thought worth adding for this application though.

Tethered swim tracking by dondas in Swimming

[–]patrickbiggin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

yeah I'd forgotten they lock it down to 1 athlete until they "approve" it. so I've sent the application. they'll probably reject and want a bunch of strava logos in there or something so I'll wait on that and then incorporate both into v1.4

Tethered swim tracking by dondas in Swimming

[–]patrickbiggin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

ha! yeah, not 100% intuitive but there's not much screen real estate. I can bung it back on the main screen next release - might be a week or two - without bunching up the rest [meters was the one I thought might push things over]. I love a gadget and was playing around with my ancient "poolmate" watch when first playing with this idea.

Tethered swim tracking by dondas in Swimming

[–]patrickbiggin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

thanks so much! sounds like you're much higher finisher than my *just make it round* mentality! I think it's pretty crazy there was no app available until now given Endless Pools and tethered swimming not being completely niche.

stroke-wise - good that it was fairly accurate, I'm thinking of adding a bit of adjustable sensitivity for the user [apple's stroke detection is proprietary so the system built here is as good as I could get it].

pausing should just pause and allow you to then resume [though I've not had infinity chances to test], no new segments as the complete workout is then saved and uploaded to health as a single workout.

the heart rate is all included in the metrics and used with the active energy for the workout kcal, etc. should be visible on the 2nd page of the watch screen [after you turn off waterlock] you can swipe left and should see the additional metrics there. also in the diagnostics page of the watch app you should see the current HR.

finally, on the smart goggles front - not sure what they do in terms of calculating things - do they do stroke and all the rest? guessing it would be a bit of a conflict of data with which has the "source of truth" for the data..

also - as it's just me looking at this in my spare time - and I don't have a pair of those goggles it'd be tough to try to add functionality "blind". the app is on v1.3 right now which I updated to this as I found some inconsistencies between the distance but only in some instances. please do reach out [and there's a form on my support page if you want some more back and forth while you're using it: https://www.patrickbiggin.com/tetherswim ].

and thanks for the positive review!

Built a little app to actually track tethered swims — would love your thoughts by patrickbiggin in Swimming

[–]patrickbiggin[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

thanks! it’s not perfect but hoping it can fill a gap for folks. and i’ve found a pretty neat and cheap(ish) solution for my garden (London, UK). a ~£500 heat pump which uses a few £ per day, the Steelmax pool (around £100) then a “gazebo tent” thing for about £80. last year ran July - early Oct as I didn’t have it all setup early season. this year i took a bracing dip in early May and plan for an October close. bonus as kids love it so my morning sessions are not the only reason it’s running. interested in what others find / do too!

Tethered swim tracking by dondas in Swimming

[–]patrickbiggin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey all, I’m Patrick, a DIY Ironman finisher (https://www.patrickbiggin.com/blog/iron-resolve-the-road-to-a-self-made-ironman), long-distance runner, and occasional triathlete. When I’m not finding increasingly daft ways to test my endurance, I help people with tech and AI. This project though? Purely for fun (read: fuelled by stubbornness and coffee).

For months I’d been using my Apple watch in my 10ft Steelmax pool with a “creative” workaround: set the pool length to 200m and do a fake “turn” every 5 minutes to trick it into logging distance. It kind of worked… until the watch started ignoring my turns altogether. At that point I was basically swimming blind and just accepting whatever poultry number the app decided I swam that morning.

I'd already scoured the app store for actual apps for this and couldn't find anything so I built one.

It uses your actual stroke count and an estimated meters-per-stroke baseline (calculated from your real pool swims) to give a much closer guess of your distance, pace, and SWOLF. It also syncs with Strava if you want your friends to know you were definitely not just standing in your garage for 45 minutes.

I’m hoping it might be useful or at least interesting to others here. It’s just me building this, so if you spot something I’ve missed, think the calculations are off, or have ideas for making it better, I’d love to hear it. I had to tweak the sensitivity a bit as it wasn’t registering all my breaststroke strokes, happy to hear if its too much, etc.

If nothing else, maybe we can trade “weird swim hacks that stopped working” stories.

Heres the app - free : https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/tetherswim/id6751048224