SportyPal - GPS tracking application

[TraderStav]

This may be a silly question, but how well does the GPS work without direct LOS. I don't have an arm band for my Touch Pro and am considering just keeping it in my pocket. At what point does the GPS lock start to degrade?

[mikeliius]

Originally Posted by hbenz2008

TP has a dedicated home button, my only gripe with Sporty is accuracy. I can get around putting it in the background and teh uploads are flawless...i just dont run on water

The accuracy depend on the strenght of the GPS signal as I know, and also if you are on open clear space for example on the mountain or some place outside the city you will get better coverage. Here is some software with which you can determine the strenght of the gps signal in your area:
http://www.trimble.com/planningsoftware.shtml

[quiqnezz]

Originally Posted by TraderStav

This may be a silly question, but how well does the GPS work without direct LOS. I don't have an arm band for my Touch Pro and am considering just keeping it in my pocket. At what point does the GPS lock start to degrade?

It's pretty good as I have my mogul inside it's leather pouch on my hip covered over with two layers of clothing and I still get a good read for the most part. Try it out.

[quiqnezz]

NEW UPDATE!

Windows Mobile SportyPal 1.0.1

Posted June 9, 2009 by SportyPal
Categories: Updates
Tags: Windows Mobile

A new update is now online for Windows Mobile users. Here are the changes in this version:

• Added a check that would prevent the application from rotating the screen on startup on devices with a landscape screen. This may help users with landscape screens. Then again, it may not (we don’t have a device to test it on), so try it and let us know.
• Attempted to eliminate empty parts showing up in uploaded workouts.
• Attempted to fix a bug where a workout would end on the center of the map if you lost the GPS signal when the workout ended.
• The same filter that takes care of the two points above may solve the bug where only two coordinates of a workout would be saved, even though the stats are 100% correct. Then again, it may not (we’ve never been able to reproduce this), so try it and let us know.
• Changed the distance display to always show miles if you’re using imperial units, also updated the main workout display to autoswitch to kilometers after 1000 m.
• Made sure that the date is displayed correctly at the records page when using imperial units.
• Made the option to use imperial or metric units clearer.
• The CAB file is smaller now.

Download the new version from the SportyPal website.

[TraderStav]

Originally Posted by quiqnezz

It's pretty good as I have my mogul inside it's leather pouch on my hip covered over with two layers of clothing and I still get a good read for the most part. Try it out.

I had it in my pocket while walking and in my hand while running and it showed 300 yards of my 1.8 mile run. It did not work well AT ALL. Very disappointed

I also didn't like the pervasiveness of the app, once you run it it completely takes over your phone and you can't swap to your music player/etc. Hope these get addressed in future releases!

[JonV]

Originally Posted by TraderStav

I also didn't like the pervasiveness of the app, once you run it it completely takes over your phone and you can't swap to your music player/etc. Hope these get addressed in future releases!

See post #23 in this thread. I wrote them about the pervasiveness and they quickly replied that it would be fixed in a future release. I wish I would have done it a week earlier and perhaps the fix might have been in this upgrade.

I can get it to my shell menu but it takes some doing. The button I assigned to do a "close" doesn't work with SportyPal but (as someone else suggested) the one I have assigned to take me to my Mobile Shell menu seems to work so I can get to my music player, etc. and back via task manager.

[HBOOT]

Good looking Herndon guy

[quiqnezz]

FYI...

A note to users upgrading to WM 1.0.1

Posted June 10, 2009 by SportyPal
Categories: Bugs, Q & A
Tags: Windows Mobile
If you’re upgrading from a previous version of SportyPal for Windows Mobile, you may have noticed that during the installation you weren’t warned that the previous version would be uninstalled. You also may have noticed that SportyPal is now listed twice in the Remove Programs menu (Settings -> System -> Remove Programs).
This is somewhat of an anomaly, but it causes absolutely no harm to anything. The program is not actually doubled in memory, and everything is in the same place. Removing either of these will uninstall SportyPal, but not the other entry. Nothing bad will happen if you remove the other entry after that.


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WM 1.0.1 update

Posted June 10, 2009 by SportyPal
Categories: Updates
Tags: Windows Mobile
There was an error with the download link for the 1.0.1 version earlier. If you downloaded a CAB that was about 2 MB in size, you still have the old version. The real 1.0.1 CAB should be around 1.4 MB, so if that’s not what you downloaded, you can get the new one now.
We apologize for the inconvenience.

[quiqnezz]

Alot of new updates and things happening. Hopefully this takes care of some of the issues we've been having. And yeah, that's me in the top 10 Ric "Da Rula". Haha

Windows Mobile SportyPal 1.0.2

Posted June 17, 2009 by SportyPal
Categories: Updates
Tags: Windows Mobile
A new update is now online for Windows Mobile users. It is highly recommended that you upgrade to 1.0.2.
Here are the changes in this version:

• Fixed a bug which would allow you to record a workout correctly, but it would upload a weird version of it with weird lines all over and a starting point in the middle. If you’ve had one of these, once you’ve installed 1.0.2, you can delete the workout on the site, and upload a correct version from your device with the re-upload trick.
• You can now make the taskbar appear in SportyPal by clicking near the top of the screen.
• Attempted to fix the auto-sleep bug. We can’t test this, so tell us if it works for you. If it doesn’t, don’t worry, we have some more ideas to try out by the next version.
• Fixed a bug where the final coordinate of a workout would not get filtered correctly and therefore end up halfway across the world.
• Changed the distance display to always show miles if you’re using imperial units, also updated the main workout display to autoswitch to kilometers after 1000 m.
• Made the record type visible when viewing records for a specific type. This is what it was supposed to look like all along, we just never noticed it was wrong until a while ago.
• Patched up a bug that would cause SportyPal to crash on startup, thanks to Adam Stein. This seems to be limited to WM Standard, which isn’t supported at the moment anyway, but better safe than sorry.
  There is now no reason why SportyPal shouldn’t start on a 320×240 WM Standard device, although it’s not very usable. Smartphone support is not on the top of our list right now, but we’re moving a little closer with each update.
• Added version numbers and device names to local error logs (this should’ve been obvious, but Adam Stein had to point it out before we did it). Hopefully, SportyPal won’t crash anymore and you’ll never get to see them.
• Sped a few things up slightly. You probably won’t even notice, really, but it’s good to know it’s there.
• Cleared the landscape view on the “My profile” screen up a bit. This screen will be split into more screens as more features are added, so hopefully it’ll become even less messy in the future.

Users upgrading directly from version 1.0 should read this note.
Download the new CAB here.


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Top 10 users

Posted June 17, 2009 by SportyPal
Categories: Updates
Tags: sportypal.com
A new feature has been added to the Community page of the SportyPal website: top 10 users. The users featured on the list are ranked using a point system which uses the data from the workouts that they’ve uploaded from their devices using SportyPal (GPX uploads don’t count).
Top 10 users for 17.06.2009

Some of you have been asking what the profile pictures you’ve uploaded are for. Well, this is one place where you’ll see them.
Expect more features on the Community page soon.


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Re-uploading workouts

Posted June 16, 2009 by SportyPal
Categories: Q & A
Tags: Windows Mobile
Sometimes, you need to upload a workout that’s already been marked as uploaded. Some of you that have been having trouble with the WM 1.0.1 update will want to re-upload some of your problematic workouts once they’ve installed 1.0.2.
There is a way to do this in the Windows Mobile version. Open the workout from “My Workouts”, and go to the workout graph. You’ll see the “Upload” button there, and if you’ve uploaded your workout, it should be gray and non-clickable.
Hold the upload button for several seconds until it turns white. When you release it, you will get a dialog box asking you if you want to upload your workout again.
The upload button

Note that if you do upload the workout again, nothing will happen on the site unless you deleted the old one first.


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Sleep mode in Windows Mobile

Posted June 15, 2009 by SportyPal
Categories: Bugs, Unresolved
Tags: Windows Mobile
Early into the developement of the Windows Mobile version of SportyPal, we noticed an interesting feature of the operating system that bugs us to this day: even if there is work actively being done by an application (such as, for example, recording the coordinates of a GPS-tracked workout), the device will go to sleep mode if it’s set to do so and you don’t press any keys in the meantime. Unfortunately for us, sleep mode also kills the GPS signal, and we don’t want this to happen during a workout. To work around this without having to tell the users to change their power settings for every workout, SportyPal disables sleep mode during workouts (where having a constant GPS fix is obviously pretty important) and handles the screen state itself. So far, so good. But there are two problems that remain:
First, if you press the power button to turn the screen off, the device goes to sleep and your signal is lost. Don’t do this during a workout, the screen will turn itself off pretty soon, and you can turn it back on by pushing any button on your device.
Second, unlike the devices that we tested on, some devices completely ignore our attempts to disable sleep mode and sleep anyway. Over the next few CAB updates, we’ll be looking for a way to disable sleep mode for all Windows Mobile devices. However, since we can’t test if this works (we haven’t had any problems with this on our devices to begin with), we’ll need your input to tell us if what we’re doing is any good.
Until we sort this out, users with the auto-sleep problem are going to have to set their power settings manually. To do this, go to Start -> Settings -> System -> Power -> Advanced and uncheck the “turn off device if not used for…” option.
Power Settings

[HBOOT]

thxx Herndon dude, in my case TP goes to sleep but Sporty works regardless...if you need any testing let me know... i most likely do a run this afternoon in WOD...