F3b Notice: Battery drain

*** Update 08-30-2023

All F3b apps we updated to used Connect IQ SDK 6.3.0, which included several fixes from Garmin to address a Battery burn issue.

– All Applications were recompile with 6.3.0, no source changes.

– Using Connect IQ SDK Mac 6.3.0-2023-08-29-fc81ed416

— 6.3.0 for battery burn issue.

–(Garmin) Fix a bug where getRegisteredSensors() would not return the correct enabled states for onboard hear-rate and onboard pulse-ox sensors.

–(Garmin) Fix a bug where setEnabledSensors() did not work correctly for onboard heart-rate and onboard pulse-ox sensors.

**** Update from Garmin Engineering

This will be rolled out to all f3b applications

From: Travis <garmin.com>
Date: Friday, August 11, 2023 at 4:16 PM
To: brian brown <brian@f-3b.com>
Cc:  Brandon <garmin.com>
Subject: RE: GARMIN Connect IQ – New review(s) for your app “F3b Inline Skating+” – Connect IQ Notification

Brian,I did some investigating and found a bug in the sensor our shutdown process where we were not decrementing a counter if an app exits without explicitly unregistering the sensor event callback. This resulted in the system keeping a periodic timer alive, sending a wakeup message to the VM thread to do some processing that isn’t needed. I have not yet confirmed that this resolves the battery drain issue entirely, but I have confirmed that it is a problem and is causing unnecessary battery drain. I have a patch for this issue that should make it into our Q4 release.

That said, you should be able to avoid the issue by ensuring that the sensor event callback is set to null when you no longer want to receive sensor data. Simply disabling the sensor or changing the enabled sensors is not sufficient. You need to clear the callback as well.

  Sensor.enableSensorEvents(null);

I think that you will find that if you paste that into the bottom of your quitSensors method, the battery drain will be reduced or eliminated entirely.

Travis

Hi,

There is a new Garmin bug within the Venu2 family, FR55 and FR955 that is affecting battery drain. The Garmin issues have been acknowledged and there are bug ticket numbers assigned. The Garmin bug tickets can be viewed in the https:\\forums.garmin.com.

F3b has made several workarounds and improvements to each app to further reduce battery drain and there are a few things you can to reduce your watch battery drain.

  • Use Garmin Express (https://www.garmin.com/express/) to verify if there are any pending updates for your watch.
    • A pending updates will cause extreme battery drains.
    • I recommend, using Garmin Express for installing All CIQ apps or Garmin Software updates.
  • Restart the watch after any CIQ app install or Garmin Software update.
  • Set the SaO2 sensor to “Manual Check” or “On Demand”. The default is ‘Always’ or ‘All Day’.
  • Use a less intensive widgets and watch face. These types of Garmin Apps typically use Garmin Background service and is continually running in the background and will increase battery drain.
  • Remove all unused apps, watchfaces, and widgets.
  • Restart the watch after an activity.

Thanks,

-Brian B.

Garmin Express -> https://www.garmin.com/express/

Garmin Forums -> https://forums.garmin.com

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