O’Reilly Radar highlights new and interesting technology garnered by tech blogs, and has recently featured Garmin Developer, announced at the Where 2.0 conference in May. The article also discusses the upcoming MotionBased Web Services API, which will allow users and developers to interact with MotionBased.
(Source: Where2.0: Garmin Developer, Browser Plugin and Javascript API)
Great news! You can now download courses from the web to your Garmin fitness devices!
This functionality requires the use of our new release of Communicator API 1.2. Read more about the new send courses functionality. This version of Communicator works with Communicator Plug-in 2.1, however course download functionality requires Communicator Plug-in v2.2 Alpha. Feel free to play around with it and let us know what you think! Please note that the alpha version is not meant for production.
A friendly reminder for developers: Because modifications are made in each new release, we suggest linking to our specific versioned URLs rather than the unversioned one, as that ensures consistent functionality. For example, if you are using version 1.2, use http://developer.garmin.com/web/communicator-api-1.2/… instead of http://developer.garmin.com/web/communicator-api/…
Stick around for updates, as grabbing courses from the devices is also coming up.
Also, good news for Mac users: We are working on a Mac compatible beta version of the plug-in, for Firefox and Safari. Yay! I’ve actually been testing an alpha release here in the office. It’s not quite ready to share with you all yet, but stay tuned and we’ll let you know once it is ready for prime-time.
It seems like everyone else in the office is chattering about web services so I know they are working hard on getting a test server for developers to preview the upcoming Web Services release later this year. These web services should be a great compliment to the Communicator API for those of you that want to store GPS data on the web without having to write your very own MotionBased.
On the administrative front I’ve been battling the spam-bots on the forum to keep the conversations clean. We are also considering launching a bug tracker that will allow you to report bugs and browse bugs that others have reported while showing the road map. Even better maybe you developers out there may fix a bug or two and help out with the open source effort.
Here are some examples of the Communicator Plug-in used by sites we’ve found:
MotionBased is a web application that translates GPS data into functional analysis and online mapping for endurance and outdoor athletes. Some changes have been made recently to the interface to make activity transfer simpler for users, by turning off the Google Map feature as well as the Cancel Find Devices option. CSS customization allows the plug-in to fit into any site’s color and font scheme. Checkbox options allow visitors to turn specific options on or off themselves, such as allowing duplicates and selecting activities individually.
Like MotionBased, AllSportGPS provides fitness training enthusiasts with the ability to track their workouts and performance. It implements a simple, one-click interface for uploading data to Garmin devices. Again, CSS styling is used here to match existing color themes.
GeoTours is a web application that allows you to easily create media-rich GPS tours now supports importing tour locations with Garmin GPS devices. Visitors can import multiple locations from their Garmin devices for their own personalized tours.
More sites using Communicator (descriptions coming soon!):
If you know of a site that uses the Communicator Plug-in, go ahead and share it with us by commenting and we’ll post an entry on it.
Since the recent release of the Communicator Plug-in API, various sites have customized it to their sites in different ways. The plug-in allows data transfer between websites and Garmin devices, and plenty of options are available to developers to integrate the plug-in seamlessly into their sites.
Some ways developers can customize the plug-in:
Options are easily turned on or off by setting variable values accordingly.
