Lap Delta

Garmin devices deliver precise, detailed data for our activities. We can see live data during an activity and deep dive into our performance after an activity. Often, the ultimate goal is the finish time but you have to finish to know that! Instantaneous metrics, like power and speed, don't represent the big picture, and averages don't work well for real-world courses with hills, descents, corners and technical challenges. So are there better metrics for adjusting pace and tuning our performance in real-time? For lap-based activities, a compelling alternative is the time delta. This tells you the time difference (the delta) between the current lap and the previous lap. It updates in real-time and tells you whether you are faster or slower, and by how much. It motivates you to maintain your pace and gives instant feedback on seconds lost versus seconds gained. Time delta is heavily used in motorsports, particularly when setting the fastest lap in qualifying or optimizing race pace. Lap Delta brings this capability to your Garmin ConnectIQ device. Lap Delta is ideal for runners and cyclists, but also applies to any sport where you want to optimize your performance by reducing your time to cover the distance. Lap Delta adds a new data field that provides a real-time comparison between the current lap and the previous lap. This is presented as the time delta between those laps and is updated continuously on a second-by-second basis to give real-time feedback. For example, a lap delta of -10 seconds means that you are currently 10 seconds faster on this lap compared to the previous lap. Using Lap Delta you can see exactly where seconds are gained or lost in a course, or use it as a pacing and motivation tool for your workouts and events. Lap Delta supports a wide range of Garmin ConnectIQ devices, such as cycling computers and watches, and integrates seamlessly with the device user interface. Laps are triggered using the lap button, or any of the existing advanced lap triggers such as time, distance or position. A lap could be a circuit race or criterium, a segment, a hill climb, a downhill course, a lap around a running track, an interval in a workout, or each individual mile of a marathon run. Lap Delta is free and has a simple, fixed feature set. No setup is required: just install, add the Lap Delta data field to a screen and go! Lap Delta Pro and Lap Delta Pro Edge are premium versions and sold separately. They have more advanced features, support longer lap times and a wide range of configuration options. What are you waiting for? Every second counts! BUY ME A COFFEE? I've been using Garmin devices for a long time and started writing ConnectIQ apps to provide some missing features that I wanted for my training and racing. I think they will be useful to other Garmin users so I've been releasing them through the ConnectIQ store. If you would like to support and encourage this work, please feel free to buy me a coffee. It would be much appreciated! https://buymeacoffee.com/biketelemetry

VERSION HISTORY 0.2 - support devices with only 32KB of memory per data field 0.1 - first released version of Lap Delta SUPPORT Please check out https://lapdeltapro.com or email to [email protected] for support. HOW TO INSTALL Lap Delta can be downloaded using the Garmin ConnectIQ app. Simply search for “Lap Delta” and click to install. ConnectIQ will transfer Lap Delta to the selected device at the next sync. The next step is to add the Lap Delta data field to a screen layout. You can find Lap Delta inside the ConnectIQ category. HOW TO USE Ahead of your activity, decide how you want to trigger laps. One approach is to simply push the lap button at the right times in your activity, such as the start/finish line. Another approach is to mark a GPS position so that a lap is automatically triggered every time your route passes through that position. Finally, the device can automatically trigger a lap each time a specified distance or time has passed. These are standard Garmin device features that can be enabled through the menu system on your device. The best approach depends on your use case. Now, simply start an activity. This will automatically start lap 1 and Lap Delta will begin to capture your lap data. At this point there is no data to compare to, so Lap Delta will display an animation of expanding and contracting dashes to indicate that it is capturing data. When the next lap is triggered, lap 1 will end and lap 2 will start. Lap Delta will then display the time delta of your current position on lap 2 relative to lap 1. A negative time delta means that your current lap is faster, while a positive time delta indicates slower. If you start working harder, you should see your Lap Delta improve! For a negative split, you want to make the Lap Delta more negative. This continues until another lap is triggered, and then Lap Delta will compare lap 3 versus lap 2. The label for the Lap Delta data field indicates that this is a time delta versus your last lap. The triangle symbol is the Greek letter "delta". The label also indicates that the value is in units of seconds. If your current lap becomes longer than the previous lap, the time delta will increase at a rate of one second every second. This indicates that the duration of the current lap exceeds the previous lap. LIMITATIONS The duration of a lap is limited to 10 minutes to save device memory. Lap Delta is compatible with Garmin devices that support ConnectIQ 3.2.0 and at least 32KB of memory per data field. Lap Delta is suitable for short round-trip or circuit-based activities where the lap button is pressed or triggered every lap. It can also be used with an appropriate time or distance trigger - for example, trigger a lap every 1km or 5 minutes of a run. PREMIUM VERSION A premium version will be released that enables new use cases through configuration options.This will include features such as: 1. Maximum lap times of up to 24 hours (depending on device memory availability). 2. An option to present the lap delta as a distance delta instead of as a time delta. 3. An option to compare against the first lap, the worst lap or the best lap as well as the last lap. 4. Options to control which laps are used for timing purposes. 4(a). The starting lap number can be configured so that the initial lap or laps can be ignored for timing purposes. This allows for a warm-up period or for heading out to the start point. 4(b). The “alternate laps” feature supports on/off intervals as well as non-circuit laps. This is useful for measuring performance on a hill climb or des