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BreakFinder — SUP Surf Tracker

· v1.0.4
★★★★★ (1) ↓ 100 downloads 2 Free

About

The only Garmin app built specifically for stand-up paddle (SUP) surfing. Generic surf trackers are built around the prone "pop-up" — that explosive push-up off the board that signals a wave catch. SUP surfers don't pop up. We're already standing. So generic apps either miss our rides entirely or count every paddle stroke as a wave. BreakFinder uses a detection pipeline designed around the actual biomechanical signature of SUP surfing. HOW IT WORKS A SUP wave catch leaves three fingerprints on your watch sensors: - Your paddle cadence surges into "First Gear" — short, hard sprint strokes above 2 Hz as you chase the wave's phase velocity - Then your paddle goes silent the moment the board planes onto the wave — the Silence Event - Your GPS speed jumps with a steep positive derivative (the drop-in) BreakFinder's 4-state finite-state machine — WAITING → PADDLING → CATCHING → RIDING — only counts a wave when all three signals agree, with hysteresis to reject paddle-side switches. Result: no phantom waves from chop or current drift, no missed catches, no false starts from paddle-out sprints. WHAT YOU GET - Automatic wave count — no buttons mid-session - Per-ride duration, top speed, and distance (logged separately to your session FIT file as laps) - GPS speed fusion with derivative gating against current drift - Heart rate, calories, activity zones — standard FIT fields - Live state badge: WAIT / PADDLE / CATCH / RIDE on the activity screen - Sessions save locally on the watch, sync to your account when connected - Full session replay on breakfinder.surf with GPS tracks and per-ride speed overlay WORKS OFFLINE The detection pipeline runs entirely on the watch — no phone connection needed during the session. Sync happens after, when you're back in range. Your privacy stays on the device until you choose to upload. 190+ GARMIN DEVICES SUPPORTED From Fenix 8 down to Instinct 2S. The full pipeline runs on every tier, with a compact 10 Hz variant hand-tuned for 32 KB low-memory watches. Instinct, Forerunner, Fenix, Venu, vivoactive, MARQ, Descent, D2, epix — all covered. START FREE 1. Install BreakFinder 2. Create a free account at https://breakfinder.surf 3. Go surf Premium unlocks unlimited session history, interactive session replay, cross-device sync, and detailed per-ride analytics. QUESTIONS / FEEDBACK [email protected] Full setup guide & API token: https://breakfinder.surf/en/surf_sessions/sup/garmin

What's new

Version 1.0.0 — Initial release A new Garmin app, purpose-built from the first commit for stand-up paddle surfing. Not a re-skin of a prone surf tracker. DETECTION ENGINE - Four-state finite-state machine designed for SUP biomechanics. WAITING, PADDLING, CATCHING, RIDING — explicit transitions with hysteresis-driven false-positive rejection. - Autocorrelation-based paddle cadence analysis with no FFT, so the full pipeline runs on the lowest-memory tier (Instinct 2S, 32 KB RAM). - Silence-Event wave-catch trigger: detects the rhythm collapse that marks a successful catch, instead of the prone-surf "pop-up" that doesn't exist on a SUP. - GPS speed-derivative gating against current drift — sitting on the board in a 6 km/h current no longer counts as a wave. DEVICE COVERAGE - 25 Hz sample rate on full-tier watches (Fenix 7+, Forerunner 965, Venu 3, etc.) with 4th-order Butterworth low-pass filtering - 10 Hz sample rate on low-memory watches (Instinct 2 family) with boxcar low-pass — same FSM, different DSP, identical wave counts on synthetic test fixtures SESSION DATA - Per-ride duration, top speed, distance — captured as FIT laps so they show up in Garmin Connect's lap-detail screens - Activity FIT type: Stand-Up Paddleboarding (sport/sub-sport correctly recognized by Garmin Connect) - Backend integration with breakfinder.surf for session replay, history, and cross-device sync

Permissions

FitPositioningBackgroundSensorHistoryCommunicationsFitContributorSensor

Details

Compatible with 196 devices
Updated Jul 20, 2026
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Open on apps.garmin.com ↗