OpenIQ Devices
← Back

Surf Balls Analogue - Wind, Wave and Tide data

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

About

This is the partner analogue watchface to my Surf Balls widget and provides all of the information to decide whether now's the time to go surfing based on 4 key factors (wave height, difference in wind/wave direction, wind speed and wave period) in a set of 4 balls (and the bigger and/or bluer the ball the better!). For a given location and the current hour it will display the surf balls and wind (green) and wave (blue) arrows which move around the edge of the display and scale to denote direction and strength. The time of high and low tides are also displayed around the edge of the clockface, a solid circle for high tide and an outline circle for low tide, and those on the outer dial are AM whereas those on the inner dial are PM. If they are in colour then they are sometime today after the current time, if they are grey then they are before the current time. The icon under the Surf Balls denotes whether the tide is currently heading to either a high or low point. You set the location in the watchface settings, my reasoning for this is that personally I want to know about conditions at a location I want to go to, rather than necessarily when I am already there. In addition to the location you can chose whether the surf balls are solids colours (orange...don't bother going through to dark blue...get out there) or scaled (small...don't bother going through to full...get out there). The first time you set the location, or if you change it, it will take up to 10 minutes for the watchface to get the data. This is down to the way that Garmin manages API calls and unfortunately I haven’t found a way around it (yet!). All of the data is sourced from Stormglass (www.stormglass.io) which is a pretty cool global weather API but you need to register for a free account to get a key which you enter in the watchface settings. This all started with my Surf Balls widget which provides all this and more, including temperatures, tide information, sunrise/set times and UV index for the next 24 hours in one hour timeslots at up to 3 locations (2 you preset and GPS). If you fancy a digital watchface rather than an analogue one then have a look at my other Surf Balls watchface. I am not a professional developer and I originally started this for as a personal project just for my own use but then decided to share it. If you like it then great, if you don't then that's fine too (just uninstall it). If you find any bugs or have any positive suggestions then please let me know by clicking on the ‘Contact Developer’ as I'm always interested in ways to enhance it.

What's new

Updated for more Garmin devices : Venu 4 41/45mm, Vivoactive 6, Forerunner 970 and the Instinct Crossover AMOLED (just displays the background and not the watch hands)

Permissions

BackgroundCommunicationsBluetoothLowEnergy

Details

Compatible with 40 devices
Updated Oct 27, 2025
Open on apps.garmin.com ↗