VenuSQ loses connection to the phone after a while

[jones139]

A user has reported that his VenuSQ loses the connection to the phone after a while (1-2 hours), and the only way to restore it is to re-boot the watch. He sees Error -101 which means BLE queue full, than it goes to Error -104 which means no BLE connection. The watch is shown as disconnected in the Garmin Connect App.

Fundamentally this sounds like a bug in the watch firmware, but OSD is causing it to occur.

[jones139]

I have tried it on my VenuSQ, and Samsung A20 phone and have seen the same issue - it crashed twice overnight, so it is not just a problem with the user's watch hardware - needs fixing ASAP!

[jones139]

I made a test version where it checks to see if a communications request is in progress before it sends another one. This ran ok for about 6 hours this afternoon, so it could be that too many comms requests is causing the issue.
The problem is that the test version just gave up if there was a comms request in progress, so we lost every other 5 second batch of data, which is no use.

I have made V4.1.1g for testing which will re-try after one second if there is a request in progress - this is working better - we receive data every 6 or 7 seconds, so we will still drop the occasional batch of data, but most will get through.
Will test this overnight to see if it fixes the crashing issue, then we will need to look at why it is taking so long to send a 5 second batch of data.

[jones139]

V4.1.1g was not successful - it stopped several times overnight (app stopped by itself).
I now have a V4.1.1k which has better logging as well as a re-try if there is a request in progress when accelerometer data is received, but my VenuSQ is crashing and re-booting itself after a few minutes of running. It is running ok on the emulator and on my Forerunner 245.
If I was the only one having a problem, I'd be saying that my VenuSQ has a memory fault and needs to be scrapped....

[jones139]

I'm still not really sure what is happening here, but it appears that we are seeing slow data transfer between the watch and the phone, which leads to multiple coincident data transfer requests. For some reason this is crashing the watch and locking the BLE connection between the watch and the phone.

V4.1.1 introduces a check whether a data transfer request is in progress or not when new data is ready to be sent. If it is, the new request is not sent, but is re-tried after half a second. I think this will avoid the BLE lock-up issue, but does result in some lost data. To address this we now have a Low Data mode where we do not send 3d accelerometer data, just the vector magnitude. The current OSD algorithms will still work in this mode, but it means the data sent to the data sharing system is not as useful as we do not have the 3d data.

V4.1.1n is currently available to try here: https://github.com/OpenSeizureDetector/Garmin_SD/tree/V1.4.x/build if anyone would like to try it.

[jones139]

Well for me V4.1.1n ran a lot longer than the previous versions when using 'Low Data' mode, but still crashed after several hours and needed a watch re-boot.

Another user has reported a similar issue with a VenuSQ, so it is sounding more and more like a Garmin firmware issue than a hardware fault as the watch hardware from Garmin has always been very reliable.

[jones139]

Software version numbers that are experiencing the problem:
Garmin Connect: 4.69.1, VenuSQ firmware: 4.90
Garmin Connect: 4.71, VenuSQ firmware: 4.90

[jones139]

Garmin bug report: https://forums.garmin.com/developer/connect-iq/i/bug-reports/venusq-disconnects-from-phone-after-multiple-makewebrequest-calls

[44616E]

Can confirm, seeing the same issue.

[jones139]

Can confirm, seeing the same issue.

Thanks. Do you know when it started (I'm trying to work out which watch firmware version introduced it).

[jones139]

Another user has reported that the newer VenuSq 2 is working OK with Garmin Connect V4.71.

[44616E]

Can confirm, seeing the same issue.

Thanks. Do you know when it started (I'm trying to work out which watch firmware version introduced it).

Durring the last week. Not sure when the watch may have updated, possibly when we restarted the phone on friday last week or saturday.

[jones139]

***** DO NOT UPGRADE YOUR VENUSQ *******

• A new firmware has been released by Garmin for the VenuSQ.
• I have updated mine and the watch settings->System->SW_Versions page now shows the software as Version 5.00.
• I ran GarminSD V4.1.n and it ran for a few minutes then the whole watch re-booted.
• There is no CIQ_LOG.TXT file that you might expect for a system crash, and the GarminSD.TXT log file does not show anything unusual - just reporting successful data transfer to the watch.

So the new Firmware does not fix the issue - it appears to make it worse.