Fitness freaks flummoxed as massive global Garmin outage leaves them high and dry for hours
- Reference: 1595514004
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/07/23/garmin_outage/
- Source link:
Users have expressed obvious concern that such an extended outage is indicative of a problem beyond maintenance, worrying perhaps about their personal data stored there, and for sure the company's communication has been poor.
Garmin Connect lets owners of Garmin devices such as fitness trackers and smart watches upload their activity, enabling analysis of activity, achievements, and optionally sharing with friends. It can be linked with other services like Strava so data uploaded to Garmin Connect also appears there.
That presumes the site is up and running, which has not been the case since early this morning. As of this afternoon, the site seems functional until one [1]attempts to sign in , where visitors will be greeted by an eternally spinning cog. Elsewhere, the company's digital storefront says it is [2]down for "maintenance" .
[3]
'Maintenance'
Radio silence from Garmin
Initially the Garmin social media accounts were for the most part silent on the matter. "@GarminFitness @Garmin @GarminUK Garmin Connect has now been down for over 6 hours. Your forums are returning a runtime error and are down. Not one of these three accounts has even mentioned this," said [4]one customer .
Garmin India [5]did pop up to say : "Our servers are currently down for maintenance & it may limit the performances of Garmin Connect Mobile & Website, and Garmin Express."
[6]
Services down across the board
Just after 13:30 UK time, however, the official Garmin account woke from its (perhaps USA) slumber to [7]say :
"We are currently experiencing an outage that affects Garmin Connect, and as a result, the Garmin Connect website and mobile app are down at this time. This outage also affects our call centers, and we are currently unable to receive any calls, emails or online chats."
The word "maintenance" was not mentioned this time, lending support to the idea that this is a serious outage, whether caused by malice or otherwise.
A customer was quick to [8]comment that "the fact that this makes my watch not talk to my phone makes me upset". The phone is working, the watch is working, both are nearby, but data has to go to the internet and back for the two to communicate. It is an IoT issue, which nobody notices while connectivity is good.
"What's going on @Garmin. Something don't feel right. You can't get us to buy watches and make it part of our daily lives and one day just to AWOL," complained [9]another .
Strava has pointed users at a [10]support note explaining how to upload a file in .FIT format directly, though this is a tedious process compared to wireless synchronisation.
We have asked Garmin for more information. ®
Get our [11]Tech Resources
[1] https://connect.garmin.com/signin
[2] https://buy.garmin.com/en-US/US/p/679335/pn/010-02293-11
[3] https://regmedia.co.uk/2020/07/23/garmin-connect.jpg
[4] https://twitter.com/landingcliffs/status/1286257784208740358
[5] https://twitter.com/Garmin_India/status/1286227663426711553
[6] https://regmedia.co.uk/2020/07/23/garmin.png
[7] https://twitter.com/Garmin/status/1286278736581726209
[8] https://twitter.com/stompy243/status/1286285347811360769
[9] https://twitter.com/vijaythomas1982/status/1286268904596111360
[10] https://support.strava.com/hc/en-us/articles/223297187-How-to-get-your-Activities-to-Strava
[11] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: I can feel the weight piling on
I just checked mine and either the service has been down for months or all I've done in lockdown is sit on the couch and watch Netflix.
When will Garmin fix this?
Just synced my watch. The number of steps is displayed, but nothing else. Says "Sorry, we're down for maintenance. Check back shortly.". Maintenance? Hacked more likely?
Every cloud has a silver lining.
Surely the stress of the site being down will lead to useful weight loss.
I can wait for kudos
GPS watch data is most useful when I’m actually running. Pace, distance, heart rate mainly. The device itself still works just fine. Some people I know only upload their runs to Strava once a week or less...
But it would be nice to know what’s going on at some point!
Re: I can wait for kudos
Some people I know only upload their runs to Strava once a week or less...
Most - no, all - people I know couldn't give a rat's bottom
Well, according to the Garmin Connect app I don't have a pulse this afternoon - should I be worried?
If Garmin's not watching then I'll sneak a few of these in... -->
I think you've been paged out due to inactivity.
"worrying perhaps about their personal data stored there"
The time to worry was when they were wondering whether to store the data.
If a man goes for a run in the forest....
And his Garmin device doesn't track it, did he actually get any steps in?
(I'm feeling philosophical this morning.)
This should come as no surprise if you are the owner of a Garmin device. Surely we're all used to unexpected crashes, loss of satellite fixes, erroneous navigation instructions, etc. Losing a data centre seems par for the course if you own a Garmin device . When I want to record a track for posterity, I record it simultaneously on my Garmin and using a 'phone app.
Love my Garmin!
Well the advantage of running with the phone is that it adds about 10% to my distances, makes me look faster as the location jitters from side to side of the road. I guess if I only ever used it to stagger back from the pub it might match reality. Meanwhile all the Garmin kit i have owned (a lot...) has generally 'just worked'.
Those who bleat like the world has ended...
... Are likely to be the kind of panicky dramatic Karens of the world... Given that one would expect Garmin to have DR processes, I'm not too concerned yet. They had a similar problem a while ago where FIT files uploaded to their platform were ignored/not ingested and processed.
I have to agree with the person asking why this would have to stop making the watch communicate with the phone... Why the phone app can't simply download the files/data from the watch and keep it until the API becomes available again has been a question I've posed to Garmin before. But this outage won't make me change away from them purely because they haven't communicated with me and held my hand (virtually) to stop me panicking about how my life has not ended because their service fell over.
Stuff happens. It'll be back no doubt.
Time to Panic
I tell my wife I'm off lifting weights followed by some cardio when I go to the pub. If she finds out where I've been and where I go afterwards I'm done for.
First World Problems
"A customer was quick to comment that "the fact that this makes my watch not talk to my phone makes me upset". "
GET A LIFE!
That is all.
Just upload manually to Strava..
Work-around: just connect Garmin watch via USB to laptop, and navigate under activities folder to locate the latest "FIT" activity file and manually upload to Strava. Actually quicker than doing it via (the now kaput) Garmin Connect.
How many times will Strava's IT folk double-check their backup strategies this evening...
I can feel the weight piling on
This is so serious. It's now firmly established by scientists that if exercise isn't on Strava it doesn't make you fitter or leaner. So now that's an hour out and about on a beautiful summers morning totally wasted!