Author: graham

I have received feedback from a couple of users of the Garmin Watch seizure detector, and implemented the following improvements in line with their comments:

• Pressing the ‘Back’ button does not immediately exit the app – instead it displays a ‘do you really want to exit’ dialog box. If you press No, or do not respond to the prompt within 10 seconds, the app returns to normal running. This makes it less likely to inadvertently exit the app by pressing buttons.
• Pressing the ‘Menu’ button will mute the system for 5 minutes. During this period both the watch and the phone app display the word ‘MUTE’, and neither alarm beeps nor SMS alerts will be issued. This is to allow you to avoid false alarms if you are going to do something that is likely to initiate an alarm (such as brushing teeth).
• The watch display now shows the status of the seizure detection analysis (e.g. OK, ALARM, HR Abnormal). If the status is anything except ‘OK’ the backlight on the watch is switched on to draw the attention of the user. (I don’t use the vibration motor in the watch, because that will mess up the accelerometer data).

I would be grateful if anyone using the Garmin seizure detector would try this out to check it works for them. To use it, you need V3.1.7 or higher of the Android App (available here), and V0.4 of the Garmin Watch App, (available here) [Remember the watch app file needs to be re-named to GarminSD.prg on the watch].

Please feed back your experiences so we can see what other changes are needed. If you hit a serious problem, you can revert to the current published versions by installing the Android App from Play Store, and reverting to V0.1 of GarminSD.prg watch app.

Graham.

The old phone that I use for Benjamin’s seizure detector (connecting to his Pebble watch) seems to be getting unreliable – its wifi connection keeps dropping out, which results in fault ‘pips’ in the night, which is not good.

The phone was on old one that I used for a couple of years, then it has been his seizure detector, running 24 hours a day for about 3 years, so time to retire it (because a factory reset this morning did not cure the problem).

I replaced it with my old Samsung J5 with a cracked screen – I did a factory reset on it, and installed OpenSeizureDetector from scratch. It was more difficult than I expected because of recent issues with apps being purged from Google Play Store. The problems I had were:

• The Pebble Android App is no longer on play store (I suspect it is because no-one argued with Google about why an app using ‘dangerous’ permissions needed to be retained – the argument I was having for most of February about the OpenSeizureDetector app).
• The ‘Install Watch App’ button did not work any more.

I got around these issues by installing the Pebble app from the apkmirror web site rather than play store. The problem with the ‘install watch app’ button not working was that the default file manager on the phone would not link the .pbw file to the Pebble App – I had to install another file manager off play store to get it to work (the new one let me select the Pebble App as the programme to use to open the file.

I have updated the Installation Instructions page to reflect this experience. The text is a bit of a mess, so if anyone has chance, I’d be grateful of some help tidying up the instructions – I am a bit snowed under with programming jobs!

A couple of users have been in touch recently with issues with the SMS sending function, that has resulted in a few changes to the Android App being proposed.

I have added a delay between an ALARM initiation and the SMS alert being sent – the idea being to give the user chance to cancel the SMS alert in the case of a false alarm.

What will happen is that the ‘Accept Alarm’ button expands and turns into a red ‘Cancel SMS’ button, and there will be repeated alarm beeps during the delay period (See Below).

This version seems to be working ok for me, but a user has reported it being unreliable with the SMS not always being received.

I would appreciate it if a few users would test the latest version (V3.1.5) and report back on how you find it. The app file is available on the Github Source Code Repository here: https://github.com/OpenSeizureDetector/Android_Pebble_SD/raw/V3.1/app/release/app-release-3.1.5.apk

If you have any trouble with this version, just re-install the version from Play Store.

Thanks for those who have tested it so far – I have just done an update to avoid a crash that one of you reported, so current version is now V3.1.5 as shown above.

Thanks! Graham

I have added a confirmation dialog box to the Garmin App to try to make it harder to exit the app by accident, which results in fault pips, which are annoying. The new version is V0.2 of the garmin App.

V0.2 is here: 
https://github.com/OpenSeizureDetector/Garmin_SD/raw/master/WatchApp/GarminSD_v0.2.prg

If it doesn’t work you can go back to the V0.1 by downloading it from here: https://github.com/OpenSeizureDetector/Garmin_SD/raw/master/WatchApp/GarminSD_v0.1.prg

The file should be copied into the GARMIN/APPS directory on the watch as GarminSD.prg (ie without the version number), as per the Garmin page. h

A user pointed out that the fall detection function that is available on the Pebble watch version of OpenSeizureDetector is not present on the Garmin/Fitbit version.

I have had a quick go at adding it into the Garmin/Fitbit data source now – there is a section in the Seizure Detector settings screen for fall detection in V3.1.0 of the Android App – not currently published on Play Store but available here if anyone would like to try it: https://github.com/OpenSeizureDetector/Android_Pebble_SD/raw/V3.1/app/release/app-release-3.1.0.apk

The fall detection algorithm is very crude (http://www.openseizuredetector.org.uk/?page_id=455#Fall_Detection_Algorithm). If anyone has suggestions for improving it, please let me know and I can incorporate them into V3.1.x releases.
Graham (graham@openseizuredetector.org.uk)

V3.0.4 has just been released on Google Play Store. This fixes a couple of issues reported by users – Crash when using the ‘Install Watch App’ menu option, and crashes after stopping the server. I have also tidied up the main screen when the server is stopped, or in a fault condition to avoid spurious or out of date information being presented.

As always, please report any issues you encounter with this release.

Thanks

Graham (graham@openseizuredetector.org.uk)

V3.0.3 has been published on Google Play Store. This is a bug fix release to address an issue with the app crashing when the phone starts up if the App Start on Boot option is selected in settings.

Thank you to those of you who reported the crashes so we can fix it!

Graham.

I am about to make V3.0.0 of the Android App live. The changes I have made since V2.6.4 which has been tested on several platforms are small, so it should go ok, but just in case, if you have a major problem and need to go back to the current published version (V2.5.5), do the following:

• Uninstall OpenSeizureDetector
  • In the phone settings, select the Apps menu
  • Select OpenSeizureDetector
  • Select Uninstall.
• Download the previous version (V2.5.5) from the Github source code repository, here:
  • https://github.com/OpenSeizureDetector/Android_Pebble_SD/raw/master/app/release/app-release-2.5.5.apk
• Open the downloaded file – you may have to select an option to install apps from untrusted sources.
• This should get you the previous version back without changing your settings.
• Let me know that you had to do this, so I can fix the problem! (email graham@openseizuredetector.org.uk, or the facebook page.)

I am still going through the appeals process to persuade Google to let me keep OpenSeizureDetector on Play Store.

The reason it is difficult is because it uses the SEND_SMS permission to send SMS text messages automatically without user intervention – this is considered a ‘Dangerous’ permission because you could do bad things with that power if you mis-used it.

They rejected my original proposal for an exception on the grounds that sending SMS text messages automatically is not essential ‘core’ functionality for the app – I am appealing saying that it is essential functionality for many users (if you do use this, it might help if you could confirm by dropping me a note to graham@openseizuredetector.org.uk, or the openseizuredetector facebook page).

I have now hit a problem in that all published apps need to comply with their policies, so I need to make the current beta-test version the main published one (because V2.5.x is not compliant with play store policies).

Therefore this weekend I will take V2.6.4, do some final tidying up, and publish it as V3.0.x (new major version because we are adding Garmin and fitbit support as well as Pebble).

Thank you to those who have tested V2.6.4 on Android V9 for me, because I don’t have an Android V9 device – it has given me enough confidence to press ‘go’ and hopefully not break the system for users – I will publish an ‘in case of emergency’ set of instructions to get you back to the current live version if necessary.

Please get in touch if you have any concerns about this, and if you can confirm that you do use SMS alerts, because it is proving a lot of hassle to keep that functionality!

Thanks, Graham.

There was a residual issue with Android 9 that I did not fix yesterday. I have addressed this in V2.6.4 of the Android App, which runs ok on the Pixel 2 (Android V9.0) emulator, but I don’t have an android 9 device to test it on myself.

Please will anyone with an Android 9 device test this to make sure it runs ok? To test it, do the following:

• Uninstall the OpenSeizureDetector app that was installed from play store (in the phone settings -> apps menu).
• Download the V2.6.4 APK from the github repository.
• Click on the apk file and follow the prompts to install software from untrusted sources.
• Start the app and see if it runs ok – test alarm notifications and SMS notifications.
• If it crashes, please sent the crash report back to me (graham@openseizuredetector.org.uk) and I will look for a fix and produce another version.
• To uninstall this version and go back to the published one, go to the phone settings -> apps menu to uninstall OpenSeizureDetector, then go to the play store to install it again.
• If it works ok, please tell me too!

Thanks, Graham.