And Suunto does it again: mid-activity crash on Suunto Race

sky-runner

@Olaf-Gottschalk said in And Suunto does it again: mid-activity crash on Suunto Race:

But Suunto, just like Polar and Garmin, don’t really know how to safeguard their operating system so that mal function that causes the complete product to crash cannot happen, nor are they able to at least automatically resume recording right after the reboot happened. (This is what Wahoo does, but I’ve not seen it crash as many times as Suunto)

As a responsible developer this would make me do some extra work and night shifts to find the root cause of such crashes and I could not rest until this is fixed.
I do not mind bugs at all, it happens to all of us, but the system core must be designed in such a robust way that inner processes might restart, but are not able to doom the whole system like shown in the above picture after almost 5 hours of workout.

In all these watches there isn’t really an operating system in a common sense. There are no multiple processes. All of them run a single process. So if something happens, for example, in an S+ app, like division by zero, the whole thing goes down. The reason it is that way is because the CPU is extremely underclocked in order to save power. If you try to do a fully featured OS, you’d get battery life of an Apple watch or a WearOS watch.

Olaf Gottschalk

@sky-runner I know, I know. But I am not using any apps and it still crashes. Thus, somebody is not doing their job correctly. It could be tracked down and through proper tests it is possible to deliver non-crashing products.

Prior to sports watches being driven by software, companies like Suunto and Polar had to make sure their products don’t crash because there was no way to update the firmware after sale… Today, they hire novices and use improper techniques to make sure this does not happen.

Using Rust and modern programming languages, there could be so many levels of safety…

Likarnik

@Olaf-Gottschalk I had similar crash mid 200km ride on my SV, it’s realy frustrating when that happens.

Dimitrios Kanellopoulos

@sky-runner nope. That’s not it. Suunto plus can crash and many user space stuff.

GiPFELKiND

@Dimitrios-Kanellopoulos any helping for his Problem so far? Please ️ my Run Crashes everTime when trying to deactivate the live Trail App… And goes in a safe state ‍️unbelievable.

Dimitrios Kanellopoulos

@GiPFELKiND this looks like a ble problem

GiPFELKiND

@Dimitrios-Kanellopoulos do you mean Bluetooth Problem?

aiv4r

Agree on this one. The crashes should be Priority #1 to fix in any sports watch, that is the main task of a sport watch. (And it probably is prioritized at Suunto and other warch brands).
After saying that, in reality is not a huge issue on the user end, watch restarts and one can start activity again. (Yes I know it is annoying to merge 2 fit files after that). But frustration level when that happens is through the roof and I think my mental state would be so much better if crashes would never happen

P.s.: only had 2 crashes in my 8years with Suunto watches (1xVertical, 1xSuuntoRaceS)

elbee

@sky-runner said in [. There are no multiple processes. All of them run a single process.]

Are you sure? While I run, I can still receive notifications and the weatherfore cast is updated in the background.

Most sportwatches use very simple operating systems, and specifically s+ apps don’t run in a sandbox. We agree there. But it will be a bit more complex than a single thread.

Suunto support doesn’t help very much when you report crashes. They advised me to do a restart of my watch. Well, that is quite stupid if you report a crash, during a race. They didn’t sound like it was a serious problem, nor did they intend to report it to the developers. I told them to report it, but I highly doubt they did. They just closed the issue.

sky-runner

@elbee said in And Suunto does it again: mid-activity crash on Suunto Race:

But it will be a bit more complex than a single thread.

I never said there is a single thread. Most likely it isn’t a traditional program but some sort of bare metal system which is driven by various events or interrupts from sensors, timers, etc. I have some experience developing baremetal code that runs without an OS… Also, I watched a hour long interview with a Garmin developer that shared a few interesting specific details about Garmin software, specifically that everything, including all apps runs in the same single process. Of course I don’t know how exactly Suunto software is built, but I think there should be some similarities with Garmin software considering that the hardware is similar. From what I read pretty much everybody uses the same NXP SoC.

Olaf Gottschalk

@Dimitrios-Kanellopoulos said in And Suunto does it again: mid-activity crash on Suunto Race:

@sky-runner nope. That’s not it. Suunto plus can crash and many user space stuff.

Hi Dimitrios - crashed again today. 2 crashes within 3 days. This is simply sick and defeats the complete purpose of a sports watch!
Today it crashed after only one hour. Didn’t notice it and since it did not resume recording my activity is more or less destroyed by Suunto.

I do NOT use any Suunto plus apps or whatsoever, it is the plain core Suunto App recording a bike ride.

This is not okay.

sartoric

@Olaf-Gottschalk

Are you using a custom sport activity or a default one ?