ACC-05: Garmin watch integration

Last updated:

Part of the EchoVision Wish List, under Accessibility and Other Products.

The need

Owners who exercise want to hear their workout numbers without looking at anything: heart rate, calories, elapsed time and distance. The owner who asked uses a Garmin watch on an elliptical machine. They want to ask EchoVision by voice, and to hear updates at a set interval, such as heart rate every six minutes.

Today's workaround

  • Garmin's own audio prompts. Some Garmin watches speak some numbers at set times, from the watch's speaker or to Bluetooth headphones. They don't give every number on demand; total calories and elapsed time are missing.
  • The glasses as Bluetooth headphones. The glasses can play the watch's or phone's audio. This adds nothing new, and it may stop the prompts playing from the watch's own speaker.
  • Point the camera at the screen. Live AI or Scene Description can read a watch or an exercise machine's display. It works on a machine with a large screen, but a small watch screen on a moving wrist is hard to read mid-workout.
  • Ask the phone assistant through the glasses. Another owner suggested this. The owner who asked reports it didn't return their Garmin numbers.

What it would look like

  • The glasses get live workout numbers from the watch, or from the Garmin Connect app on the phone.
  • You ask in plain words: "What's my heart rate?" or "How long have I been exercising?"
  • You can choose updates at a set interval, and which numbers they include.
  • The watch's own audio prompts keep working as before.

Pros and cons

Pros

  • A real need for blind people who exercise, and hands-free: no phone, no pointing the camera, no touching the watch mid-workout.
  • Fills gaps that today's workarounds leave: numbers on demand and the owner's choice of updates.
  • Many blind people already wear a fitness watch, so it could help more than one owner.
  • Could start a wider way to bring outside devices' data into the glasses, alongside other app integrations (APP-05, ACC-04).

Cons

  • Outside the glasses' main job of reading and describing what's around you, so it competes for time with reading accuracy, Live AI and languages.
  • Partly possible today: the watch speaks some numbers, and the camera can read a machine's screen.
  • Depends on Garmin: what it lets other apps read, and whether that changes. Owners of other watches (Apple Watch, Fitbit, Samsung) would soon ask for the same.
  • Spoken updates at an interval need a new control or setting, and must not talk over other speech (guiding principle 2).
  • Live data needs a steady link between the watch, phone and glasses, and may use more battery (guiding principles 4 and 5).
  • Health data is private and needs careful handling.

Open questions

  • Which route could give live numbers: a Garmin Connect IQ app on the watch talking to the EchoVision app, the watch's heart-rate broadcast over Bluetooth, or Apple Health and Health Connect (which may only update after a workout syncs)?
  • Should it be Garmin only, or a general fitness-data feature that works with several watch makers?
  • Would a general way to ask the phone's apps for information meet the need instead of a Garmin-specific feature?
  • Could interval updates belong to task modes (LIVE-02) rather than a separate setting?

History

  • November 4, 2026: Under review. From a discussion on the EchoVision Community Forum.