A small wonderful experience with open source

I have to say, I've been using Linux for a couple years now. It's a bit late for me to head back to Windows-land. But not in all the years I've been surround by open source software have I realized the beauty of it all, until now.

I have an old Garmin Vivosmart HR that had been gifted to me. I've been using it for a month or so. Very cool, keeps a lot of stats on me that I'm interested in. But as is very common these days, I simply downloaded the app and let it do the work. Access the data myself? I'd love to, but I doubt the manufacturer would make it easy.

The manufacturer did not make it easy.

But, the beauty of open source software, is that someone else has already done it.

I googled "Garmin Vivosmart HR Ubuntu", which lead me to this wonderful Github repo with naught but a single star (me, an hour ago). The lad's provided a lovely script for accessing the inside bits of my Garmin.

What do now with this?

The log files are in an encoding that is not UTF-8, so what do I do now? Give up? NO! Give up after failing to find someone who's already done the work!

This wonderful Github repo provides some Ruby (.. shudders ..) scripts for converting these files into human readable formats. Amazing!

Now with the help of (at least) two people that I don't know, whose work is fairly under the radar (compared to the latest Javascript doodad), I too have access to data I should've had from the get go. All because these fine people contributed their small bit of work to the public. Huzzah!