Split when there aren’t samples

Is there any way to split a segment even if that segment doesn’t have enough samples?

Scenario 1: my phone died at home and I traveled to the repair shop where they revived it. Arc understandably records all that time at home and jumps to the repair shop for when my phone turned back on. I had Strava running to have a record of my time and location (and honestly could not figure out how to get that info into Arc… is that possible?) but I couldn’t split the home segment into walk, bus stop, bus, bus stop, bus, walk, repair shop.

Scenario 2: I know I started cycling at 10:40 but there’s no way to split this into stationery and cycling. (I’m honestly just bummed that my data is off this early into the new year :laughing::nerd_face:)

Any workarounds?

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Unfortunately there’s no easy way :disappointed: If the data isn’t there, it isn’t there.

But you could fake it, by editing the LocomotionSamples JSON file for that time period, and inserting some fake LocomotionSamples with new timestamps, to fake up some data that you can then work with.

You’ll find the LocomotionSamples file in your Arc backups on iCloud Drive. It’ll be the most recent week file in there. To import the edited file back into Arc, copy it into the Arc App/Import/LocomotionSample folder (you’ll probably have to create that last folder. Then go into Arc’s Backup, Import & Export view from the Settings tab, open the File Importer, then you’ll see the file listed there and you can tap on it to import it.

It’s a bit of a tricky process, especially editing the JSON, if you’re not familiar with JSON! Let me know if you need more details.

Exciting! I’m not super familiar with JSON but do have a habit of mucking about in things I don’t entirely understand because patterns are fun to figure out!

So I’m looking in that file, and I would’ve guessed that with the screenshot above, there would be a sample with a timestamp at 10:17:51, and another at 11:06:44, but nothing in between. But I see:
“timestamp” : “2022-01-03T10:17:52Z”,
followed by
“timestamp” : “2022-01-03T10:20:09Z”,
“timestamp” : “2022-01-03T10:22:56Z”,
and 15ish more until
“timestamp” : “2022-01-03T11:07:04Z”,

What am I missing!

Well that’s odd. Are you sure you’re not looking at the wrong samples due to timezone offset?

There’s also a possibility that some samples were orphaned during some processing, and that’s what you’re seeing. Though the fact that there’s no sample for 11:06:44 makes me suspicious.

By orphaned samples, I means samples that have become detached from their parent TimelineItem (which are the visits and trips between that you see on the timeline view). If something goes a bit wrong when the processing engine is merging, splitting, etc, samples can temporarily get detached and have no parent item. The processing engine will later find them and reattach them to a suitable parent item, so it’s typically self healing before you’d notice.

You can tell if they’re orphaned by the lack of “timelineItemId” in the JSON (or perhaps it’ll show as a nil timelineItemId - I forget).

If they are orphaned, then you’ll see them reappear in Arc, well, it should be almost immediate. Which makes me doubt that theory. But yeah, that’s my only theory at the moment :smirk:

Does it record in GMT? I’m in GMT-8.

Yep! It’s GMT. I think that’s what the Z means.

Technically the Z means UTC (Universal Time Coordinate), which is basically GMT, except with a rigorous scientific definition.

Probably makes no difference if you treat it as GMT or UTC unless you’re launching satellites or something.

I got it to work!! Finally!! At least for the single added sample from this year. Now to tackle scenario 1 from last year with many more fake samples. Thanks for your help!

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