PulseLink — User Manual

1. Getting Started

Before you can use PulseLink on your watch, you need a free account. Sign up on the website, install the app via Connect IQ, and enter your credentials on your phone — your watch logs in automatically.

1. Sign up at easymoat.github.io/pulselink/register — you'll receive a welcome email.
2. Install PulseLink on your watch from the Connect IQ Store.
3. In Connect IQ Mobile on your phone: open PulseLink settings, enter your email and password.
4. Set your nickname (and, for Leaders, your Crew name) in the Connect IQ phone app — these fields support Japanese and other 2-byte text.
5. Open PulseLink on your watch — it logs in automatically and lands on the Watch Face Home.

2. Watch Face Home

When PulseLink starts, you land on the Watch Face Home — your everyday watch face, with the clock, your optional image, weather and daily metrics. PulseLink is two things in one: a watch face when you're on your own, and a live Crew view when you run together. (Customize the home in chapter 5.)

From the home, tap the screen or press START to open the You menu, then choose Link up to create or join a Crew. Members join free with an invite code; Leaders create Crews and need a subscription — but the first 14 days are free.

The You menu holds your personal settings, grouped by what they do: Link up (join, create or leave a Crew), Watch face (everything about how the home looks — chapter 5), Share (what your watch sends — chapter 4), Alerts (what interrupts you) and Heat stress (chapter 8). Settings you touch while running live in the Crew menu instead (long-press the Crew name row).

Leader states explained

• 14 days free — You haven't created a Crew yet. The trial starts when you create your first Crew.
• N days left — Trial in progress. Subscribe before it ends to keep leading.
• your own Crew — Subscribed. You can create and manage Crews freely.
• Trial expired — Trial ended without subscribing. Leader is locked; Member still works.

3. Crew Screen

Once you Link up, PulseLink switches from the home to the Crew view — every Member of your Crew with their live heart rate, steps and distance. Tap or long-press different rows for different actions.

Interactions

• Tap anywhere / START button (short press): refresh — push your latest data and pull other Members. This is the only send path when Update interval is set to Manual.
• Long-press the Crew name row (top): open the Crew menu — everything you touch while running: Update interval, My weather / Member weather toggles, Alerts (message & join alerts, Crew distance), Heat stress, plus Crew admin items for Leaders (see chapter 7).
• UP button (long press): open the Messages feed from anywhere on the Crew screen.
• Long-press a Member row: open the Member menu — Send message (to that Member; recipient can be switched to Everyone or the Leader on the send screen) or Move to... (change that Member's position in your list).
• Long-press your own row: jump straight to the position picker (move your row in the list). Personal settings live in the You menu on the Watch Face Home (tap the home).
• Long-press the date row (bottom): open the Messages feed (same as UP long-press).
• Long-press weather bar — left half: open the info loop (weather details → compass → altitude → pressure).
• Long-press weather bar — right half: jump directly to the compass page (same loop, page 3 — DOWN/UP to cycle).

Status marks

The letter to the left of each name shows where that Member is — not what they share. Data always follows their own Share switches (chapter 4).

• * (green): online and on the Crew screen — watching along with you.
• L (grey): online but on their watch face, so they may not notice things right away. Their data is still shared as usual.
• Z (white): offline — the app is closed, sharing is paused, or the watch is out of connection. Values show as "--".
• M (red): unread message from that Member.
• O (cyan): Leader is in Observe mode (watching without sharing their own data).

Color coding

• Yellow nickname (with Z icon): Leader is paused or away.
• Red date: unread messages in the feed — open Messages to clear.
• HR number color: white by default. With the Heat stress monitor ON, the HR number is colored by that Member's heat tier, from Safe (blue) up to Danger (red) — see chapter 8 for the full color scale and how tiers are shared.

4. Sharing & Privacy

PulseLink gives you independent layers of control over what your watch sends to the Crew. None of these affect what others share — only your own broadcast.

• Go back to the Home (BACK) — while you are on your watch face, your Crew-mates see a grey L next to your name, meaning "not looking at the Crew screen right now". It is a presence hint, not a privacy setting: your data keeps being shared exactly as your Share switches allow. To stop sharing data, use the Share toggles or Pause sharing (see below).
• Share → Heart rate / Steps & Distance / Weather — Toggle individual data types (You menu on the home). HR off means others see your steps in the HR position.
• Share → Location — Off by default. When ON, your position appears on your Crew-mates' compass radar (see chapter 9) so you can find each other on the trail. While sharing is on, PulseLink keeps your position up to date wherever you are in the app — on the watch face or the Crew list, not just while the compass is open. If a fresh position cannot be obtained, your old one is not sent as if it were current: your Crew-mates see your last known spot with the time since, instead of a stale position pretending to be live. Turn it off any time — your stored position is cleared immediately.
• Share → Image / Camera — Leaders only. Image shares the picture currently on your watch face; Camera shares your PulseLink Cam feed (chapter 12) as its own channel — so your Crew can watch the camera even while your own face shows something else. Both are off by default, and either one appears in your Members' Image source list for them to choose.
• Update interval — How often you broadcast. Leader sets it for the whole Crew (10s ~ 10min, or Manual). Member can follow Leader or override locally to Manual.

5. Watch Face

The Watch Face Home is a full watch face you can keep on all day. Set the clock style, a background image, colors, and which daily metrics appear — all from You → Watch face (tap the home to open the You menu).

The Watch face menu is ordered the way you work: Display (what appears) → Clock style, Image and Image source (how it looks) → Color.

• Clock style — tap the item to cycle Hands (analog) → Rim marks (minimalist ticks) → Digital; the change applies instantly. Optional minute ticks around the rim (Watch face → Display → Clock ticks).
• Colors — 6 backgrounds, 12 clock colors, 6 weather-bar colors (Watch face → Color). Items are named after what they color — Weather bar, Physical bar, Hand color, Clock color — matching the Display menu.
• Weather bar — Watch face → Display → Weather bar shows or hides the conditions bar on the watch face. The Crew list has its own switches, and they live where you use them: long-press the Crew name row → My weather (your bar in the list) and Member weather (other Members' weather in their rows). So you can keep the bar on the face and hide it in the list, or the other way round.
• Physical bar & rim meters — Optional daily metrics right on the face — steps, calories and more in the physical bar, plus slim rim meters for battery and Body Battery / Stress.

Watchface image (Leaders)

Leaders can show their own image on the PulseLink watchface (home screen) — a photo, team logo, or any symbol. You upload it from the website; the watch downloads it via your phone and shows it automatically the next time PulseLink starts. On the upload page you can drag the image to position it and zoom to frame it before sending.

• Placement — tap Image in the Watch face menu to switch Upper (top half) ⇄ Center (centered, full size); applies instantly.
• Image source — one place to choose — Your watch face shows exactly one picture, so there is exactly one item to choose it: Watch face → Image source. It lists everything available to you in a single column — Slot 1-5, Camera (if you run PulseLink Cam, chapter 12), Leader's image and Leader's camera (if your Leader shares them) — and the current one is marked "current". Whatever you pick is what appears; picking an empty slot goes back to the default artwork.
• Share with your Crew — Leaders can share their image with the whole Crew (You → Share → Image). It then appears in every Member's Image source list as Leader's image (they choose it when they want it). Placement is always your own setting.
• Image slots — keep up to 5 — You can keep up to five images on the server and switch between them without uploading again. On the upload page, pick a slot (1-5) before you upload; a dot marks a slot that holds an image and a star marks the one your watch is using. Selecting a filled slot loads that image into the preview — at the size and color count it was saved with — so you can see exactly how it looks before you switch. Change the active image from the page ("Use this slot on my watch") or on the watch itself: Watch face → Image source.

6. Messages

Send messages two ways: pick one of 20 template slots (5 pre-filled; edit them in the Connect IQ Mobile app), or type a free-text message on the spot.

How to send

1. Long-press a Member row on the Crew screen.
2. Pick a template from the list — or pick "Type a message…" to write your own.
3. Recipient defaults to that Member. Tap the To: row to switch to Everyone or the Leader.

Free-text messages

"Type a message…" opens the on-watch keyboard — type and send on the spot. With the Instant Keyboard in Garmin Connect on your phone you can also type 2-byte characters (Japanese and other non-Latin scripts) and send instantly.

Reading messages

Unread count shows on the Crew name row (N new in red). To open the feed, either long-press the UP button or long-press the date row at the bottom of the Crew screen — both jump straight to the messages.

Alerts

Msg & Join alerts (You menu on the home, or the Crew menu) notifies you of new messages — and, for Leaders, new join requests. Tap the item to cycle vibe + tone → vibe only → off; a preview plays so you can feel the difference. Default is off.

7. Crew Admin (Leader)

Leaders see the admin items right in the Crew menu (long-press the Crew name row) — full control over who can join, who gets banned, and the invite code.

• Invite code — Show the 8-character code to share. Reset it from this screen — the old code stops working immediately.
• Join requests — Approve or reject pending Members. The pending count shows on the item, and new requests fire the Msg & Join alert (see chapter 6).
• Members — Tap any Member to kick (temporary) or ban (permanent).
• Banned users — Review and unban.
• Leader mode — Participate (broadcast your data) or Observe (hidden, no broadcast).
• Rename Crew — edit the Crew name in the Connect IQ Mobile app settings (any language supported).

8. Heat Stress Guide

A personal heat-strain indicator that combines current temperature, humidity, your heart rate and Body Battery into a single 5-level rating. Information only — not medical advice.

Opening & toggling

1. Long-press the Crew name row → Heat stress, or on the home: tap → You menu → Heat stress.
2. Tap the Monitor button at the top of the screen, or press START, to toggle ON / OFF. Default is OFF (seasonal opt-in).

What you see

• A 5-level tier with color: Safe = blue, Caution = green, Warning = yellow, Severe = orange, Danger = red.
• Estimated WBGT, Feels like, Humidity.
• Your current HR and %HRR (with a note if your HR is high for the current heat).
• A short advisory line that scrolls if long.

On the Crew screen

When Monitor is ON, your HR number on the Crew screen is colored by the current heat tier (blue → red, same scale as above). Members who also have Monitor ON share their tier with the Crew — you see their HR in their own color too. Members with Monitor OFF stay white. The assessment runs every 60 seconds.

9. Compass

A simple rotating compass for trail runners and hikers, behind the weather bar.

How to open

Long-press the right half of your weather bar — on the Crew screen or the Watch Face Home.

Radar — waypoints & Crew locations

On top of the compass, a GPS radar shows nearby points as markers around you — with their bearing and distance. It's built for the outdoors: a light "just in case" safety aid for trail runs, hikes and climbs, so you can find your saved spots and your Crew.

• Save waypoints — Press MENU (or long-press) on the compass → Radar menu → Save here to store your current location. Saved spots appear as blue markers with a number. Select a saved spot to Rename (give it a short name) or Delete. Up to 8. Crew Leaders can also Share a waypoint to the whole Crew, so it appears on everyone's radar.
• See your Crew — Crew-mates who turn on Share → Location appear as green markers with their initial. Opt-in and off by default — no one is shown unless they choose to share.
• Name or distance — Tap the screen (or START) to switch every marker's label between its name and its distance from you.
• High-precision GPS — On supported watches the radar uses multi-band, multi-GNSS positioning for the best accuracy in valleys and under tree cover. Positions are shared at full precision (no rounding).
• Altitude difference — In distance mode each marker also shows how far above or below you it is (e.g. +150 / −80 m), so you can place your Crew even on a mountainside where a flat map falls short. Differences under 5 m are hidden to reduce clutter.
• Navigate to… — Radar menu → Navigate to… lets you pick one target (a waypoint, a Crew-shared spot, or a Member) and switches to a single big-arrow view that points straight at it, with the live distance and altitude difference below.
• Freshness — A Crew position that hasn't updated recently shows its age (e.g. "12m") in place of the altitude, so you know how current each marker is.
• My position — Radar menu → My position shows your own latitude, longitude and altitude in large text (about 1 m resolution) — handy for reading your exact coordinates aloud to rescue services if you ever need help.
• Your own track — The radar leaves a faint breadcrumb trail of where you've been, so you can retrace your steps. Radar menu → Clear track resets it.
• Stray alert — Crew menu → Alerts → Crew distance (200 m / 500 m / 1 km / off) sounds an urgent alert when a location-sharing Member drifts farther from you than the chosen distance — a heads-up before anyone gets lost.
• Choose what the radar shows — Radar menu → Radar display cycles through Places + Members → Places only → Members only → Off. Off clears the whole overlay — markers, rings and your track — leaving a plain compass. Your choice is remembered.
• Hide a single waypoint — Select a saved spot and turn Show on radar off to keep it saved but off your radar (the list marks it "hidden on radar"). Hidden spots are still available under Navigate to…, so you can head for one without putting it back on the dial.

About the altitude difference: each watch measures altitude with its barometric altimeter, which every device calibrates on its own. So the altitude difference to a Crew member (a reading from their watch versus yours) can show several tens of metres even when you are standing in the same spot — it reflects the gap between the two watches' calibration, not a fault. The altitude difference to your own saved waypoints is always consistent because it comes from the same altimeter. For the closest agreement between watches, calibrate both altimeters to the same known elevation. Your watch's sensor mode also matters here — with "Barometer only" the altitude stops changing as you climb and these numbers become meaningless; see chapter 10.

Location sharing is always opt-in and off by default. Positions are stored only while you share and cleared the moment you turn it off.

10. Weather

The bottom weather bar shows current conditions synced from your phone — temperature, humidity, wind direction & speed, pressure, altitude, and an icon for the weather state.

Wind direction icon

A kite shape (chevron) — the pointed end shows where the wind is heading, the notched end shows where it's coming from. This is the standard meteorological convention.

⚠ Your watch's sensor mode — important in the mountains

Your watch has one barometric sensor, and many models let you decide how it reads pressure changes — Auto / Altimeter only / Barometer only (Settings → Sensors → Altimeter, or Barometer → Sensor Mode; the exact path varies by model, e.g. Venu 4: Settings → System → Altimeter & Barometer → Sensor Mode). This setting is part of the watch, not PulseLink, but it directly changes what PulseLink can show you.

• Auto — best for everyday use: the watch decides: pressure changes count as altitude while you move, and as weather while you are still. Everything in PulseLink works. This is the right choice unless you have a reason to change it.
• Altimeter only — best for hiking, trail runs and climbs: every pressure change is treated as altitude, so your altitude follows the climb quickly and reliably. This gives the most trustworthy altitude difference to your Crew on the radar. The trade-off: while you stay in one place for a long time (a long rest, a night at camp), passing weather slowly drifts your altitude, so re-calibrate at a known elevation.
• Barometer only — avoid while using PulseLink outdoors: altitude is frozen, as described above. The pressure reading and its 3-hour trend (rising / falling) stay correct in every mode, so you do not need this mode to watch the weather.

No Sensor Mode on your watch? (Venu 3 / 3S and similar) — nothing to worry about. Those watches still have a barometric altimeter; they simply manage it for you, which behaves like Auto, and every PulseLink feature works normally. There is no mode to avoid. What matters on these models is calibration: Settings → Watch Sensors → Barometer → Calibrate, where you can enter a known elevation or let the watch calibrate from GPS.

Before a trip with your Crew: switch to Altimeter only and have everyone calibrate their altimeter to the same known elevation at the trailhead. The altitude difference on the radar compares one watch's altimeter with another, so matching calibration is what makes those numbers agree (see chapter 9).

11. Account

Most account tasks are done on the website, not the watch.

• Register: easymoat.github.io/pulselink/register
• Forgot password: easymoat.github.io/pulselink/forgot
• Delete account: easymoat.github.io/pulselink/delete
• Nickname / Crew name: Set in the Connect IQ phone app → PulseLink settings (supports Japanese and other 2-byte text).
• Cancel subscription: Use the Stripe Customer Portal link in your activation email.

12. Camera (PulseLink Cam)

Turn a spare phone into a still camera and watch it from your wrist. A photo is taken every 2 minutes and becomes your watch face image — handy for keeping an eye on a pet while you are in another room, or on the garden while you are out. It needs no app: the phone just keeps a web page open.

Setting up the camera phone

1. Plug the phone into power and place it where it can see what you want to watch.
2. Open easymoat.github.io/pulselink/cam in the browser (Safari on iPhone) and sign in with your PulseLink account.
3. Press Start camera. A dashed circle shows exactly what will be sent — the round area your watch displays. Aim the phone until your subject sits inside it.
4. Leave the page open. It keeps the screen awake by itself; if the status line says the wake lock is off, set Auto-Lock to Never on the phone. Use Darken screen to black out the display while the camera keeps running.
5. On the watch: You → Watch face → Image source → Camera.

Reading the picture on your watch

• Capture time — the time printed at the top of the image is when the photo was taken — not the current time. It turns yellow once the picture is more than 30 minutes old, so a frozen image (phone asleep, watch out of Bluetooth range) never passes for the current view.
• How fresh it is — the phone takes a photo every 2 minutes and the watch checks for a new one every 2 minutes, so the picture on your wrist is typically 2-4 minutes old. Transferring an image over Bluetooth is what sets this pace; shooting more often does not make it arrive sooner.
• Night vision — dark photos are automatically brightened, denoised and rendered in night-vision green, so a dim room still reads at a glance. It switches on and off by itself as the light changes. Note that pitch darkness stays black — a small night light makes a big difference.

Viewer — watch and adjust from any screen

easymoat.github.io/pulselink/view shows the same camera on any phone, tablet or PC, at full quality and much larger than a watch face. Sign in with your PulseLink account; the page shows the capture time and how long ago it was.

If the camera is yours, the Viewer also controls it remotely: pause and resume, take a photo right now, zoom, brightness, colors, black out the camera phone's screen, and the night vision mode (Off / Auto / Always). While you are adjusting, the page refreshes every few seconds so you can see the result quickly — a change usually reaches the camera within 10-30 seconds. Members watching a Leader's shared camera can view it but not control it.

Sharing the camera with your Crew

Leaders can share the camera with the whole Crew: You → Share → Camera. This is separate from sharing your watch face image, so your own face can show anything you like while your Crew watches the camera. Members pick it up with Watch face → Image source → Leader's camera, and it keeps updating on their wrists too. Turn the switch off and it stops appearing for everyone.

What you need

• The camera phone — iPhone 5s or newer (iPhone 8 or newer recommended, so the page can keep the screen awake by itself), or an Android phone with Chrome. On older iPhones use Safari — other browsers could not reach the camera before iOS 14.3.
• Power and a foreground page — keep the phone charging with the page in front. Phones stop the camera when a page goes to the background; that is an operating-system rule, not a PulseLink limit.
• A light on the watch — the phone's torch can be switched on from the Viewer, but only on iOS 17.5+ or Android; on older iPhones the web has no access to the light and the button is greyed out.

13. Troubleshooting

Compass froze on the last frame

See chapter 9 — this is Garmin's CPU budget protection. Press BACK and restart PulseLink.

Stuck on "Connecting..."

• Check that your watch can reach your phone (Bluetooth connected, Connect IQ Mobile running).
• Confirm your email and password in Connect IQ Mobile → PulseLink settings — even one wrong character blocks login.

"No weather data"

Your phone hasn't synced weather to the watch recently. Open the Garmin Connect app on your phone with internet access, then re-open PulseLink.

Trial expired but I want to keep leading

Open the You menu → Link up → Create a Crew; your Device ID is shown under it. Subscribe at easymoat.github.io/pulselink with that ID — you'll receive an activation key by email.