Some questions on operating this new beast of a watch..

Former Member over 6 years ago

Evening all!
I took the new 5S Plus out this weekend for a hike. I wanted to create a round-trip course on the fly, navigate using it, and try out a pile of data fields to see what worked and what didn't.
Taking things in turn:
1. Course creation: i could have done this in either Garmin Connect (synching the output), or on my watch (but not Garmin Explore, if i'm not mistaken?) - i chose Garmin Connect as i was indoors and it's easier and quicker. But some questions here: despite it being in the Cotswold countryside, and despite picking 'hiking' (as opposed to road cycling or running) it mainly stuck to roads, which was a little disappointing. Is there a way of forcing it to stay on tracks/trails/bridleways, where possible? And once the course is created, i found it difficult to 'drag' the route in order for it to take in certain sights/locations..it really wanted to stick with what it had created for me. Is there a way of asking it it to take in certain locations on the map as part of the course? Almost like creating direction 'via XYZ'. I couldn't find anything that let me do that, so had to take a few manual diversions...i know i can make 'freehand' alterations, but it would be great to have GC do the hard work, taking paths.
So all in all.... is GC the best application for this? or would the watch have been better? (or would it have been identical, using the same algorithmns, etc?) Or would Garmin Explore have been better, of only i knew how to use it...
2. Adding Course/Waypoints: i added a couple of Couse points (=waypoints?) on the course created by GC (the summit, for lunch, and a point at which we rejoined the main road, just to prepare for it), but when on the hike the 'Dist Next' and 'Time to Next' fields seemed to relate to the next turn in the navigation course, rather than the points i manually added. Does the process of course creation effectively create a 'waypoint' for every 'turn'? Should i therefore assume that 'waypoints' = 'turns' ? Is there a way of seeing the time/distance to a particular waypoint/course point that i manually add? Typically i'm keen to know, pretty early on in a hike, how far/long it is until a) lunch b) the top! I couldn't find a way of doing it though.
3. Fields i didn't understand: there were quite a few.
i) ETE: what does that denote? The estimate time to reach the end point? it was flicking about almost randomly early on, so i gave up on it.
ii) 'Dest. Waypoint' - what does that do? Is that meant to be co-ordinates of the destination? it was blank on mine
iii) 'Waypt. Next' - this was blank for the whole hike until my 'summit' waypoint was next, at which point it showed that waypoint name. So they're all unnamed apart from the ones i add manually (and name) ?
iv) 'Course' - this cryptically said '090' throughout. What's that? The name of the course? Wasn't what i'd named it.
v) VMG - this is the speed to the final destination?
vi) 'Vertical Speed to Tgt' - is this to a waypoint? or the highest point on the elevation profile?
vii) The navigation pages - two of them i think. Are these customizable? I found they added some of the fields i added manually, so a whole bunch doubled up.
viii) Red blob: what is that red blob bobbing around the inside of the bezel...is this the direction to the next 'turn' ?
4. On the maps screen: there are often three arrows: red, blue and white. What do each denote? It appears to be North (i.e. a compass) and current location for red and blue, but i have no idea what the white one is.
So overall, it worked out well, but a few things along the way had me pretty befuddled.
Post hike, a few more things spring to mind.
5. Locations not synching: i added a few 'locations' in Garmin Explore, and named them. I have synched my watch since, but they don't seem to show up on it. What am i doing wrong?
6. Garmin Explore generally: I am still looking for a full explanation of what Garmin Explore actually does. From what i can see, it adds Tracks and Routes (which seem indestinguishable from Courses to me) but cant actually create any, despite seeming to have the best looking maps. The pdf manual spends more time talking about messaging and linking to social media.

One other unrelated niggle, this time when running. The 'total time' field on my old 735xt kept the seconds showing when it got past 1hr of activity (e.g. 1:01:35) whereas on the Fenix 5 it seems to knock the seconds off and show 1:02.. which is a little annoying. Any way around that?

Crikey that was longer than i thought... partial answers/thoughts/comments are most welcome.
John

0 Notne over 6 years ago

Evening all!
I took the new 5S Plus out this weekend for a hike. I wanted to create a round-trip course on the fly, navigate using it, and try out a pile of data fields to see what worked and what didn't.
Taking things in turn:
1. Course creation: i could have done this in either Garmin Connect (synching the output), or on my watch (but not Garmin Explore, if i'm not mistaken?) - i chose Garmin Connect as i was indoors and it's easier and quicker. But some questions here: despite it being in the Cotswold countryside, and despite picking 'hiking' (as opposed to road cycling or running) it mainly stuck to roads, which was a little disappointing. Is there a way of forcing it to stay on tracks/trails/bridleways, where possible? And once the course is created, i found it difficult to 'drag' the route in order for it to take in certain sights/locations..it really wanted to stick with what it had created for me. Is there a way of asking it it to take in certain locations on the map as part of the course? Almost like creating direction 'via XYZ'. I couldn't find anything that let me do that, so had to take a few manual diversions...i know i can make 'freehand' alterations, but it would be great to have GC do the hard work, taking paths.
So all in all.... is GC the best application for this? or would the watch have been better? (or would it have been identical, using the same algorithmns, etc?) Or would Garmin Explore have been better, of only i knew how to use it...
2. Adding Course/Waypoints: i added a couple of Couse points (=waypoints?) on the course created by GC (the summit, for lunch, and a point at which we rejoined the main road, just to prepare for it), but when on the hike the 'Dist Next' and 'Time to Next' fields seemed to relate to the next turn in the navigation course, rather than the points i manually added. Does the process of course creation effectively create a 'waypoint' for every 'turn'? Should i therefore assume that 'waypoints' = 'turns' ? Is there a way of seeing the time/distance to a particular waypoint/course point that i manually add? Typically i'm keen to know, pretty early on in a hike, how far/long it is until a) lunch b) the top! I couldn't find a way of doing it though.
3. Fields i didn't understand: there were quite a few.
i) ETE: what does that denote? The estimate time to reach the end point? it was flicking about almost randomly early on, so i gave up on it.
ii) 'Dest. Waypoint' - what does that do? Is that meant to be co-ordinates of the destination? it was blank on mine
iii) 'Waypt. Next' - this was blank for the whole hike until my 'summit' waypoint was next, at which point it showed that waypoint name. So they're all unnamed apart from the ones i add manually (and name) ?
iv) 'Course' - this cryptically said '090' throughout. What's that? The name of the course? Wasn't what i'd named it.
v) VMG - this is the speed to the final destination?
vi) 'Vertical Speed to Tgt' - is this to a waypoint? or the highest point on the elevation profile?
vii) The navigation pages - two of them i think. Are these customizable? I found they added some of the fields i added manually, so a whole bunch doubled up.
viii) Red blob: what is that red blob bobbing around the inside of the bezel...is this the direction to the next 'turn' ?
4. On the maps screen: there are often three arrows: red, blue and white. What do each denote? It appears to be North (i.e. a compass) and current location for red and blue, but i have no idea what the white one is.
So overall, it worked out well, but a few things along the way had me pretty befuddled.
Post hike, a few more things spring to mind.
5. Locations not synching: i added a few 'locations' in Garmin Explore, and named them. I have synched my watch since, but they don't seem to show up on it. What am i doing wrong?
6. Garmin Explore generally: I am still looking for a full explanation of what Garmin Explore actually does. From what i can see, it adds Tracks and Routes (which seem indestinguishable from Courses to me) but cant actually create any, despite seeming to have the best looking maps. The pdf manual spends more time talking about messaging and linking to social media.

One other unrelated niggle, this time when running. The 'total time' field on my old 735xt kept the seconds showing when it got past 1hr of activity (e.g. 1:01:35) whereas on the Fenix 5 it seems to knock the seconds off and show 1:02.. which is a little annoying. Any way around that?

Crikey that was longer than i thought... partial answers/thoughts/comments are most welcome.
John

I'll bump this up because it's got a lot of good questions. I'm interested most in the one I've highlighted in red and underlined. I'm often confused about the arrows and their orientation as well.

Thanks -

0 crutlefish over 6 years ago

1: Create courses in GC website, sync via phone. The routing is based upon popularity for that activity. If 1 person choses the footpath over the hill, and 9 people chose the path along the road it'll default to the road. You can force it by dragging a marker from the line to where you want to go. This is the nature of the beast, and does require you to spend some time considering the route (which is no bad thing given the trouble you could get yourself into blindingly following a computer algorithm).

2 + 3: The manual will likely answer that for you, very much worth a read. For reference, using the 5+ as a runner, cyclist, hiker, and swimmer, most of the data points the device provides are interesting, but rarely useful for my needs. You'll probably find you'll just reconfigure the entire data screens several times as you work out what you need, and what is nice to have quick access to (don't forget that you can change the configuration of screens even during an activity).

4: The blue arrow is you. The red arrow is compass. White arrow is direction of travel along the course being followed.

5: No idea.

6: I believe it's there for being able to, without internet access, generate waypoints etc. With the Fenix 5+ I believe you can then say "navigate me to this way point using your clever map stuff". I've yet to really use and abuse it because GC does all I need at the moment (see 1), but I've got some adventures planned which I can test this stuff out.

0 Notne over 6 years ago

1: Create courses in GC website, sync via phone. The routing is based upon popularity for that activity. If 1 person choses the footpath over the hill, and 9 people chose the path along the road it'll default to the road. You can force it by dragging a marker from the line to where you want to go. This is the nature of the beast, and does require you to spend some time considering the route (which is no bad thing given the trouble you could get yourself into blindingly following a computer algorithm).

2 + 3: The manual will likely answer that for you, very much worth a read. For reference, using the 5+ as a runner, cyclist, hiker, and swimmer, most of the data points the device provides are interesting, but rarely useful for my needs. You'll probably find you'll just reconfigure the entire data screens several times as you work out what you need, and what is nice to have quick access to (don't forget that you can change the configuration of screens even during an activity).

4: The blue arrow is you. The red arrow is compass. White arrow is direction of travel along the course being followed.

5: No idea.

6: I believe it's there for being able to, without internet access, generate waypoints etc. With the Fenix 5+ I believe you can then say "navigate me to this way point using your clever map stuff". I've yet to really use and abuse it because GC does all I need at the moment (see 1), but I've got some adventures planned which I can test this stuff out.

Thanks, crutlefish! I'll check out the arrows as you've described them.

Much appreciated!

0 Crispin_Ellisdon over 6 years ago

For Point 5, It’s likely you have a “Collection” in Explore that is configured to sync with your 5+; not the whole “Library”. If those Waypoints you created are only in the Library and not added to the Collection, then they won’t sync with the 5+. Essentially Explore stores all of your Waypoints, Routes and Tracks in the “Library”, but it is assumed that you won’t want to sync your entire Library with all your devices, so it only syncs what you put in the specified Collection to the device. If you’re familiar with iTunes for managing music then: the Library concept is the same, Collections are equivalent to Playlists and the sync is the same as if you specify only one Playlist to sync with your iPhone/iPod.