Major tracking issue on running activity

Former Member over 5 years ago

Around 20th of January my Fenix 5 Plus started to act very inaccurate into my daily running trainings. I use to run into the same circuits so I know well where every "km" mark is. Suddendly my device decided to shorten some segments between 3rd and 4th Km of activity or randomly between other intervals. It uses to do it once per activity resulting some crazy lap intervals of 1km in 2'30" or 2'06" (which is clearly IMPOSSIBLE :)).

I did a complete reset of the device once, then activating GPS + GLONASS and GPS + GALILEO with "every second" recording-mode. After one activity of regular tracking the device started to "eat" from 200 to 400m into some intervals (like described before).

I did a complete reset AGAIN, without importing the data history of my recent activities, then again activated GPS + GLONASS and GPS + GALILEO in "every second" recording mode. Again no luck with that.

I wrote to Garmin support just describing this issue and they actually told me: "Why don't you try to perform a reset and then activate GPS + GLONASS?".
.....
Guessing they don't read e-mails properly.

Anyway. Anyone experienced this issue? My device has always been fully updated (currently on 10.10 latest software device, updated through Garmin Express on OSX environment)

Here's an example of what happens into my GPS track when it comes the issue. It's kinda "drift" effect isn't it?

Any help would be highly appreciated, thank you!

0 sakis MT over 5 years ago in reply to Former Member

In the link below you will find an article with the description of EPO.BIN and what is it for.

https://support.garmin.com/en-AU/?faq=6IbaJEHc1i9gydzQomXzyA

Maybe it is worth to try to exclude the possibility of having issue with faulty or expired EPO file.

Manually delete (or move it to a different folder as a backup) the EPO.BIN file from your watch (..\GARMIN\RemoteSW folder) and let the device to automatically re-download its latest version during the synchronization with GCM or via Garmin Express.

You may check the status of the EPO on the watch by going to the watch menu > Settings > About > scroll until you see the EPO screen. If everything is fine it should show EPO: Current.

0 Former Member over 5 years ago in reply to sakis MT

Thank U Sakis!
I've spent last couple of hours trying to get some infos on EPO.BIN and I've noticed my device says EPO: Current as it shoud be.

I'll try to see if tomorrow's activity will be fine as the one I did this morning, then I'll check EPO.BIN status again.
Is it possible that Garmin Express synchs a bad EPO.BIN? Because I've precautionally uninstalled and then re-installed also Garmin Express too!

0 sakis MT over 5 years ago in reply to Former Member

I experienced few months ago on my Edge 830 that despite having EPO:Current status the file itself was not up-to-date (I checked it in the file properties on my PC) and I had a lot of issues with GPS tracking. After manual deleting EPO it was re-downloaded by the device during next sync and I've had no problems with it ever since. Most probably the EPO file was corrupted in my case so I thought it is worth trying this solution on your watch too.

0 Former Member over 5 years ago in reply to sakis MT

Today is my second run without this issue. So.. finger crossed!
EPO status says "Current" but I'll try to delete and then re-upload it if necessary
thank you!

0 Former Member over 5 years ago

Update: no way to get this thing fixed.
Again after the hard reset it performed two activities without issue, since the third the problem came out again. Same course, two different spots. I don't know if it would be something related to data-storage causing this problem.

0 JeyJey over 5 years ago in reply to Former Member

Have u got enabled the autopause feature? Today i have been doing a trekking with this feature enabled, when i saw the activity finished on the GC i realized that in every stop i made during the track, the gps signal jumps to other points diferents from my original track and back again to my real route. I just disabled this feature in all my activities and i will try it again to check if it could be root cause.