Is anyone having trouble with cycling cadence? I did my first outside ride with my Fenix 5x connected to my Wahoo cadence sensor. I failed to configure a page in the cycling app for cadence before the ride so was unable to monitor cadence during the ride (added now). At the end of the ride, F5x reported average cadence of 35; I typically maintain a cadence of between 85 and 95, so this is way off. The other oddity was that the graph of cadence on GC was flat at 35 rpm. There were no spikes where I pedaled hard and no valleys where I coasted. This sensor worked fine with my F3, so it seems like an F5 issue. Anyone else?
I've only had one ride with my 5x, but the cadence was right on track with that recorded by an Edge 1000, which was also recording.
CAVEAT: My cadence is being broadcast by a STAGES power meter. (power was also spot on when recorded by the 5x).
I know in the manual (and from comments in these forums) that power and cadence sensors don't work correctly unless you properly set the wheel circumference on the watch. Is it possible your wheel size is off? I don't have a bike power/cadence sensor, so I can't speak from experience, but just wanted to offer this as one possibility.
Thanks for the reply but a simple cadence sensor has no relationship to wheel size. Definitely speed and power sensors do. I'll have to see what happens on my next ride.
Again, I don't use bike sensors so I readily admit that I'm speaking from a place of ignorance. I'll just note that even if cadence shouldn't depend on wheel size, the fenix 5X instruction manual says to set the wheel size correctly before using "an optional bike speed or cadence sensor." So it might be worth just trying it out to make sure. Might be a quirk in Garmin's programming?
A bike cadence sensor measures how many times the cranks and pedals turn per minute. This is unrelated to wheel size.
In the past, cadence sensors were not standalone things, they were part of "speed and cadence" sensors. The speed part measures RPMs at the wheel, then multiplies by wheel size to get distance, which is part of speed. The reason Garmin's manual is worded the way it is is that cadence-only sensors still aren't terribly common in use, a lot of people are still using combined speed and cadence sensors.
Power meters also have nothing to do with wheel size. Some power meters report cadence (my Vector 2 does). Pedal-based power meters need the watch to know how long your crank arms are in order to report power correctly.
I have several rides with my F5x and Vector 2 reporting power and cadence, no speed sensor, just GPS. The watch does not know my wheel size. Cadence (along with power and distance) match across my devices. Here's a ride file:
Thanks, NorthCascades. I have no experience with power meters yet, but all the rest of what you say is consistent with my experience. I'll have to see how it goes on my next ride.
I have a set of the newer (individual) Garmin cadence and speed sensors on each of my two bikes, they seem to be working fine, cadence is smack on with my historical data.
