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Garmin Instinct Solar fails to show complete details of outdoor bike activity after temporary stop (ex. Coffee break)

I recently purchased an Instinct Solar and I also own an Edge 830 bike computer. I've noticed on two separate occasions that if I have any sort of a temporary pause (say stopping for coffee), the Instinct fails to provide a complete picture of my ride. I have auto-pause set to kick in whenever my ride drops below 5km/hr and was set to SMART for recording intervals. It's also connected to my speed and cadence sensors.

The image below is from the Instinct Solar and the red flag shows where I stopped for coffee. At this point, the data should have shown that I had ridden over 60km's.

The image below is from my Edge 830 and a far more accurate representation of my ride. The edge is also connected to the same external sensors.

The data recorded on the Instinct occurred when I hit the GPS button at the end of my ride at which point I could see that some how the distance and average speed was off. What especially baffles me is the fact that the data on the instinct should have at least corresponded with what's on the map. But it's like the watch some how reset when I started to travel again after my break or perhaps when hit the GPS button at the end of my ride.

As I mentioned above, I do have auto-pause on in the hopes that I don't have to touch my watch until the end of my ride when I want to save and record my ride. I will also add that I did hit the back button to view the normal clock and then re-entered the activity using the GPS button. But I was very careful not to stop the activity.

Here's another recording of the Instinct. The colored sections represent what was accurately recorded whereas the blue section began to appear after I stopped for a break:

Same ride from my Edge 830 which accurately recorded the ride:

Am absolutely baffled as to why this is happening. I am guessing the blue indicates that somehow that Instinct 'saw' the trip but didn't record the data.

Any advice on how to ensure I capture the complete ride data would be greatly appreciated.

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0 razmichael over 3 years ago

I can't provide anything definitive (although we have an Instinct in the 'family', I don't use one) but will offer some bits and pieces.

Firstly you are using Smart recording but notice a poorer path - that is to be expected with Smart. Unless you really have some reason to use Smart, stick with 1 sec (normal) as there is really little reason to use Smart under normal use.

Regarding the other issue, auto-pause is best suited to short pauses (at intersections etc0 so if you are pausing for an extended coffee break, the watch may be going into the auto-save mode (same as when you manually pause for an extended period of time). different models will spend different amount of time in a paused mode before saving and going to a resume later mode (for battery life). not sure how long with the Instinct. You can also stop and Save for Later manually hen resume. (although I understand the Auto Pause advantage).. You may also be see some issue with reconnecting to the sensors after the extended pause.

Again, other than the Smart recording issue, I'm just throwing some things out for the main issue - hopefully someone with an instinct and a similar use case can provide more substantial suggestions.

0 7179860 over 3 years ago in reply to razmichael

First off, thank you. I'd welcome any suggestions. And, very much as you suggested, I've switched to 1 sec recording as to see if that helps. The thing I can't understand is that if the extended pause is causing auto-save to kick in then I should have a record but that doesn't seem to be appearing in the most recent instance. But I will try the extended pause if the 1 second interval doesn't work.

The sensor point is another interesting observation. I have wondered if something was going on there as well. One thing that's not obvious is whether my sensors are connected to the Instinct via Ant+ or BLE. At one point it was connected both ways. I ultimately removed one of the connections but it's just a guess as to which one as the watch doesn't give you enough info to tell which type of connection is being used. I naturally want ANT+ as the Edge is using the same sensors.

Thank you again for the suggestions!