Fenix 6X ANT+ Light Control - Bike Only?

I have a Fenix 6X and I have some ANT+ bike lights (Bontrager Ion/Flare).

I connected the lights to my Fenix, no problem.

I played with it some and they will automatically start when I go in to a bike activity, I thought: "GREAT! No more forgetting to turn on or off lights!"

It was raining that day, so I didn't get on my bike.  Well a little later I started a Strength activity and started weight lifting and low and behold, my Fenix was trying to connect to my Bike Lights ("Network Forming").  I went to the back room where my bike is stored and sure enough, the lights are on.

Am I doing something wrong or did Garmin just completely miss that there would be absolutely no reason to activate lights on my bike unless I am actually in a BIKE activity?

Surely I just missed a setting, otherwise this connected feature is completely useless.  I do weight lifting at home along with starting point for morning runs and other activities which are in range of my bike.

Any help with the issue would be appreciated.

  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 4 years ago

    I wounded if the problem still there?

  • Yes.  The problem is still there for the lights.  I have since added a cadence sensor and power meter to my bike, those try to connect when I am in "Cardio" activity.
    Garmin has some terrible engineers that obviously are not familiar with what these settings are.

    The only solution I have found was to get a dedicated bike computer and not connect any sensors to my Fenix, which is absolutely stupid, but I can't find a better solution and Garmin support is completely unhelpful.

  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 4 years ago in reply to N1CKV

    Thank you for the answer. Then I won’t try to connect mine. I disconnected my cadence, my fenix 6 went nuts with the speed... garmin is not on the top of line anymore...

  • You can turn the sensors off in the sensor menu to prevent the watch from forming the network with every activity.  You just have to remember to turn them back on when you go for a ride.  I have three Tempe sensors scattered about and I turn on the one I want for a given activity and leave the other two off (1 on running shoes, 1 on mountain bike, 1 on commuter bike).  It would be nice to map from the sensor pool to a given activity.

  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 4 years ago in reply to Dan.Boilermaker

    Of corse. But the thing is that you want it to work automatically. Garmin should connect to right equipment regarding to what activity you run. That shouldn’t be that hard to be done. 

  • I know this is an ancient thread, but I thought I'd chime in to say it's still a problem. FYI, on my previous Fēnix, the 5X, you could configure every activity to only connect the accessories you wanted running during that activity. I don't know when or why Garmin ditched that user control. Maybe they thought they could do a better job intuiting what people want with presets --spoiler alert: they can't. So yes, I have a foot pod that gets woke every time it happens to be in range of the watch when I'm doing a strength training activity, and bike lights, power meters, speed and cadence sensors that all blast away incessantly and with no intuition as to the activity I happen to be tracking.

    Manually turning them all off and selectively activating what I need for each activity is a huge pain in the you-know-what.

    FIX THIS, Garmin!