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Broadcast heart rate intermittently stops working

jjbuchan
over 2 years ago

While cycling I broadcast heart rate from my Fenix 6X Pro to my Edge 1040.  On my last two rides the Edge would randomly stop displaying the value despite the watch typically still showing that it was broadcasting.  Sometimes I can fix it by waiting a little bit and then restarting the broadcast, but most of the time I end up having to restart the watch, wait for heart rate to be measured, then start broadcasting again... then keep an eye on it until it fails again.

I suspect the cause is the Fenix rather than the Edge since sometimes when trying to start broadcasting it will switch to the "Stop" view for an instant before moving back to showing "Start".  I'm not sure why the watch would fail to broadcast so quickly?  Also, power/cadence sensors on the Edge have never had this issue.

This has definitely happened in the past but was rare enough to not cause too many problems, but for it to do it twice in a row is concerning.

I've attached screenshots of the last two rides.  You can see there does not appear to be any pattern in why/when it drops off.

Any ideas?

Edit: I'm on v26.0

  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 2 years ago

    hi,

    I would not rule out the edge as source of the drops

    looking at the provided hr graph

    • there are the high ridges when starting to log after loss (edge suspect)
    • the low ridges picking up hr around 70bpm (fenix suspect)
  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to Former Member

    Anytime I restarted the watch it would always be slow to return to the expected value.  I'd see it at 70-90 before making it's way up to 130-150.  If I waited longer before restarting the broadcast or was able to broadcast without rebooting the watch, the "correct" value would be stored.

  • 0 over 2 years ago

    Hi jjbuchan,

    I have the same issue as you have mentioned so I did a factory reset on my edge 840 to start with but still had the same issue so I did a reset on the Fenix 6 but the issue continued so I had an old Fenix 5 which has not been updated for a while and tested it over the last few days with the same edge 840 and all worked fine I think it's the latest firmware but not to sure if Garmin is aware of the issue I'm hoping it gets picked up by Garmin and fixed on the next firmware release I'm guessing it's a function not may people use so it's not been reported much

    PS I'm on Firmware 26.00 so the same as yours

    I've just emailed [email protected] asking if they can advise if it's firmware I will update if I get a reply.

    Looks like Firmware 26.00 is still Beta 

    Garmin releases Beta Version 26.00 to Fenix 6, Enduro, Marq, Quatix 6 and Tactix Delta as new Release Candidate. Garmin is finalising its latest round of alpha and beta updates for the Fenix 6 series and its counterparts.6 Jun 2023

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to JohnBairner

    morning john bairner

    did you get a solution to the problem? i have the exact same issue, my garmin fenix 6 stops broadcasting to my edge 530 and i have to start it again 2 - 3 times on a 60 km ride.

    Regards mark

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to Mark Koehler

    Morning Mark 

    No update from Garmin so far however I have gone back to using my heart rate strap as it just works 

    Cheers, John

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to Mark Koehler

    I am having similar issues with my fenix6 & edge530, I also get where it has stopped &  I press the start button and a few secs later it stops and I can repeat for multiple times, I have close off the broadcast and restart, I seem to always have issues when I riding near my vo2max and doing some efforts, I have also noticed on the edge530 it doesnt pickup the HR even though the broadcasting is on

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to lopey66

    Wish Garmin would find a solution for this issue

  • 0 over 1 year ago

    I contacted Garmin support via a chat a while ago and they were very hesitant to report it as a bug on their end.  I can see from the version data in Garmin Connect that it definitely started with the v26.0 update.

    A workaround for this is to configure the watch to broadcast during an activity, and then start recording a bike ride on it as well.  In that case I haven't had it drop off in the middle of a ride - if it does drop it is always at the beginning, but once connected again it continues to work.  Obviously that will use up more battery so is just a workaround and not a full solution.

    I'm going to start another chat with them to push this further.  Having more people reporting the same issue should help.

    From what I can tell they do not look at this forum for bug reports.

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to jjbuchan

    Yes Starting an activity on the watch which seems to lock in the broadcasting its been longer issue than that, Dcrainmaker mentions timing out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuOcAP_7uec and suggest using a virtual run as the activity, I am going to use treadmill as virtual run requires pairing to zwift or another online app