Course limit on 1030 Plus

Microkid said:

On my previous Garmin 1030, the limit of 100 courses was not present.

Not true! See specs below!
The maximum has always been 100 courses!
 
buy.garmin.com/.../567991

And here are the specs of 1030 PLUS:

Hmm, can't remember ever hitting that limit on the 1030. But 100 courses is way too little :)

This is exactly the same as the restriction on the Garmin 1000. It's by design. What is annoying is that you get no warning when the course has failed to be added to the list due to that restriction.

It doesn't really have anything to do with the size of the files (at least, not with any fairly-new unit).

I suspect the firmware has a limit in the size of the course list.

The list probably can't be any size (the unit would run out of memory for really-large lists).

Somebody is going to not be happy with a particular limit.

Garmin never intended people to archive lots of courses on these devices.

I know it's not to do with the file size :-) I was just commenting (maybe not clearly) about this having been a legacy constraint :-) As such the limit may be just a historical carry over that hasn't been considered by Garmin in terms of opening that up for newer devices, it could be part of the core Edge software build and is the same for every device regardless of it's internal storage capacity.  I have reached the limit in the past with club ride courses as well as my own routes. I just 'culled' a few when the limit was reached. (Only discovered by accident when I added a route for the Sunday ride only to find it wasn't there on the day I needed it! OOOPS! The limit isn't well documented and must have cause confusion for many. I'm not sure (as I regularly back them up) if there is also a limit on the number of Activity .fit files, but seem to remember something about the oldest ones getting overwritten back in the Edge 800 days :-) Like many things Garmin, we can only guess at the reasons, as it would often appear that Garmin themselves don't even know ;-)

v1sionmaster said:

it could be part of the core Edge software build and is the same for every device regardless of it's internal storage capacity.

The "internal storage capacity" is the "hard disk". The course limit has nothing to do with that (there has been enough memory there for many, many years for hundreds of courses).

There is other memory: the "RAM". That's what the limit is preserving.

The Garmins sort that list by the distance to the start from your current location (or by name). If the list had no limit, this sorting might take too long (and lead to other complaints) for long lists.

There's a limit to the activity files too: it's either 200 files or 200 hours (not clear about which).

It doesn't seem that common that people have a problem with this. That suggests the 100 course limit isn't unreasonable. Picking a higher limit won't make everybody happy.

It would be nice if there was a notification when the limit was reached.

These limits are indicated in the device specifications (maybe, elsewhere too).

There will always be people for whom anything isn't "well documented"

Hmmm interesting - I hope it's not a hard disc ;-) Whether the course list is read directly from internal none-volatile storage or moved into volatile RAM first is perhaps debatable. From either it could be read directly :-) . Over a 100 courses would be unwieldy to scroll through, so we are only discussing the theory anyway and not the practicality. I certainly know people who have NEVER deleted their ride history and unless you need to keep everything - (I copy them to a backup folder for Golden Cheetah, in case I ever have to re build my training files) it's of no consequence. I've been using Edge devices for 10 years (not as long as some of course) and have had many discussions with Garmin about many aspects of some of these device constraints (not to mention all of the functions that don't work as described on the 1030+ and previously, 800, 810 & 1000 :-) More often than not they sadly simply can't tell, because their training doesn't cover that level of detail and everything has to be deferred to their main support in Arizona. It 'is what it is' and you have to feel for the UK first line support. I haven't heard anyone complaining about the 100 limit either and I'm not sure it would actually make anyone happier if it was increased - as long as you know it's there it's not an issue, as you can keep as many courses as you like in Garmin Connect :-) . I still think that there is a core software framework that carries much of the same rules for the majority of the Edge portfolio - it would make perfect sense if that was the case as then extra features could then be added model by model safe in the knowledge that the base framework would play nicely in all of them :-) .  

When I said 'it could be part of the core Edge software build and is the same for every device regardless of it's internal storage capacity' I used the term storage capacity as a simple generic analogy :-) As for well documented, if it isn't referenced in the full device manual and the only real information is in these forums then I'd say it wasn't well documented. I'm sure that we both read the manuals from cover to cover, use the forums and research thoroughly when finding an issue that doesn't have a direct answer provided by Garmin. 

Best wishes and happy cycling.... :-)

v1sionmaster said:

Whether the course list is read directly from internal none-volatile storage or moved into volatile RAM first is perhaps debatable.

The list is being read into RAM. At one point or another. It's the list in RAM that is being sorted and that you are selecting from.

v1sionmaster said:

Over a 100 courses would be unwieldy to scroll through, so we are only discussing the theory anyway and not the practicality.

If 100 courses is unwieldy to scroll through, a longer list would be even more unwieldy (which is one reason not to make the list even larger).

v1sionmaster said:

When I said 'it could be part of the core Edge software build and is the same for every device regardless of it's internal storage capacity' I used the term storage capacity as a simple generic analogy :-)

"internal storage capacity" appears to refer to the "mass storage" that comes with the device. The course limit clearly has nothing to do with the "mass storage", since the size of that has been big enough for a very long while.

Scrolling trough more than 100 could be a pain but since you can do a search on the device...

This would not be such a big problem if one could also do a search trough courses in garmin connect app. There is the list with my courses and then if I want to search/ filter I get al sorts of courses made by others in the neighborhood WTF