UT800 and Varia RTL light network not forming

Yes, you can reach out to me directly. I am located in USA. Troubleshooting includes ensuring I have latest updates, 1040 device power down and restarts, sensors removed and added, reset 1040, and others I may have forgot. I even try superstitious stuff like powering on 1040 and just letting it do its thing before I calibrate power meter or even moving the bike. 

My headunit does not power up/off the varia taillight. It does seem to automatically control the front Bontrager ion200 rt; it seems to operate fine when using the Bontrager app. The rear varia radar has trouble forming a light network and is either unresponsive or slow to change settings. It depends on whether I'm using the baked-in 1040 app or Bontrager's app. They exhibit different levels of control.

Princess what do your settings look like on the edge in Settings > Sensors > Lights > Network Options > Light Beam Activated ?

Do you keep your radar in standby mode? (side LED light will flash blue every once in a while) or do you start with it completely off? 

It's set to timer start. I also have auto pause on. The light network doesn't work when I click start. I'll press start, but because I'm motionless it auto pauses; neither the taillight, nor the headlight turn on. I go into the Bontrager app and manually turn them on before setting off. I would assume there would at least be a flash of light from both the front/rear lights after pressing start; but nothing.

I turn my radar off after every ride. I turn the radar on at the same time as the headunit. I noticed that if I leave the headunit in sleep mode after completing a ride. It will sometimes affect the zeroing of my power meter. It will report the calibration as 0. If I restart the headunit, then recalibrate it will report an actual number, such as 907.

I just tested the power meter issue and it remains the same anytime I put it to sleep. If I use the sleep function, upon waking the calibration will report 0, but say successful. 

I tested turning off auto-pause, and the varia radar turned on, however, the front light did not. I went into the Bontrager light app to turn the front light on and adjust the rear from solid to flashing. I have both lights set to day flash.

Some newly discovered issues:

1) Battery life level not reporting correctly- readout for both headlight and tailight was at half-charge at the beginning of ride. An hour into my ride I was getting reports of low battery for both units, which turns out to be accurate, as the low battery led (red flash) was seen on tail light.

2) Light network reforming/dropping- this is my first experience with this. It happened over and over. I tried pausing my ride and restarting the headunit. I also stopped running my Fenix 6 watch in tandem. That seemed to solve the problem. The watch seemed to be reforming network over and over, but also reported in the headunit. I had to manually go into the Bontrager app to control the lights; it kept resetting to off when light network was lost.

3) Unit powers up during charging

Have you tried the light network on the Edge without having the bontrager app also connected/controlling it? it could be causing interference. 

Which unit powers up while charging? The Edge or light?

Ok. So I tried uninstalling all other light control apps and it kinda sorta worked. The taillight works upon starting an activity, but the mode was not correct; the headlight didn't power up. I put the unit to sleep, then powered it back up and it seems to have resolved the issue: both the front and rear power up during an activity AND in the correct mode. 

The headunit powers up when plugged in for charging. I think my previous 530 did this also.

The next issue I'm seeing is that after I fully charge my headlight it does not report as fully charged. It's reporting one bar short of charge. The varia radar reports correctly.

Yes, US. 

By the way, I had an awesome tech support person that I talked with at Garmin on this issue. She recommended Garmin replace my headlight and it's worked flawlessly since I received the new unit! My best guess is that there were some really faulty units that were shipped in the last couple of monhts. 

The issue I'm having now is that my radar will just say disconnected during a ride but it's still connected. It doesn't happen every ride (like the headlight did) but going to watch for a pattern and request a replacement if it continues.

As expected, the way the headlight works now is as follows:

• Remove it from the charger and attach to bike
• Attach Edge 1040 to bike
• Turn on headlight, one minute press on the power button
• Turn on Edge 1040
• Everything works perfectly
• On ending the ride, turn off Edge 1040
• Turn off headlight and put it on the charger

Thanks all! This has been frustrating but nice to get it resolved.