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Very long routes

A week ago I took my 1040 Solar (FW 17.29) on a 600km ride. I had a single GPX track that I imported and uploaded through connect (mobile). Selecting and loading the track worked good and quick enough. Overall navigation experience was good, battery performance was also okay'ish, but I expected more (I had to recharge to be able to reach the destination after 36h) There were a few things that went not so well.

rendering performance:

- sometimes the map view did not draw new content until only the lower quarter of the view showed something

- rotation of the map after a turn was very slow and delayed (seconds)

- switching to the list of upcoming climbs took 10 seconds and more. The previous screen was visible for that time until suddenly the list appeared. swipe gestures and Di2 commands were queued, so in the beginning i often pressed multiple times, just to "overshoot" after the list of climbs was finally calculated.

navigation and climb pro:

- after deviating from the route/course, it took minutes after returning to it, that the current position was matched to the route and navigation continued

- climb pro was often lagging, sometimes it showed that the climb was done when there was clearly still some 10s of (steep) meters left to the peak

- when approaching a climb and switching away from the climb pro page that "announces" the climb, I do not expect that it will switch back the climb pro page when the climb starts. This was very annoying combined with the long time to render the list of upcoming climbs.

- is there a rule to wich page to switch when a climb is done? it seems random, sometimes it is page 1, sometimes the page that was left when the climb started, sometimes just any page.

after the ride:

This was actually the biggest bummer. After stopping and saving the ride, the device started to sync and sync and sync and would never stop. I restarted device and phone - the usual drill. Nothing was synced or uploaded. I tried Garmin express on the Mac, which was at least showing an error message that the activity was corrupted and could not be synced.

I used mass-storage to get the fit file and upload it to Strava, which did not complain and just accepted the file, everything was there, all sensor data, etc

I was not able to sync new activities, until I deleted the long, "corrupted" one.

I had a lot of trust in all Garmin devices I ever used, also on the long Brevets. I never felt the urge to "double record" - I guess at least for the next one I will.

If this is useful for Garmin QA or engineering, I can provide the fit file, logs if the exist, etc. I can also send this to an support email address if needed.

Thanks,

Roland

  • Garmin’s decision to remove “smart” recording has a big impact on the size of activities especially for the longer brevets which then flows on to sync time and possibility of something not being right and corrupted recordings, when I complained the support persons were disbelieving that users might want to ride 600, 1000, 1200 kms. Current bugs with courses especially with Turn Guidance disabled makes a backup device almost a requirement now on longer brevets, I love the screen and battery life (I can get 80+ hours) but am becoming more disappointed with the software with each release. F

    ps for brevets I find the standard elevation screen more than enough and ride with climb pro disabled as it has a fair few issues of its own and seems a processor / battery sink.

  • Thanks for the tip to disable climb pro. I'll try that. It's sad that a successor of a device performs so much worse in certain categories ... 1030 was fine. I wonder why I need such a long battery life, when I'm not supposed to ride that long. It could be a multi day recording - doesn't need to be "in one go"

  • L Rouge, I have been mounting my Edge 1040 and carrying my Edge 1030 Plus for a year or so.  Admittedly, I do two to three hour rides, but the 1030 Plus files are about 20% larger than the 1040 files.  Data Recording on the 1030 Plus is set to 1 second.  For power and cadence, both units are set to "Do not include zeros". As an example, today's ride generated a file of 696kb on the 1030 Plus, and 534kb on the Edge 1040.

    I agree with you that very long rides have a bigger chance of generating a bad FIT file.  I would try to save portions of the ride when I came to a rest stop - maybe 100km or 150km.

    I also find that my Edge 1040 is very sensitive to touch - I have had it save or delete a ride while I am dismounting the unit from my bike.

  • I have been riding with a 1040 Solar and 1030 Plus for over a year. I adopted the practice of using 2 different GPSs starting with the 2015 TCR owing to reliability issues with Garmin Edge products of the era. I have always ridden with 1 second recording. I can't think of the last time I've had a corrupt file, but I can't swear it hasn't happened in the last year. Regardless, I still carry 2 GPSs because I keep one on the map screen and the other as my instrument panel. Meanwhile this IP unit has its map screen at 10x the zoom of the other. A single press of the left Di2 A button is configured to bring up the map screen. So if I happen upon a confusing roundabout or go off course, this setup mitigates time spent manually navigating. OK, enough about me.

    I too have found the latest ClimbPro to be very slow and have disabled it. Like L.Rouge, the standard elevation screen is adequate. But I sure wish we could pan the course analogous to the map.

    I suggest breaking up your activities to no more than 24 hours in length. Having such a large activity "in memory" is kind of asking for trouble in my simple mind. Plus it aids in tracking your Eddington Number. Oops. There I go talking about myself again.

    FYI, on my last 600k, I recorded 34:12 of activity over the 2 days of riding The GPS reported 3:16 of solar charging and ended with an indicated 36% battery

  • Thanks for sharing your experiences. For the 600k I did last weekend, I started to record in parallel using my watch, but forgot that restart it after I stopped it at a longer break :-)
    Before the ride I resetted the 1040 and did only a minimal setup. I also disabled ClimbPro. The unit worked much better, the long delay matching to route/course after deviating from it remained though. Battery life was way behind what you are describing. after ~28h of use I got the warning to battery saving mode and I recharged the device. solar charging gave about 80min of battery life according to the summary report.
    The activity file synced fine (after the usual turn off/turn on dance ... seriously, this is like a bad joke about computers from the 80s ...)
    I guess I will use GPS only for the longer rides to improve battery life and no multi-*, at the risk of position drift and bad or no matching to the route. I saw that before, riding for an hour in a parallel line, about 25m apart to the route. You loose upcoming turns, ETA, waypoints, etc ... this kind of navigation I can do with a paper map.


    (I have this device since more than a year and it still feels like a b- or c-sample ...)

  • after ~28h of use I got the warning

    What other settings do you have, backlight %, phone pairing, tracking???. During the day, especially if sunny, I have no backlight and at night maximum of 10% and mostly timeout of 30s, I can always just tap the screen if I want to check anything, no phone connection, GPS only and I consistently get 80h + , with the GPS only I get perfect route tracking, no issues. My rides are mostly very rural, no taller buildings and not much tree cover, I run it continuously with no auto pause as I use a CIQ field called "Time in Hand" which gives me my banked time at my current location. (I do though have Turn Guidance off and just follow the route line and/or have custom course points for turns and controls)

    PS I will experiment with the SatIQ / Auto GPS setting to see if that impacts the battery too much

    I also am having some problems with "ghost" Courses and the 1040 thinking turn guidance is ON when the switch is firmly OFF

  • backlight is on auto and turns off after 30s. I do have turn guidance on, a) for the chevrons which I do like and on 1040 you only get them with turn guidance and b) during the night the backlight turns on before a turn (took only 6 month after purchase for this "feature" to work). I do have sounds turned off and use the auto pause setting. There is only one CIQ field left that I'm using, it is called Super Randonnee and gives me all the data I need right on the map screen.

    I do see problems with positioning in forrests. Usually the iPhone does not have these problems there. I'd expect it the other way

  • The chevrons mostly worked with Turn Guidance OFF but there is a long running "Ghost Course "BUG which can remove them from the course. Previously this mostly occurred when Turn Guidance was OFF but since 17.26/17.29 seems to have infected courses with turn guidance ON as well, but it is not consistent and not on every ride.

    https://forums.garmin.com/sports-fitness/cycling/f/edge-1040-series/336365/ghost-course-chevrons-missing-wrong-navigation-instructions-17-29

    I don't like Turn Guidance as it generates far too many notifications, too many round-about alerts which translate to "continue straight ahead", I can see this from the map.  The SR field looks useful but with all those metrics and the grade re-processing could be processor and battery intensive?

  • The SR field looks useful but with all those metrics and the grade re-processing could be processor and battery intensive?

    This could be the case. I guess I will have to do a ride without and compare.

  • Found this thread because I was wondering whether to use the 3600k Race Around Poland as-is or cut it in smaller pieces. https://ridewithgps.com/routes/40166051

    Guess I found my answer (1040 solar here) Rofl