24.19 - Home update and Ant+ connectivity issues

Do you have wi-fi enabled on the 1040 during the activities / workouts even if it is not actually connected to anything. With my trainers (Tacx Flow & Flux S) they would have some disconnects if the 1040 had Wi-Fi enabled but not have disconnects if Wi-Fi is disabled., my experience anyway, many many rides over the last two years. The disconnects would be mostly power, rarely speed or cadence and previously (up to FW 20.xx) a lot  of disconnects to the resistance control from the 1040 to the trainer resulting in the resistance level continuing at the same level it was when disconnected regardless of grade changes, this would continue until I disabled / enabled the "trainer sensor" and then it would work again. All mostly stopped when I disabled wi-fi on the 1040.

I tried with WiFi disabled, no changes to both the behaviours 

As you know the Garmins are not without their "issues" so some of these might be actual bugs, I have no experience of calendars and workouts so can't offer any help there. 15 years of using Garmins has taught me that sometimes (often) they can get confused. My theory is that due to sloppy programming various memory locations, system tables etc are not cleared / initialised consistently and get "full" / corrupted leading to odd behaviours. When ever my devices (including 1040) start doing "odd" things I do a factory reset and todate this has fixed the problems for the next few-many months. The restoring of settings, sensors, profiles etc from a prior sync via GCM  is much better than previous devices and usually only leaves some of CIQ fields / apps and phone / wi-fi config to be manually re-entered. (my experience anyway)

I appreciate that but I do heavily use the calendar and workouts and this problem with the refresh of the home and disconnection of the trainer is really annoying. Very weird it hasn't been fixed at all

When you say " random turbotrainer disconnections" what exactly do you see. When I had this problem there was no "disconnect" notification but a few seconds later there would be a "trainer connected" notification. Using the ANT+ RX/TX log (in the "hidden" debugging menu) I could isolate the ANT messages in the log to to around that time and actually see the messages returning or sending rubbish messages. During the 20xx beta the trainer disconnects really annoyed me and I spend days chasing these, results summarised below,

https://forums.garmin.com/beta-program/edge-1040-series/public-beta-bug-reports/i/edge-1040-series---20-xx-bug-reports/20-13-previous-indoor-trainer-resistance-control-stops-following-a-disconnect-re-connect

I never go any feedback from garmin but as the beta progressed and I feed test results for each version and the disconnects reduced and finally stopped and have remained stopped (for me)

I appreciate it is very annoying.

What I see is that while pedalling my power, speed and cadence go to zero then resume one second later. Not a proper disconnect from the computer

Ok, the cause then is likely interference between the Ant messages and other transmissions from other radio frequency sources, wi-fi, ANT Bluetooth and many many other devices share the 2.4 GHz frequency band, many of them are very crude like door bells without any regard to other devices. Ant “should” work properly in this noisy environment but clearly does not, BT has better error correction but is not supported for all sensors.

This is why some trainer suppliers have started having usb direct wired connection ports or Wi-Fi between trainer and trainer app.

Unless Garmin can fix Ant the only thing you can do as a user is minimise interference by limiting other sources, not all are under your control of course. My trainer is in the garage of my apartment block and dozens of wi-fi or BT sources show up if I scan the frequency band, those closest generally have the highest strength and those are generally my phone or other devices.

If I want a good trainer session I have to disable wi-fi, BT on my phone, 1040 and have no other close sources, then it works without issues, mostly as other sources might still cause interference. If I am using a trainer app on my phone or computer rather than the 1040 to control the training it uses BT and I have never had a dropout or disconnect or gap in the trainer data.

if you find another solution there are thousands of us who would like to know.

That's annoying and very disappointing

So where should I disable bluetooth and wifi? On the 1040 or elsewhere? I usually keep my phone around as I listen to music on headphones that are connected via bluetooth to the phone.

It is an easy & reversible experiment to disable connections to see IF that solves your disconnect problems. Then you can toggle (re-enable) connections one at a time to see if just one is the problem, when you know which one(s) cause the issue you can decide if you can live without that one(s).

1. On the 1040 disable both Wi-Fi & Phone (BlueTooth), on mine just having Wi-Fi enabled but not connected to anything was enough to repeatably cause disconnects.
2. On your phone disable both Wi-Fi & Bluetooth (might have to use wired headphones for music?)
3. On any other nearby device (tablets / ipads / computers) disable Wi-Fi & BT (especially important on devices that might have once been connected to the 1040 with either ANT+ or BT)

Do enough workout to be confident the issue would have shown normally (without the disconnections), do a few trials to ensure you have enough evidence of a changed state.

If you get no disconnects then you can evaluate the utility of various connections against a better workout

The calendar / home screen issue might just be a bug or the functionality you are looking for might not be covered by the current implementation?

If you still get disconnects then perhaps you have to move to an app using BT rather than using the expensive 1040?

Good Luck, otherwise you might have to put the trainer/bike inside a Faraday Cage ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage  )

PS I have no Wi-Fi access point / router in my garage where the trainer is so you might have to account for that

Thanks for the steps, really appreciated. I hope you understand this is ridiculous for a product on the 500+£ range...

The calendar updated is just poor software because by hard switching off and on it works well but again, ridiculous at this price point.