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Disappearing course points/waypoints

I have a route created on Garmin Connect with 93.2Km (see https://connect.garmin.com/modern/course/25133309). I marked 13 waypoints along the route to mark relevant reference places, summits, etc. While this detail is irrelevant, my waypoints are at about Km 2, 8, 16, 18, 25, 27, 35, 38, 43, 46, 59, 64, 68. This is mostly a road course.

Since I know pretty well the area, I just want follow the course and I do not want Turn By Turn navigation, so it is switched off, as well as automatic recalculation. But I want to have an accurate "distance to the end" and "distance to the next course point".

When I load the course at my departure point, I go to the course point screen and I see the 13 course point clearly listed. And when I start the course, the distance to next course points displays accurately the (decreasing) distance to the first point, about 2Km away. However, a few hundred meters later, the distance to the next course point jumped to course point at 25Km. I go to the course point screen and the first 4 course points disappeared. A few kilometers later, without any apparent reason, the next course point is already at Km 43, and well before 20Km are made the "next course point" was pointing to the course end at Km 93.2. Note that I never went off course, neither I never got a "off course" warning. Since I am cycling at reasonable speed, I am not sure when the waypoints disappear, but I noticed that, in some cases, the "distance to end" flashed (went blank by a few tenths of a second), but I am not sure if this coincided with the "disappearing" waypoints.

While I am listing a very specific example, in fact the same happened to me all times that I used the 820 in the last few months. I never was able to have the course points working, which are a very relevant feature to me.

I am quite frustrated, since this mode was my main use of my edge units. I used this feature without any problems with the 800, Touring plus and even the 820, at least up to firmware 3.2. I am not sure when this feature stoped working, since I was almost off cycling from November 2016 to April 2018 for medical reasons, so I skipped several firmware versions. But I have reasons to believe that it was still working on version 9.0.

Any hint regarding how to solve this issue would be welcome. Since it may be a configuration problem, I list my relevant settings below. Am I forgetting anything relevant? Thanks in advance.

Navigation > Courses > Saved Courses > Turn Guidance -> OFF

Navigation > Courses > Saved Courses > Off Course Warning -> ON

Settings > Activity Profiles > Train (the one I use) -> Navigation -> Routing Mode -> Mountain Biking

Settings > Activity Profiles > Train (the one I use) -> Navigation -> Calculation Method -> Minimize Distance

Settings > Activity Profiles > Train (the one I use) -> Navigation -> Avoidance Setup -> (all off)

Settings > Activity Profiles > Train (the one I use) -> Navigation -> Lock on road -> OFF

Settings > Activity Profiles > Train (the one I use) -> Navigation -> Recalculation -> OFF

 

  • None of those settings are relevant to course points.

  • Ostensibly they don't, but who knows?  Can you suggest other setting that might be relevant and affect the problem one way or the other?

  • I agree, in principle. But since this seems to me a navigation related issue (not map based navigation related, but course path related anyway) I felt it was better to give some context. Is there any other setting that can affect this issue?

  • ???

    It makes no sense for them to be relevant (and that's the case for all of the units).

    It's wacky behavior that isn't useful at all. It would be peculiar for there to be a relevant setting.

    I haven't seen reports of it happening to other people.

  • You said the settings were "relevant".  I'm making it clear that they aren't relevant so that you (or anybody else reading this) won't expect that messing with these is going to do anything. 

    There wouldn't be a relevant setting because the units aren't supposed to work the way you are describing.

    ==========================

    The behavior you are describing is wacky and random. 

    The normal behavior is to drop the course points from the list after you've passed them.

    It sort of looks like the unit was having trouble determining your location.

    What does the recorded ride look like?

    Note that the units can need some time to get a GPS fix if they have been moved a long distance while off or not used for a long time.

  • It sounds like some of the settings cached in memory have gotten corrupt.

    I would suggest backing up your unit (see instructions below). Performing a reset and then restore your settings.

    Non-prompted Non-Vol Clear - Clears NV and deletes all FIT files including Activities, Courses, Workouts.

      1. Turn device off
      2. Hold Lap/Reset and Start/Stop
      3. Press and release the power button
      4. Continue to hold only Lap/Reset and Start/Stop
      5. Release Lap/Reset and Start/Stop when the Garmin Logo is cleared
      6. The unit will restart and clear non-vol

    This is the process for an Edge, but it is very similar for the watches, just some of the folders are named a little differently.

     

    On the Edge go down in to the Garmin folder and select all the folders and copy them to your PC. Don’t copy the files in the Garmin folder otherwise you will be there all-day copying maps.

     

    On you PC you have the following folders

    Follow the guide below to decide which files you need and where to place them on the new unit or the original unit after a reset.

     

    Folder Name

    Contains

    Restore contents to this folder on the new unit

    Activities

    Activities

    Activities

    Apps

    Connect IQ apps

    Copy prg files to Apps

    Courses

    Courses

    NewFiles

    HMD

    Screen layouts for HMD

    NewFiles

    Locations

    Saved locations

    NewFiles

    Records

    Personal records

    NewFiles

    Segment_List

    Leader board selection for segments

    NewFiles

    Segments

    Segments

    NewFiles

    Settings

    User profile and sensor pairings

    NewFiles

    Sports

    Screen layouts

    NewFiles

    Summary

    Activity summary from other devices

    NewFiles

    Totals

    Activity totals

    NewFiles

    Workouts

    Workouts

    NewFiles

    Multisport (Watches only)

    Multisport settings

    NewFiles

  • Thank you, aweatherall. You must be right. Today I made a a soft reset and, while in a different course, all waypoints were at the correct distance. The single strange occurrence was that, after a short off course section of about 100m, and upon return to the course, I lost the distance to the end for a few kilometers -- it became fluctuating around 900m. Oddly, the distance to the next course point was correct  (about 5Km-7Km at that time). Everything came back to normal after I went again off-course due to road works for 300m and return back to course. Maybe some of my complains of the last few months are in fact a side effect of some corrupt parameters cached in memory. I will try a full reset as per your instructions.

  • Unhappily, it seems that the reset does not fully fix this problem. I performed yesterday an hard reset as per instruction. Today, over a third course of 55Km and about 15 waypoints, everything seemed OK at the beginning. However, as soon as I shortly passed under a bridge, I got an off course warning due to lack of GPS signal (this is normal), but as soon as it displayed the "course found" message the next three waypoints disappeared. The distance to the end recovered correctly. The same happened upon passing under a second bridge a few kilometres ahead. Near the end of the course, when I went again shortly off course for 200m, I got again the same strange behaviour of yesterday: the unit was unable to recover the correct "distance to the end" upon returning to the course, which remained stuck at about 200m, while the distance to the next course point recovered OK and it was accurate.

    I can only guess that the latest software versions are full of heuristics to solve specific TBT navigation problems (which are quite hard to solve, I recognise), but that such heuristics rules produce undesirable side effects to the few of us that prefer to simply follow courses, keeping  TBT off and not use onboard routing based on maps.

    I wonder if there is any way of downloading and install old firmware releases, where I know that some of these features worked better, in spite of a few differen bugs.

  • Agree totally.  I never said it made sense for them to be relevant. However, if something is not working correctly, it may be influenced by some seemingly unrelated setting.   Without knowing the detailed inner working of the software, we can only guess as to what might be interrelated.   In reporting bugs, giving as much context as you can is good as it will help the engineers in reproducing the problem or narrowing down where to look.