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Mountain bike navigation on the Edge 830 - please help me make it more useful!

ZillaG
over 5 years ago

I ride almost exclusively mountain bike now; just an interval training ride on my road bike on a pave path to put in the mix. I may be using the words course, route, and trail interchangeably.

I've had my Edge 830 for 3 weeks now and done 12 +/- MTB rides on it on trails that I know, using courses that I've created on Trailforks. I want to learn how to use the device this way before I venture out into courses that I don't know. Basically I want it to help me, duh, navigate! I want to be able to do something like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z771IpF1KWM, except on an MTB trail.

I have several issues I just can't seem to resolve.

1. I have turn guidance turned on because I want it to tell me WHERE to turn when there's a fork on the trail. Isn't this what the feature is for? However, it tells me to turn on EVERY bend on the trail thinking it's a turn. Well guess what, an MTB trail has LOTS of bends. This is driving me NUTS.

2. To makes matters worse, today I was no a course I that I know like the back of my hand. When I got to several forks (don't want to use the word turn here), the device didn't tell me which fork to take. How am I supposed to trust this on a less familiar trail system?

3. I just have one data screen (to keep it simple for now) that shows time elapsed, avg. speed, and heart rate that I want showing 99% of the time when I'm riding. I have my MTB profile to only show the map during navigation. However because of #1, I see the map screen more than I do the data screen, that is, it's navigating most of the time. See how #1 drives me nuts?

4. Zoom feature fiasco - I think this has been discussed enough on this forum. But yeah, it kinda sucks.

5. Around 1:45 of the video, the guy stops, and the Edge pauses, and he is able to swipe his screen from the map to the data screen. I tried to do this several times today, but couldn't swipe, that is, I swipe but nothing happens.

I hope a Garmin support employee who is a mountain biker that has and Edge 830 can chime in on this. I ride alone most of the time because I like going at my own pace, and hate being lost in the woods I'm not familiar with. I got the Edge 830 because it seemed to be the more mountain-bike feature rich device to date. I'm hoping it would've solve the navigation issues I had on the 520, but it seems worse.

HELP!!!

Top Replies

  • over 5 years ago +2

      Sorry to hear you are having trouble with trail navigation, that is frustrating. Here are some answers that may be helpful to the questions in your previous post:

    1. Please make sure that sharp bend…

All Replies

  • 0 over 5 years ago in reply to Former Member

    I also had the Edge 800, it was a very nice device. Thick lines for easy viewing on the go (but probably related to the relatively low resolution of the display).

    However, I also remember navigating with a compass, map and shady directions based on relative distance from guide books when mountain biking in the alps.

    So, compared to where I come from, I actually find the Garmin devices to be very nice and do not expect a car-satnav-like experience from my Edge 830, 1030 and Fenix 6pro. And yes, the software is sometime buggy, probably because Garmin tries to cater for everyone with a multitude of (often too much) functions etc. Still, the alternatives from other companies are often worse.

  • 0 over 5 years ago

    Did you try using Course Points? You can generate them with JaVaWa's RTWTool, or with RWGPS but then you need a paid account. Remember to save the track as .TCX or .FIT and turn OFF T-B-T navigation. The Edge shows the course - generated from the loaded track - as the wellknown dark purple line with black borders and the course points are shown on the map during the ride, depending on the choosen parameters in the RTWTool program - how far or how many seconds ahead of the turn to be taken.

  • 0 over 5 years ago in reply to bikepc01

    You shouldn't NEED to buy anything else to make an expensive bike GPS act like a GPS.

  • 0 over 5 years ago

      Sorry to hear you are having trouble with trail navigation, that is frustrating. Here are some answers that may be helpful to the questions in your previous post:

    1. Please make sure that sharp bend warnings are disabled in the mountain activity profile and that the routing mode is set to "mountain biking", these are default settings in the mountain profile.

    2. Can you provide a link to the activity and maybe point out where you missed the turn prompt for the forks? I'd like to investigate to see if the other direction at the fork is recognized within the various maps. That being said please make sure you have all the maps enabled on the device including the Trail Forks map. It may also be a good idea to plug your device into the computer and see if any map updates are available through express. 

    3. If this ever happens again you can also tap in the middle of the screen and use the arrow buttons  that appear at the bottom of the screen overlay to change screens. Also, disable sharp bend warnings.

    4. I saw you had made a comment regarding pinch and zoom but not being able twist a few months ago in another thread. I just tested the feature on current software version and pinch, zoom and rotation and all work great. Just tap the little hand in the middle of your map screen. Was there another issue that you were experiencing with the zoom feature?

    Thank you for bringing these concerns to our attention, we greatly appreciate your feedback.