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Broadcasting Heart Rate to Garmin Devices

The instructions for broadcasting heart rate to my Edge 1030 work just fine. And it's nice to be able to track heart rate while I ride without the strap.

However ... once broadcasting HR, I haven't figured out how to get back to the watch face without turning off HR broadcasting.

Am I missing something or is this a Garmin "feature."

  • I have the same issue. I think, you have to see it as a feature, to watch the HR on the watch AND on your Garmin Edge ! :-)

  • I actually do the opposite, I wear my HR strap, and receive HR on both my Edge and VA4. I do this because otherwise my HR on Garmin Connect mobile doesn't represent actual HR while riding. To achieve this the VA4 needs to be in an activity at the time (I use indoor bike to minimise battery drain, since I discard the activity from the VA4 keeping the Edge activity only).  I believe that broadcasting HR from VA4 to another Garmin device also requires recording an activity at the time

    Assuming I'm correct, then the thing I've found let's me see the time is to scroll up or down to another screen, then scroll sideways left to right to see the time. Check if this works for you

  • You can't get back to the watch face without turning off broadcasting.

  • That is verifiably false

  • Great news. Verification?

  • Please share how do you do that.

    Maybe if you broadcast during an activity, then you should be able to return to the watch face without stopping the activity.

    But if you don't want to start an activity, just broadcast HR - then I don't think that is possible.

  • My answer is based on broadcasting during an activity (ie while recording). I've just checked and you are quite correct, there does not seem to be a way of moving away from the broadcasting HR 'On' screen (I apologize, I had not even noticed that option)

    What is the downside of using the Broadcast during Activity? I usually use the Indoor Bike activity (even though I'm usually riding outdoors) because I don't need GPS since I'm not going to keep the VA4 activity and I don't want the battery drain that goes with GPS. I haven't tested, but I don't see why the battery drain for a non GPS activity with HR broadcasting on should be any different to that from toggling broadcast HR on without an activity. If like me you don't want a duplicate activity in addition to that from the external device, then end and discard the VA4 one when done. If doesn't even need to be the "right" activity the what you are doing, just choose one an no GPS and minimal other things. You could also customise it right down to just the one screen if that suits.

    Anyway, as this boils down to viewing  the time during an activity, the steps are:

    • Start activity
    • Swipe from left to right to view time (scroll right)
    • Occasionally this does not seem to work, but then scrolling up or down to another activity screen 1st seems to help
    • Once on the watch face screen, you can then scroll up and down to any other of your regular (non-activity) screens/widgets
    • If you do nothing further, after a little delay it will return to the activity screen
    • Next time you scroll right, it will return to the last accessed regular screen or widget
    • If you want to go immediately back to the activity screen, scroll left

    I have checked that this works for my own favourite activities

    • Indoor bike
    • Cardio
    • Walk
    • Ski

    I am aware that there are some differences between activities, so you may want to check with others

  • Thanks, ianmiles. I'll try the "disposable"/"dummy" activity approach.

  • I found this tip elsewhere and did it today - using Bike Indoor, while using my Edge to record the activity. I found that the screen keeps reverting back to the activity. So, I changed one of the data fields to "Time of Day" on the Bike Indoor.