945 appears to have lost GPS 32 metres into Open Water Swim

Dr Phil said:

But the swims are still being recorded without problems.

What? Without problems?



You have interesting way of thinking that those are without problems. It losts GPS in the beginning, when I'm still standing in the shore before going in, then catches somewhere in the swimming. Does not much make sense.

Battery wise, it  might be the case. We used to get notifications that the HR strap battery is low. Can't remember when I've last time seen those. Have to check it later, I'm now struggling with the new map update that does seem to again load the map forever compared to normal usage.

My apologies - Clearly I should have stated MY swims are still being recorded without problems - I could not access your links for some reason earlier. The picture on the right you posted does suggest the GPS signal is being lost and found. I take it you are swimming freestyle?

I had problems with the GPS being lost and found during swims some while back but haven't seen it on the 945 while swimming this year.

Couple of things to try:

• Swimrun with manual changing
• Recording the swims and runs as separate activities.

And open a case with Garmin Support.

BTW there have been issues with Garmin Express, which might explain your map update issues.

To me it seems that they both lost the signal in the beginning when I was still on the shore and then got it back during the swim. Yes, it was freestyle.

And after the first error in auto sports change I did disable it, so those swims are with manual transition. I pressed the lap, stand on the shore, put on hat and glasses and started getting into water. So plenty of time to have the GPS start.

Doing so many activities in own activities isn't really a option, it would be painful and you can't see the whole route in one activity (it would be like *** Strava for these and you have bunch of run and swim activities).

Update worked today, yesterday it was broken, but it took like 30 minutes after soft reset and a lot after the map was installed... Tried to boot many times and it was just slow and slow. Reinstall with 7.0.0.0 made it feel more like normal, still 1 minute to start from logo to time.

Here's mine from today. Auto swimrun did not auto change activities. When I did change to swim in the water it changed back to run after a few strokes. Swim recorded distance ok, but as you can see the track is not the best. This is similar to what I saw with the F6 the other day. Swim on it's own and the track is much less granular than using the swimrun activity - F6 track below. I've attached the shorter swim my wife recorded on her 945. Easy to see it's not as gnarly as the 945 swimrun.

Getting a little cool here now so not sure how much more open water swimming I'll be doing (8C out 15C in) but I'll take the 945 out again if I do.

I'll contact Garmin support and let them know. Have you?

945 swimrun

F6 Swim

945 (wife) swim only

I've done a couple of swims this week

First Swim and Second Swim. Not quite sure what happened in the second swim - the track is a little off and there is a bit of an outlier - first swim track is more accurate. It's better than it was though, but still not impressed for the cost vs will it / won't it record properly. My latest bug bear with it is it's not recording elevation properly - it's over reading by 25%+ vs my wifes exact same watch / settings and my Garmin Edge over the same running / riding routes

It would be better if you would report them this issue. They should be aware that they still have bugs in the OW feature. If more people report them this, they will decide to investigate it further.

Regarding the two different kind of handling the OW swims, I think that the swimrun uses the old OW algorithm, while the pure OW swim uses the Swim2 version. What also has some bug... The old one just shows empty pace chart, while the new one adds a fake default reading, but still there is massive GPS loss sometimes.

I think they should know that they still have bugs as they haven't told that they have fixed it. And I'm not sure it can be fixed as it might just be hardware limitation of the crappy Sony chipset. 

And I looked one of the GPX exports of the failed swims.. there like 2 seconds of data and then:

      <trkpt lat="60.30499418266117572784423828125" lon="24.62160796858370304107666015625">
        <time>2020-05-28T15:44:13.000Z</time>
        <extensions>
          <ns3:TrackPointExtension>
            <ns3:atemp>23.0</ns3:atemp>
            <ns3:hr>122</ns3:hr>
            <ns3:cad>0</ns3:cad>
          </ns3:TrackPointExtension>
        </extensions>
      </trkpt>
      <trkpt lat="60.30718739144504070281982421875" lon="24.62205740623176097869873046875">
        <time>2020-05-28T15:51:09.000Z</time>
        <extensions>
          <ns3:TrackPointExtension>
            <ns3:atemp>18.0</ns3:atemp>
            <ns3:cad>0</ns3:cad>
          </ns3:TrackPointExtension>
        </extensions>
      </trkpt>

jmto said:

I've not contacted Garmin support,

Fine. I'll not bother trying to narrow the issue down any further with you. I'll just report my findings to Garmin.

jmto said:

I think they should know that they still have bugs as they haven't told that they have fixed it.

And how will they know this if nobody reports problems?

PS

There is a clear difference between swim track recorded with Swimrun and between OWS although (for me) distance remains the same and no issues with the swim recording.

PPS

Have sent the information to Garmin

nick.d.barnes said:

My latest bug bear with it is it's not recording elevation properly -

In the swim? LOL

I don't think you need have any concerns about the reliability of the swim recording. We've been swimming since October. My wife exclusively using a 945 and me switching between watches. Happy to say she's had very few bad results and same for me.