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Alarm unreliability

Former Member over 7 years ago

I am almost at the end of my tether with my VA3.

Its currently a 50/50 proposition whether or not any alarm I set will go off in the morning.

I’ve now been late for work a couple of times during the week thanks to it not going off, and more importantly on weekends I’m having the same trouble too. I regularly set very early alarms in the 3.30-5.30am range and need a good silent alarm so I don’t wake my wife.

I set the alarm usually as I’m going to bed the night before on the watch and I usually set 3-4 alarms in a 5 minute span.

Im quite sure that it’s not an issue with vibration strength (I understand that’s a known issue on these forums) given that on my watch I haven’t failed to wake up when the alarm is going off.

Im on the latest firmware and everything else bar patchy iPhone syncing seems to run fine. What gives?

0 Former Member over 7 years ago

I had some issues with them not going off as well and ended up deleting all the alarms in the app and on the watch.

I then created each of my alarms on the watch and haven't had an issue since. Maybe worth a try for you...

0 Ekaterina66 over 7 years ago

I had similar issues with my first VA3 (im sending it back because it froze after syncing). Anyway, I had few alarms set, that I usually use 3:30am, 4:30am and 6am...so I activate one depending on my schedule. That is on my VAHR... I set the same alarm on my VA3 and first day none rang, like it got disabled or something... Second time it reset to 9pm (go figure!)... So then I deleted every alarm on my watch, and on my phone they would still show up, so I cleared those, synced and created new one (just one) on the watch again, and only after that it worked. Next day my watch bricked, so couldn't do any more testing...
???

0 Former Member over 7 years ago

Hi all,

I have similar problems. If I set the alarm at 8:00 am:-

1. it does NOT go off at all, or
2. the alarm goes off at 8:10 am.

Further, the alarm does NOT sync with Garmin Connect. For example, I have set three alarms via Garmin Connect (on my iPhone) and these alarm setting will not appear on my Vivoactive 3 even after repeated sync.

I actually "ungraded" from Vivoactive HR to Vivoactive 3. It now seems like a downgrade instead. I am totally disappointed that Garmin cannot get such a basic thing to work!

0 Former Member over 7 years ago

I am having similar inconsistent and unreliable alarm behavior on a new Garmin 235. Alarm does not always go off when set in advance. I do use one of the Connect IQ watch face (NoFrills).

I even set 3 recurring alarms for 5:45am, 5:46am, 5:47am. The 5:45am and 5:46am alarms went off on time, but the 5:47am alarm didn't. At 7:45am that same day, the alarm for 5:47am went off (I could tell because the display said that is was 5:47am even though it was 7:45am).

I notified support and they are sending me instructions to "remove the Connect IQ apps, temporarily, and clear some files, and see how it goes". I'll report back.

0 Saad over 7 years ago

And this problem has finally struck me as well. Everything about alarms was working fine for me since I got the 2.60 firmware update, but today my alarm failed to go off, at least I noticed nothing and overslept by an hour. I just tried setting another alarm on my watch to test and nothing happened when the time came, no vibration, nothing.

0 Saad over 7 years ago

Sorry user mistake in the test, so it appears the alarm is triggering like before, but the vibration level, which had been fine for me since the 2.60 update, went back to being super weak and basically not noticeable. Bummer.

0 ibrubeer over 7 years ago

Sorry user mistake in the test, so it appears the alarm is triggering like before, but the vibration level, which had been fine for me since the 2.60 update, went back to being super weak and basically not noticeable. Bummer.

For me, THIS had been the biggest issue for me. I think the alarm (or timer) goes off, but the vibrate is so weak that I don't notice. I can barely detect the vibration even if I'm looking at the alarm going off! Had anybody seen something that affects/fixes the vibration intensity? It is set too high in settings Amway.

0 Saad over 7 years ago

Clearly this is not a hardware problem, as my watch's vibration is plenty strong for all other kinds of alerts. After upgrading to the 2.70 firmware, the alarm vibration remain stubbornly weak. What is mystifying is that it had been perfect and matched the strength of other alerts on the 2.60 firmware before going weak a few days ago, basically a couple of days before the 2.70 firmware came out. I think I'll try to raise a ticket with Garmin. The only thing that gives me pause is that I hear in these forums they generally have you do a factory reset, and other than this all the other settings I spent time on work fine. Other than the Activity Auto start ones which I basically don't care that much about.

0 Electrocutus over 6 years ago

I am also having issues with alarms on my Vivoactive HR. For a while it was hit and miss and would work only some ot the time, which is as useless as not working at all. The alarms seemed to work for a little while after I rebooted the watch.
Then a couple of months ago alarms stopped working altogether. It doesn't matter if I deleted them all and created new ones. They just do not work.

Today I tried creating one for just a few minutes ahead and kept my eyes on the screen. the alarm triggered but without any vibration. I double-checked my settings and the vibration level is at the highest level.

This is so frustrating. It makes the alarms completely useless. This was one of the features I loved, because I could use the alarms to wake me without wkaing up my wife.

0 ChuckM over 6 years ago

This is utterly ridiculous. I have deleted the alarms through the Garmin Connect website and recreated them. I have deleted and recreated the alarms through the Garmin Connect app. I have also deleted and recreated them on the watch itself. No alarms. This is clearly software related.

All along I've believed the altitude/stair count issue has been largely software related. Today in church the abnormal heart rate alert went off and I wasn't even remotely concerned.

I'm not sure the Garmin programmers could program a DVR to record the Price is Right every day.