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Golf Autoshot Stopped working early 2020

Hey Garmin and community,

I use my VA3 for golf and it's OK but one of the coolest features was autoshot. While it wasn't perfect, it did a pretty good job of detecting each shot and recording distance. That could later be linked to clubs in the garmin golf app to provide reasonable data to work with to understand ranges for each different club. A really useful feature.

The last time this worked for me was late Jan 2020, since then, it doesn't work at all.

I've tried the usual swapping wrists and so forth but it doesn't change anything.

I've tried a factory reset, which also didn't help.

Garmin, if you're listening, and still care about this device, please fix auto shot. Or at least let me do it manually for each stroke.

Cheers

0 DaveH over 5 years ago

Come on Garmin, fix his watch. It does work, apart from the odd blip mine has been detecting shots for two years. Do you ever read this forum, is anyone there? Or do we have to get the ouija board out?

0 hhasert over 5 years ago in reply to DaveH

They don't read the forum or just occasionally. You need to go to their support channel and chat to log an incident. I use the UK one, which has responded good during UK business hours, although I would not get your hopes up, because none of my issues have been solved. At least I feel better reporting it :-).

https://support.garmin.com/en-GB/?partNumber=010-01769-00&tab=topics

0 AndrewF80 over 5 years ago in reply to hhasert

Well, yeah I could do that but I like to do it in the public forum so anyone else who has the problem can chime in, or have a solution available to them down the track.

I'll do it anyway, see how it goes and report back.

0 hhasert over 5 years ago in reply to AndrewF80

I have the Va3M and it still works ok.

0 Former Member over 4 years ago in reply to hhasert

Hi All, I've had same issue and an ongoing dialog with Garmin over 6 months that is getting me nowhere fast. The main thing that was useful is following from Garmin ...

Plug the GPS device into the computer
Open the Computer
Open the Garmin drive
Open the Garmin folder
Delete the GarminDevice.XML file
Eject the GPS device from the computer
Power on the device

This does make the Autoshot work again, but it only lasts a few rounds before it gives up the ghost again, so I am repeatedly having to do the above which is just not a good enough solution. But hope it helps you.

0 tweeb over 4 years ago

I had the problem for a few weeks/months - with my VA3 recognising maybe 3 shots out a round of 18 holes - useless! However I then rebooted my watch and set the Golf Setting back to small numbers rather than big numbers - and it is now working perfectly! Plus it now tells me how long each shot is when I reach the ball - I didn't know it did that (doesn't seem to when you have it set to Big Numbers) - Doh!

0 AndrewF80 over 4 years ago

Thought I'd respond to this with an update.

I logged a support ticket with Garmin and they asked for some logs then went silent. Never to be heard from again.

Ended up selling my VA3 and getting a Fenix 5 which is a great device but has it's own golf problems! I don't know which device is worse but neither of them cut it for golfing.

Super annoying and pretty poor support from Garmin too. They're not cheap devices, I feel like we are deserving of better support given how much we pay.

0 Former Member over 4 years ago in reply to Former Member

I appreciate you sharing this solution as it did get my auto shot back. It only lasted one round for me. It may be spring before I can try again and I will try before each round. Sucks but better than nothing.

0 tweeb over 4 years ago in reply to Former Member

Hi. Yes. I discovered that myself the next time I played a round. Will have to reboot the watch before my next round to see if it cures it again.

0 tweeb over 4 years ago in reply to tweeb

All, I have my watch on my left-wrist (as I am right-handed) but set with the button to the left, so I do not accidentally press it when I flex my wrist (happens during cycling). I recently thought that maybe that might 'screw-up' the auto shot accelerometer - so set it back to right button ... and now auto-shot seems to work most of the time!