Your Garmin help, please

They peaked with the Garmin eTrex H.

Of course, that had no maps, no routing, etc.

I still cling to my Edge 705 because if I use it the way I use it (display track on the map, never use routing) I never have any problems unless I'm an idiot.

What is the recommend Garmin for turn-by-turn, long routes with lots of waypoints, and a good battery life (I really wish I could stick my own batteries in these things).

One of the eTrex range most likely.

I wish they'd release one of the Edge range that took AA batteries. (I can't use an eTrex as they don't record power.)

I don't know what the obsession is with USB charging and internal batteries.

I just had a rave in the lights thread because I finally quit using USB tail lights and the ones I have now are dirt cheap, take AAAs, last longer, are bright, and it's so easy to use them on multi-day tours as AAAs are ubiquitous and you can just pick some up a garage somewhere.

If someone did the same for a turn-by-turn GPS cycle computer it would be great.

I think the next device I'll look at... when this Edge 800 finally dies (internal battery becomes more shit)... will be a Suunto Spartan watch or something.

Such a shame as the device seems to work very well. Don't they have the same farm of developers working on the apps as the devices.

when this Edge 800 finally dies (internal battery becomes more shit)

I've replaced the battery in my Edge 705 once so far. It was only £10 or so on eBay and gave it whole new lease of life. Back to running for ~12 hours on a single charge (I should be able to get away with just a single 5000mAh USB battery pack for the upcoming 24.)

Garmin do it because ~99% of the use cases are covered by the battery life of an internal Li-Ion battery:-

• Promuters (STRAVA ALL THE COMMUTES!)
  
• SportiveWankers (It will be happy up to 10 hours)
  
• Beardy Audax Weardies (well, up to 200km anyway)
  
• Cycling holidays with overnight hotel stays (access to mains charging)
  
  

For those that want to go a bit further Garmin have the (horribly overpriced) cache battery.

And the first thing most people do when returning from a ride is plug it in to the computer to upload to Strava and so the charge is topped up as a handy consequence and not an explicit action.

Ironically, the new 'upload via bluetooth/wifi' feature of the later Edge Series will mean people are less likely to need to remove the GPS (depends where they store the bike though) and Garmin might start to need to think about a battery powered version for cycling.

The USB lights do work for people who have to take their lights off whenever they park the bike, you just get into a routine of bringing them in and plugging them in to keep them charged up. I don't so I've got a bolted on dynohub light on the commuter.

Example from Sunday:

Edge 1000 route home: 35k
Edge 800 route home: 6mi (I had it set to miles after my last 50mi TT)

I'm pretty sure 6mi is less than 35k...

I like the 800s. Just be careful when adding routes to NewFiles - if I do a 600k say, and it has 9 files, it will take 2-3 goes to actually get all the files to 'take' and appear in the Courses list.

Even with a fixed route that I've created in RWGPS, the Edge 1000 manages to cock it up and if it's say a point-to-point segment of an audax, route me back to the start making the "500k to next point" a little annoying when it's a 100k segment.

I followed the wrong line a few times on the weekend because of it's stupid routing.

it will take 2-3 goes to actually get all the files to 'take' and appear in the Courses list.

Oh god this is so annoying, I end up doing them one at a time to avoid having to keep checking which ones are missing!

I copy the batch, unplug and count through them, then plug it in again and copy the missing ones. Takes two or three goes with, say 9-10 files total. Annoying but not as annoying as getting to the 300k mark of a 600k audax and finding file #5 isn't on your device...

Been there done that

and you just know ALL the same crappy bugs will be on this...

https://www.westernbikeworks.com/product/garmin-edge-820

No, that would imply some kind of consistency and allow you to work around them with historical knowledge of the issues. No, Garmin are far to evil to keep the SAME bugs in place...

What usually defeats me are map files.

If I create too large a file it sometimes does not work, and if I create smaller files then I span multiple SD cards.

If I fail to change SD cards when crossing country borders or something, I can suddenly find myself on the international base map staring at an open space of nothingness and an arrow floating through it on a line that is the route.

Parts are so damn cheap nowadays and power performance so good that there's no excuse for not having a decent amount of onboard memory.

Argh, someone should just make a new device already: Bluetooth Smart + GPS + GLONASS + ePaper screen + turn-by-turn navigation + raw tracking and logging of ANT+ and Bluetooth Smart sensors + takes standard batteries.

Argh, someone should just make a new device already: Bluetooth Smart + GPS + GLONASS + ePaper screen + turn-by-turn navigation + raw tracking and logging of ANT+ and Bluetooth Smart sensors + takes standard batteries.

Get funding and I'd be interested.

I'd also add cryptographic signatures for each trackpoint.

I've used an external SD card on my 800 for like ever.

Just get a big SD card, put huge maps on it, ride to your heart's content and it'll be well (until it crashes at ~500k and you have to factory reset but that's another issue). I have all of Europe on one SD card and I don't think the card is massive - maybe a 16gb?

Wahoo need to make an Edge 1000 killer.

Bluetooth Smart + GPS + GLONASS + ePaper screen + turn-by-turn navigation + raw tracking and logging of ANT+ and Bluetooth Smart sensors + takes standard batteries.

Most of that shit isn't even necessary. I don't use Wifi, bluetooth, glonass. All I want it to do is last as long as possible and not crash, while logging ANT+ data and a GPS track and letting me following a decent TBT route.

I'd also add cryptographic signatures for each trackpoint.

For verification of time and place?

Neat. I wouldn't have thought of that.

Strava dopers >>>

I'd add an app that can connect to the internet but hey, I'm a maverick.

Bluetooth instead of ANT+ for sensors like cadence, HR, power and speed. It uses far less battery power. ANT+ would be supported for people who have existing stuff, but it would use more power than BLE stuff.

GLONASS uses less battery power than GPS to track, so running both would allow the device to use whichever is most appropriate for long battery life and accuracy. Should easily go from 14-16 hr battery to 48 hr. This is the biggest battery killer, so also the thing to solve well.

ePaper uses way less power than any lit LCD/LED screen. No reason to constantly scroll the screen, change layout to show distance to next waypoint, key junctions and next waypoint info. Screens are the next bigger battery killer, ePaper is close to negligible power use and would be higher res than the LCDs today (which use low res to save power). If the device were more comfortable with hundreds and thousands of waypoints this type of display would work well.

Tracking, no cleverness to it, no virtual partners or device trying to show it in a certain way... just reliable dump of everything in universal formats.

Should be able to make such a device with a 36-48hr battery life, using standard batteries.

It would be a little uglier than a full colour touchscreen, the interface would be different and again to save power just have buttons rather than a touchscreen. But it could be done, it's totally feasible today.

I'm not upgrading £££ of powermeters just to get better battery life from them. BLE >>>

Does it? I thought GLONASS allowed more accuracy not less power. How does it choose between sensors without communicating with both to know either was available? Less sensor, less power, no?

ePaper - how do you do quick updates at junctions? I ride around a RAB glancing at my position to know which exit to take because "take 2nd exit" is usually wrong and fails to include motorway on-ramps as exists!

Tracking. Agree.

etrex already gets ~30hr with Lithiums but I want rechargeable AAs if possible. If they just extended it to read ANT+ and made the processing/screen draw faster and maybe TBT nav they might have something decent.

I'd miss the touchscreen. I like scrolling around to see how lost I am...

Does it? I thought GLONASS allowed more accuracy not less power. How does it choose between sensors without communicating with both to know either was available? Less sensor, less power, no?

Signals from more satellites == more processing power required = higher battery drain

GLONASS has fewer satellites than (US) GPS, so it'll generally take less power for similar accuracy (to the level that cyclists care about).

For pure accuracy comparions, GPS is generally going to better than GLONASS.

Signals from both GPS + GLONASS = much better accuracy, but two sets of almanac/epheremis data needs to be cached, etc. And a lot more computation to determine the current location. You also have to power the GPS receiver for each system enabled.

Each system has a different way of limiting accuracy for public use. The US system encrypts the lowest significant bits of the timing signal, with the decryption keys only available in specialist hardware. The ~5m accuracy we are used to in commercial GPS systems is all down to the random jitter caused by these encrypted bits.

The Russian system sends the high precision signal 10 times from frequently than the low precision signal, but the format of the high precision signal isn't known/published, so no-one knows how to make use of it.

It lives - albeit the only addition that really interests me is the 'battery save mode'...

https://buy.garmin.com/en-GB/GB/sports-recreation/cycling/edge-820/prod543199.html
http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2016/07/garmin-edge-820.html

i have one of the magnetless speed sensors that you wrap around the hub, and it's stopped working.

i un-paired and tried to -repair it to my 1000, and it's not reading. the LED is constantly blinking green, very faintly. is it a battery issue, or something else?