Monday, April 2, 2018

Garmin 820 Woes and Combining Ride Files

Garmin 820 Woes:

I almost want to go on a full rant about the Garmin Edge 820. I sometimes wonder if any of the developers at Garmin actually do cycling and if they use the 820. I also wonder if they have experienced any of the issues that some of us have with the screen sensitivity? Do they know the sensitivity and the potentially fragile state when combined with the Save and Discard ride options if one stops the timer on the 820 during the ride?

I do not use auto pause because it fouls up the power meter data stopping at intersections, but I will stop the timer briefly for a quick roadside stop. Maybe I shouldn't do that, but that's what I will do at times. I have also accidentally had a ride discarded twice in the past. Recently the Garmin has at least saved itself mid-ride and left me with no option except to start a new ride to finish out.

I never had those issues with previous versions of Edge computers. In fact hitting the lap button ensured there would be at least some fraction of the ride saved even if the battery died during the ride. I have seen some others post these same issues so I know I am not the only one. I posted here (http://thecyclingaddiction.blogspot.com/2016/07/garmin-edge-820.html) about the screen sensitivity and a firmware update helped a little, but it is still ultra sensitive at times. Yesterday I hit the timer to stop and stepped away from the bike for a few seconds. When I returned the ride had saved. Did a fly land on the Save icon? Maybe a leaf fell on it? What the heck happened? At least it was saved and not discarded like has happened before. 

I still have the trusty Garmin Edge 800 and 500 that I am considering go back to using although there are several features on the 820 that I prefer. Garmin developers need to put a bit more thought into how to ensure ride data is handled carefully. It can be frustrating to lose training data, but imagine someone losing race data or from an epic ride adventure.

Combining Ride Files:

Since I ended up with two ride files loaded to Strava I looked for a tool to combine files and found the following and it seemed to work well. It also uploaded the ride to Strava once I gave it permission and the combined data looked good. 

http://gotoes.org/strava/Combine_GPX_TCX_FIT_Files.php

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