Garmin Woes (Read 216 times)

Anyone having Garmin woes or have any suggestions for me with mine?  The Garmin forums appear to be down.

Short version: I think my 610 might be completely whacked and my 220 isn't measuring distance.

Longer version:

I have a 610 and a 220.  I have not installed Garmin Express.

I normally run with my 610.  I've noticed my paces have been slow for the past week (about 1:00/mile slower than the week before) but I attributed it to heat/humidity.

Yesterday, I was talking to a co-worker who loves to talk about running with me and he said he's noticed his 620 is measuring short.  So, I thought maybe I should do my next run with my 220 and see if I notice a difference.

Last night, I put my 220 out on the porch to acquire satellite before heading out on my run.  I see the green thingee at the top and start my run.  A few minutes down the road I notice it's not showing distance.  Fine.  I run this route all the time so I can use the watch as a stopwatch.  I upload the time for the segments and they are fast.  (I ran the same course on 9/4 at 9:22 pace.  Last night, I got 8:27 pace).  Updated to add: I think I found a thread about this problem on the Garmin forums.

This morning, I went to Garmin Connect and created an interval workout.  I transferred it to my 220.  I put it on the porch, acquire a satellite, test it by walking a half block and it doesn't appear to show distance.  I go back and grab my 610 and do the interval workout.  The paces are slow, but maybe I'm just slow.    But, one segment, where I do go under and overpass, in particular was showing 10:00 pace.  I run this course often and know that interval is always going to be wonky but...

Other nutty thing I noticed in the last week with my 610 but thought maybe I was just imagining things include:

1. I created a workout with 4 steps.  I sat it out on the porch, was going to start my run and then noticed the 4th step was somehow first.  I thought to myself maybe I entered it wrong but I really don't think I did.  I really think the segments somehow reversed themselves.  I edited the workout back to how I wanted it.
2. The watch itself was showing the wrong time.  I think it was off by something like a half hour.  I attributed it to me be slow - a 1:00/mile slower chews up time.  But, as the run went on, it seemed like the time corrected itself.  Again, I thought maybe I didn't read the time correctly.

It's a little frustrating to have two Garmins and not have confidence that either of them is working properly.  But, maybe that's because I really need to install express to get the firmware updates.  (Sigh).

For fun you should wear them both at the same time and see if one can train the other to behave.

My Garmin 310xt needs a hard reboot about once per year to stop it from misbehaving.  A hard reboot wipes out all settings, so it needs to be set up from scratch after.  I learned this after spending two full hours on the phone with Garmin tech support trying to get it to update, before the tech support person had me do a hard reboot.  Now I no longer update it, just reboot whenever it acts up.

I went for a run in the woods the other day, and my 305 was not recording the distance accurately.  I guess it just couldn't get a good satellite signal, but it's odd because I haven't had that problem in the past.

My 210 is a frequent source of frustration...in large part because of the horrible charging clip design.  It seems to have fewer issues ever since a firmware update a while back, but it's still nowhere near as reliable as my 305s were and thanks to the frequent issues with the charging clip and discharged battery and crashing I suspect the battery has been forever damaged -- I only bought it a little over a year ago, but I doubt I could do much more than a 2 hour run before the battery would be fully drained.

 

I've been contemplating upgrading to the 220.  I've read mostly really good reviews of that model, particularly in terms of the improved charging clip design.  I wonder if you got a buggy one, Julia.

+1 to the first comment in bold; +1 also to the second comment, for a while, but I have since reconsidered. All in all, my 210 works OK, knock wood. I pretty much have a system down to get the clip connector to work. And it did appear to die on me a couple times, requiring a hard reset, but this has not happened in a long time. Mainly, since I am hearing so many problems with people who have bought new ones, and don't want to have to deal with the whole Garmin Express issue if it prevents uploading to RA, I am now in the mode of sticking with what works.

Seems everyone's Garmins have problems. And you have two -- mo' Garmins, mo' problems.

May be the firmware update will do the trick, although then you won't be able to upload to RA, which may or may not be an issue for you.

I suppose the other thing that wouldn't hurt to try is just a hard reset, as general rule of thumb for any electronic device.

Not true in the FR220 case.  I have had Express installed since Day 1 on my desktop at home and have had ZERO problems uploading to RA.  I use the USB connection to upload and it works just fine, every single time.

There was a point when my 220 was completely hosed and wouldn't show time or pace though it had acquired satellite lock.  I went online to find a way to do a hard reboot and found that there was a new S/W update for the watch.  I updated it (via Express) and my problem was fixed (though I'm sure it wasn't due to the update ... probably a hard reboot would have fixed it as well).

If I were the OP I'd update the software on the 220.  There have been two updates put out by Garmin for the 220 since I bought it and I've done both of them via Express.

You might need to update the firmware or software and without Garmin Express you won't be able to.

Although I love my 910XT, it has been giving me problems with distance and/or paces on the same routes every day.  So, I just bought a TomTom Cardio Multisport after 10 years of running with Garmins and I cannot be happier.  So far, so good.  Same route? Same distance.

Hope you can figure out what's wrong with it.

 

Not true in the FR220 case.  I have had Express installed since Day 1 on my desktop at home and have had ZERO problems uploading to RA.  I use the USB connection to upload and it works just fine, every single time.

So Express will/may work with RA after all?  I wouldn't bother, but I've been borrowing a pair of the Garmin power meter pedals and would really like to be able to view the data they've collected in the past few weeks, particularly in terms of potential L/R power imbalance so that I can work on correcting that over the Winter on the trainer.  Only way I can see all the data is by using Garmin Connect, which requires that Express plug-in.