Does anyone use a Garmin Fenix 5 with an Edge 520? If so, have you been successful in broadcasting the heart rate throughout the duration of your ride? I'd love to know how you made this happen if so!

Here's what's happening for me:

1. I start broadcasting heart rate from the Fenix 5
2. I turn on the Edge and I get a solid heart icon meaning that it recognized the heart rate
3. I start my ride and see my heart rate on the Edge
4. Within 30 seconds or so, the heart rate blanks out on the Edge, never to be seen again (but the Fenix is still in broadcast mode)

This is really frustrating as I really don't want to have to purchase and keep up with a strap.

I'd be eternally grateful if anyone can provide any pointers for making this work.

Is it always at 30 seconds?

I've used a Fenix 3 HR to broadcast my heart rate to an Edge 800. It worked, other than the F3 not having a very good HRM. Makes me wonder what's going on. I doubt it's on the edge side. And 30 seconds seems like a pretty likely timeout value of some kind.

How are you putting the watch into broadcast mode? Is it also recording an activity, or acting as an HRM only?

Regarding timing, no, it has happened in just a couple seconds and has also taken as long as a few minutes.

I'm not starting an activity on the watch, only broadcasting the heart rate.

I did try letting the Edge sit (while turned on) for a couple minutes before turning the broadcast on from the watch and that was promising. I took the bike for a spin around the block and it recorded for the entire five minutes. I'm going to test that further on a real ride tomorrow if the weather holds up.

Does your phone support ANT+? If it's a Samsung it probably does, I don't know about other phones. If so, you can use a free app (like S-Health) to record a ride alongside your Edge, I'd be curious to see if they both drop the signal at the same time (which would imply your watch is to blame) or what.

Also, try https://forums.garmin.com/ as somebody else there might be experiencing the same problem.

I had the same issue with my Garmin FR235 and Edge 1000, and was never able to resolve the problem. I just upgraded to a Fenix 5, and it has worked perfectly so far (knock on wood). Let us know if you figure it out.

Went on a 20 Mike ride yesterday and it dropped out in less than 60 seconds. Half way through the ride, I stopped the broadcasting and then restarted it, but again, it dropped out almost instantly.

I gave up and ordered a chest strap...as annoying as that is.

I wonder if my bike's speed and cadence sensor could be causing the issue?

I was finding the same issue and it seems that its a known problem with the fenix 5 (google the5krunner) but you can get around it by setting it to broadcast during an activity in the settings under sensors/heart rate and start recording an activity while you're out on the bike even though you're already recording on the edge. While the activity is going the heart rate stays on fine then. If you find you want to keep both recordings in Strava u might have to stagger when you start one recording so one isn't ignored as a copy and best to set uploads to be private until one is made public upon upload.