Rayzorx

Steve B.

Iride01 

You didn't use the smart-phone app with your edge 500 did you? So why not continue to connect the 520 to your computer like you did the 500? Garmin's phone apps and even Garmin Express on my computers just cause me more grief than they solve. So I just manually retrieve rides from my devices. Saves me quite a bit of gnashing teeth with the quirks of Garmin's apps that seem to occur at the worst possible moments.

ljsense

I've got a 520 and now the 520+ and they work like your friend's device -- when I save a ride on the Garmin unit, it automatically uploads it to Strava if my phone is nearby.

Someone else may have better troubleshooting tips, but this is a sequence I'd try:

1. unpair everything, have your phone forget the Garmin on bluetooth. Turn off your Garmin. Uninstall the Garmin Connect app. Leave everything off for now.
2. Update your phone's iOS, reinstall and update Garmin Connect.
3. Turn on the 520, pair it with your phone and let it update its software
4. Pair Garmin with your Strava
5. Try the 520 just with your phone, see if things are working
6. add the heart rate monitor, see if things work
7. Add the speed/cadence stuff, see if problems develop.

Lastly, the 2 bluetooth connections serve two different purposes. One is for all the cycling functions. The other is to send your texts and call alerts to your 520. I never have the second one, for calls and texts, on.

Hope that helps. When all else fails, there's always the manuals.

Steve B.

Bmach

Rayzorx

So if you get a squealing noise coming from engine belts in your car, and the mechanic says fixing it is more grief that it's worth, do you put up with the noise? Thanks but part of the reason I wanted the 520Plus was for the BT features. I go on long multi-day rides and don't always have access to my computer to plug into.

Rayzorx

No he doesn't wear a watch

Rayzorx

Long story short, after 2 weeks of back and forth with Garmin, they issued an RMA for a replacement 520 Plus. Hopefully it will work correctly.

RayK

Cyclist0108

Your phone has a setting that allows the Garmin app to run in the background. That will facilitate auto-uploads and further drain your phone battery.

Rayzorx

Marcus_Ti

Hopefully it does....

Back when I was a Garmin user browsing their Edg1000 forums semi-regularly, there was at least 2-3 threads about broken iPhone/iOS behavior a week.

Steve B.

Jakey27

I have same problems with a Garmin 820+, used to download automatically but is now erratic. If I give it a couple of hours and then pair the device again with my iPhone, it seems to work. I had put it down to issues with the Garmin Connect service..................

Rayzorx

*Update*
I received the new Garmin 520 Plus and had a chance to test it today on a ride.
The new 520+ was paired with my iPhone 7 per instructions, I had set the Garmin Connect app settings to use Cellular data, and Background app Refresh.
Once I finished my ride, I saved it on the 520+ and observed that the ride uploaded to Garmin Connect (and Strava) without having the Garmin Connect app on my iPhone open.
This is contrary to what the Garmin tech told me. He said that I had to open the Garmin Connect app in order for the uploads to occur. I also confirmed this with several of my riding mates, and they do NOT have to open the Garmin Connect app for the upload to work.

So the good news is that the new 520+ works correctly. The bad news is that Garmin Support Tech didn't know how their products are supposed to work.
I'm going on another ride tomorrow and will be curious to see if this continues to work as expected.

RayK

njkayaker

Garmin Connect Mobile has some sort of "background" process. That might not always be running. So, you might need to run GCM, once in a while, to get things to work. So, the techs are kind-of correct.

Steve B.

It's likely that Tech Support is not aware that the GCM app IS running in the background on an iOS device, especially if you never specifically closed it out. I look at GCM after a ride as the app will generally call up a notification that an activity was completed. This means the ride successfully loaded to the GCM app and also means the app WAS running. I really never force close the app, so it's always in background mode.

Now if I can only get the 1000 to automatically connect to iOS everytime the unit boot.

seajaye

Bumping this thread.

I got an Edge 520+ to replace my trusty Edge 500 for this upcoming randonneuring season and the road to Paris-Brest-Paris. I'm also experiencing a lot of woe in getting the 520+ to behave like my old 500.

What I used to do with the 500:

• Create routes in RWGPS. Generally i'd do it by controle or maybe every 100k.... never would make long routes. Also helped the unit load routes faster.
• The mapping page was excellent. A breadcrumb trail with the next cue and distance to turn. All I needed!
• Stop and save files every 200k or so. I'd generally experience freezing and corruption with 300km+ rides, so I got into the habit of resetting every 200 and then stitching files together later.
• Charge on the go with a Gomadic charger.

Issues with/questions about the 520+:

• It takes FOREVER to load routes, even if they're short. DC Rainmaker pointed this out in his review of the pre-production 520+, and it doesn't seem to have gotten fixed. Would turning off all mapping help with this issue? A breadcrumb is totally fine with me.
• Using .tcx from RWGPS, sometimes I get a full cue sheet as one of the main pages, and sometimes I do not. It will just have "Start" and "Finish" cues. I have to dig into the menus to find the cue sheet, which is not helpful.
• Related to the above bullet, on the mapping page, during navigation it will show me the route highlighted, but sometimes will give me no cue or distance to turn.
• Does the 520+ suffer the same issues with long files? Saved routes / recording data with too many waypoints?
• Can I charge on the go with any regular USB stick and cable, or do I need a specific pinned one like Gomadic?

Because I am riding brevets that have a fixed course, I do not necessarily need actual maps on the unit or rerouting on the fly. I want to be able to perfectly navigate the course I plotted. I have tried things like stopping/reloading courses while I am riding, tweaking settings such as Turn Guidance, Course Points, etc. but haven't figured out exactly what I need to do to get it like my 500.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated!

aclass

Santa Claus brought me a 520+ this year and I had a lot of trouble initially. As of late, I just open the Garmin connect on my phone, power up the 520 and take off. Zero issues the past 20 rides.

jadocs

You guys are persistent! I'd have sold it on eBay and purchased an Elemnt Bolt by now.

seajaye

What does Garmin Connect do, slash solve? I don't really want my unit to be tied to my phone, because now I'll have two things to worry about charging.

I initially wanted to get a Wahoo, but after reading a lot of the reviews, it seems like it needs to be tethered with your phone. Even if not needs, then maybe it's just simply designed to heavily lean on your phone. One of the things I love(d) about Garmin is that they can be totally stand-alone units. I don't want navigation to fail because I went out of cellular range or something silly like that.

jadocs

No you don't need your phone or a cell signal to rely on navigation. That is misinformation by people who have never used one (or to be more precise, don't understand how it works). The phone app is there to make setup easy and to link all your data to other apps like Strava, RideWithGPS, etc... This is done one time, after that it's all automatic. The phone app has zero to do with using the Bolt or with navigation.

daoswald

I have an Edge 820. The first day things were a little tricky. The Connect app on my phone kept telling me that the device needed an update before I could add anything to it, and to check the Connect website. The Edge 820 would tell me to check the Connect app to turn on Wifi. There seemed to be no provision in the app itself to upgrade the GPS's firmware. ...those sorts of oddities.

But then something cool happened: I plugged in my phone to charge, and plugged in the Edge 820 to charge. While they were charging the phone app sent an update over to the GPS. The GPS, once fully charged, displayed a message that to complete the upgrade I needed to unplug the device. I followed that instruction, and the device updated. After that both the phone and the GPS needed to have the bluetooth paring removed, and then they needed to re-pair. At that point they were both using the latest versions of the software, and were fully compatible.

Now everything works as expected; as it should. ...maybe even better than expected. I discovered just yesterday that even if I create a route using the connect.garmin.com website, I can then tell my phone to send it over to the GPS. I don't have to install software on my computer. Any ride info that gets recorded automatically syncs with my phone's Connect app, and then up to my Garmin Connect account. Strava also just works. The on-device routing works well enough, too.

seajaye

Ah, gotcha. Thanks for the clarification. Can you choose which rides from RWGPS get synced to Bolt? I have hundreds of courses but only need a handful for a brevet. If this Edge 520+ keeps giving me headaches I will re-consider a Bolt for France.

In any case, the original questions still stand. I'd like to develop a streamlined system to get this thing functioning like my old 500.

Steve B.

When I had problems with my Bolt, I returned it to REI and got a Garmin Edge 1000. Nicer maps, works great.