ROJA

For night riding, etc.

Thanks.

dwilbur3

If you set an alert for a very short period of time/distance it will light up whenever an alert happens. I'm not sure you can turn it on constantly (that would chew up the battery real fast).

twilkins9076

I don't have mine in front of me now to verify, but I'm pretty sure there is a setting that turns it on and leaves it. As noted above, it will burn batteries pretty fast.....

rajarajan

Just confirmed it, there is such a setting. Used SW Ver # 3.20 GPS 3.00

bikinfool

Just curious why you'd want it on so much?

ROJA

I will be riding an unfamiliar route at night and want to be able to follow the map. The ride is only about 2-3 hours, so I figure the batteries would last that long even with the backlight on the whole time. I think the timer beeping every minute would be a bit annoying.

bikinfool

Trail riding?

socalrider

The 305 does not have maps.. You must be thinking of the 605 and 705 models..

bryce_atx

The 305 doesn't have maps like the 705 does, but you can map out a ride on a site like mapmyride.com and then load it into the 305. You'll then have a path to follow so it'll be obvious if you missed your turn. You don't see cross streets or intersections, you just see a line on the screen with a dot (you) tracing it.

It doesn't officially support this feature, but there are ways to work around it. I think mapmyride actually has a feature on their site where you can click to load a route onto your 305. You used to have to do crazy workarounds to convert files, etc, but it's pretty easy now.

I think you'll be able to run the back light for 2-3 hours, but not much more than that. I've stretched my 305's battery out to 11 hours even though it only has something like a 7 hour run time stated. I never used the light, never hit any buttons except at the start and finish, set it to do that smart recording (rather than record every second), and I set it to stop recording when I stopped moving (like under 3mph). I don't know if that makes any difference on battery life, but it's something you might consider. At the end of my 11-hour ride it was beeping at me to say that the battery was going to die, but it lasted long enough for me to get back home.

ROJA

It definitely does- you are missing out on one of the big features. It doesn't have any BASE maps, but you can upload an activity from motionbased or somewhere else to your Edge 305 (they are called courses). You can then "do" the course and it will show up as a map on your device (you have to select through the different screens). You can zoom in and out using the top and bottom buttons on the right side of your device. Since there is no real base map or navigation for courses, you just need to look at the little course on the map and make turns accordingly (the course simply shows up as a little line on the map screen). For example, the map might show an upcoming right turn, but that could either mean that you turn right onto another road or that the road you are on makes a right turn. It works better for course with fewer turns (more likely for bike rides).

I have had good luck learning new rides this way, especially if I am riding away from home- I will find a trip on motionbased that I like, download it to my computer (as a .CRS file), and then upload it to my Garmin using Garmin Training Center. It is a great feature. There is lots more info on the web about how to do this if my explanation is confusing.

ROJA

This one is a road ride, but it could work on the trails, too.

ROJA

Sorry, I don't have the device in front of me. Do I just go to the settings menu and select it? Not sure how I missed it before.

tornado

Settings>Display>System allows you to set the on time. I don't know if continuous is a choice.

bryce_atx

settings-->general-->display-->backlight timeout-->stays on

ROJA

BTW, the backlight appears to use less juice than expected. I ran it for a full hour last night and the battery charge indicator was still at full. I would expect that 3-4 hours would not be a problem.