garmin malfunction question

[lmgoldberg]

Guru's on the Forum, hoping you can help.

Yesterday I rode a 30-mile route I have ridden many times before but my Garmin 530 showed significantly fewer miles -- only 22! Could the accuracy of the Garmin be affected by fact that the unit was sitting loosely in my handlebar bag, not firmly attached to the bike? The inaccuracy was apparent at least halfway through the ride (was 4 miles off at the 12-mile mark) and continued to grow over the course of the ride.

People on various Garmin forums have said the GPS is affected by tree coverage, but this is winter and I was on a combination of the MBT, the CCT, and city streets.

PS I don't have a speed sensor or cadence sensor on this bike. I understand getting those would make the Garmin more accurate but ... I am a cheapskate and don't feel the need for that data on my commuter bike.

thanks in advance!

[Steve O]

Have you tried using the "correct distance" feature? Sometimes my Garmin will lose connectivity with the satellites or something. I'll note that it is still displaying my speed but the distance is not changing. When this happens, and I happen to notice, I will turn it off and back on. That generally fixes it. Then I will use the "correct distance" feature in Strava, which usually corrects the mileage after the fact.

For my own personal reference, if I forget to start my Garmin or other bonehead move, I will add a private manual ride to my feed so that my overall mileage is relatively accurate. This, of course, will not count towards Freezing Saddles.

[lmgoldberg]

Wow -- didn't know about that function in strava. Thank you Steve O! That addresses the symptom but of course not the problem. Would still be interested in ideas on how to prevent this in the future.

[mstone]

depending on what the bag is made of and what was in the bag, yeah, it could affect gps reception

[Judd]

I sometimes had issues with my Edge 1000 losing satellites mid ride which would eat miles from the distance. Didn’t seem to be a pattern to it and it would happen on perfectly clear days with the unit on the handlebars.


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[kwarkentien]

Also be sure you have the correct wheel size in the settings. It can auto detect on some units but I would check to be sure that isn’t an issue. Also check which GPS setting you’re using (GPS, GPS+Glonass, GPS+Galileo). With Glonass seems to be the most accurate.


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[mstone]

Also be sure you have the correct wheel size in the settings.

wheel size doesn't matter if there's no speed sensor