Garmin

3 lurkers | 223 watchers

jelly Jan 2023 4:33pm, 18 Jan 2023 4,544 posts	jelly My watch is fine when I’m running but sometimes it’s a bit erratic when I’m out walking. Today I walked less than 1km up the road and stopped to talk to a friend in her gallery and it buzzed a 2nd km while I was there and another one further up the road. It doesn’t quite make much sense why it’s doing this when I’m standing still. I’m not sure how to go about fixing it either!!
larkim Jan 2023 4:40pm, 18 Jan 2023 20,034 posts	larkim It doesn't know you're standing still. It's getting GPS signals which say you may be here, there, over there, across the road etc so it just plots that route and accumulates distance. Best option is to either enable autopause (if it's not already enabled) or literally stop your watch from recording whilst you're stopped having a natter.
um Jan 2023 4:43pm, 18 Jan 2023 6,928 posts	um As larkim says, but the key thing is 'in her gallery' - the manic 'record any signal' is because you were indoors and instead of straight lines, the signal is bouncing off all sorts of things causing the distortion. Best to pause if you go indoors for any more than a minute or two.
fetcheveryone Jan 2023 4:43pm, 18 Jan 2023 28,666 posts	fetcheveryone If you stood there long enough, and then graphed the data, you’d get a circle around you representing the margin of error. Remember that your watch is communicating with usually at least three satellites in space to triangulate your location. A few metres of error from satellites that are 20,000 kilometres away is still pretty special.
jelly Jan 2023 7:02pm, 18 Jan 2023 4,546 posts	jelly Thanks for explaining what was going on!
SPR Jan 2023 7:13pm, 18 Jan 2023 39,406 posts	SPR I don't pause my watch for lights or road crossing stops and GPS is generally well behaved (can check moving time and idle now to confirm). What the others say is correct though and I'd pause it if I was stopping for an extended period.
Big_G Jan 2023 7:40pm, 18 Jan 2023 2,241 posts	Big_G Hi, I’ve got a Fenix 6x Pro, and it has European maps on it and it has worked really well the handful of times I’ve used it whilst abroad. I’m off to USA in the coming months and I’d like maps on the watch, if that is possible, to plan a couple of runs for when I’m over there. How do I go about getting the maps on there? I could have sworn that I read that the Garmin worldwide maps were free, but did I make this up, as they’re not on the watch as far as I can tell (ie, when I pan over to the USA and zoom in, I can’t see the roads etc).
Badger Jan 2023 8:22pm, 18 Jan 2023 15,946 posts	Badger I think the 7 series include worldwide maps but the 6 only had the part of the world where you bought it. You can buy Garmin maps for the USA, or you can find open street maps for the area dcrainmaker.com including reading the comments, because the main site he mentions has been offline for a while now, or you could buy talkytoaster maps shop.talkytoaster.me.uk If you take your current maps off to make space, copy them to your computer so you can put them back - I've heard of people having problems trying to re-add them via Garmin Express if the originals aren't on the watch. Just being hyper-cautious there
Sam Jelfs Jan 2023 10:02pm, 18 Jan 2023 1,287 posts	Sam Jelfs Honestly, i tried getting free maps working, it was a PITA and if i was going to be doing much in the US again I would just buy the official Garmin maps for €50.
Big_G Jan 2023 2:08pm, 19 Jan 2023 2,242 posts	Big_G I have just downloaded Garmin Express as I didn't have it, and when I logged on it had some maps to download, including USA. It is in the process of downloading them now (it will take some time, 3hrs), but it hasn't asked me for payment yet. I wonder if it will a bit later, after it has downloaded them?