Experience Thread: A noobie getting into a specialized vado 5.0 IGH

[dynamic]

auto-pause and auto-start are horrible features! turn off.

On watch under clothing in winter they are deal breakers. And they work great on apps and apple watch. It’s just another buggy thing from bike UX.

Anyway, this isn’t appropriate behavior for a forerunner functioning normally. And there are a number of things that may resolve it. So I am trying them. Trying again tomorrow.

 

[dynamic]

different people have different ideas what totally silent means!!!! full power vado is much quieter than SL motor, but i’ve never heard one that’s “totally silent.” not as loud as a freewheel, rough pavement, or high wind speed, but quite audible in ideal conditions like climbing a steep smoothly paved hill at low speed but high power.

When I got it, it sounded identical to the other vados and comos I had tried. None of them were silent. But I think it is making a new noise now. Will bring it in once they are open.

 

[mschwett]

On watch under clothing in winter they are deal breakers. And they work great on apps and apple watch. It’s just another buggy thing from bike UX.

Anyway, this isn’t appropriate behavior for a forerunner functioning normally. And there are a number of things that may resolve it. So I am trying them. Trying again tomorrow.

disagree on auto-start/stop on apps. doesn’t work well on cadence, RwGPS, mission control, or cyclemeter. GPS position is always slightly delayed relative to cadence or bicycle speed sensor, and i’ve not seen an app that correctly intuits when to start and stop. they all seem to give too much weight to GPS, for example stopping when you ride through a tunnel or overpass. and heaven forbid you see it doing so, hit the button, but do so just as it figured out you came out from the tunnel and instead of starting it you stopped it LOL.

and unless you leave your phone/computer on the bike while grabbing a drink, water, snack, auto start will stupidly resume your ride while you’re in the cafe, making little hairball traces.

of course, not every cares about precision of their starts and stops and not everyone rides through tunnels, underpasses, between tall buildings and in forests, etc!

 

[GuruUno]

2022 are not. At least, mine never has been.

My 2022 Vado 5.0 had a constant 'whine', especially when in Smart mode. Usually, after the motor warms up.

 

[dynamic]

disagree on auto-start/stop on apps. doesn’t work well on cadence, RwGPS, mission control, or cyclemeter. GPS position is always slightly delayed relative to cadence or bicycle speed sensor, and i’ve not seen an app that correctly intuits when to start and stop. they all seem to give too much weight to GPS, for example stopping when you ride through a tunnel or overpass. and heaven forbid you see it doing so, hit the button, but do so just as it figured out you came out from the tunnel and instead of starting it you stopped it LOL.

of course, not every cares about precision of their starts and stops and not everyone rides through tunnels, underpasses, between tall buildings and in forests, etc!

Start stop timing is fine for me on rwgps. But starting/stopping randomly while riding is a problem. Garmin should be smart enough to use power/cadence/speed when they are connected. I don’t think they are that smart (or it’s broken).

I don’t have GPS interruptions here from things like tunnels. There are none. Or buildings. There are “mountains”.

My problem is I won’t remember to restart it. And, absolute accuracy isn’t super necessary. The problem with start stop constantly happening wasn’t data. I lost 1 or 2 minutes of moving time to it. The watch was non-stop buzzing. *that* was annoying.

If this problem is solved, the forerunner will be the solution. It’s otherwise been great so far.

 

[dynamic]

So, the garmin forerunner 955: I don't know if I resolved the issue with auto pause yet, but it really seems to need garmin express desktop app. The map updating on watch flat out didn't work. ( something other users have experienced ). Now, I am not navigating with it at all, but doing all the updates may also force the GPS info to be updated which *may* resolve the auto pause issue. I will likely find out tomorrow. Some sources have indicated that the watch doesn't fully sync/update without garmin express desktop app.

So far, I really like the data I am getting out of this watch. It will only get deeper as some of the HRV / Training Readiness takes days or weeks of data collection before it provides analysis. Even the morning report thing was pretty nice. A lot of those daily things just annoy me, but this one at least has relevant info for planning your activities based on yesterday, sleep and other metrics. A lot of them are only "here is what you did", not "here is how you should think about today".

It's neat stuff. Whether it has *real* value, I can't say yet. But it appears to be fairly well done. And, honestly, the notifications on it are sufficient. I can't respond to stuff the way I can on my apple watch, but I at least know about it and could get the phone out. There is a small and growing list of things I would miss from apple watch if I switched to exclusively the forerunner. One thing is apple pay. (garmin pay exists, but doesn't work with several of my card providers).

Fun times. Will keep experimenting. At least the forerunner isn't a one ride wonder like the 1040.

 

[dynamic]

Auto pause issue is not gone. But it was less frequent. It may also be related to coasting. Today I tracked GPS signal and it never went below max visually while pausing/unpausing or at any other time. So I don’t think it is signal gaps.

I wasn’t tracking when it was happening but if I am coasting, cadence and power would be zero. So it either has gps or speed to work with. Now, it’s done this when going 25-35 mph downhill. At no point should either gps or speed signal a pause.

Going to try and isolate and reproduce as much as I can.

 

[mschwett]

Auto pause issue is not gone. But it was less frequent. It may also be related to coasting. Today I tracked GPS signal and it never went below max visually while pausing/unpausing or at any other time. So I don’t think it is signal gaps.

I wasn’t tracking when it was happening but if I am coasting, cadence and power would be zero. So it either has gps or speed to work with. Now, it’s done this when going 25-35 mph downhill. At no point should either gps or speed signal a pause.

Going to try and isolate and reproduce as much as I can.

my impression is that all the auto stop algorithms are GPS based and not sensor based, since bike sensors vary and the developers of these tools don’t seem to have included any preference for sensors when available. would be pretty simple to do, also simple to verify. just pedal the bike with the wheel off the ground and see what happens

 

[dynamic]

my impression is that all the auto stop algorithms are GPS based and not sensor based, since bike sensors vary and the developers of these tools don’t seem to have included any preference for sensors when available. would be pretty simple to do, also simple to verify. just pedal the bike with the wheel off the ground and see what happens

I don’t have a trainer. And if it is coasting, that will only work when not pedaling. By the way, it seemed to unpause while on the stand at the shop today. But I wasn’t paying attention to the watch.

I think garmin is using a mix of sensors. And, I would bet it messes up auto pause when forced to swap sensors. I might try disconnecting all the sensors and going for a ride. If it doesn’t do it with just gps, then it’s just poorly implemented sensor checking for auto pause.

The problem is: it is still erratic. It doesn’t do it every time. And there are definitely times where it just doesn’t do it at all.

Will test and try and identify it. This time I have a 90 day return window to try and figure it out. I also genuinely like the device. This problem isn’t creating a huge issue. It’s about 45 seconds of dropped data for 30 minutes of mixed riding.

The other possibility is the ant+ speed data is experiencing interference and the garmin pauses when data stops streaming reliably.

 

[dynamic]

@mschwett FYI, starting a session, lifting the rear wheel and spinning the pedal unpauses. Coasting did not cause it to stop (but only for a few seconds). Putting the wheel back on the ground caused the workout to pause. So it’s definitely using some speed sensor.

 

[mschwett]

@mschwett FYI, starting a session, lifting the rear wheel and spinning the pedal unpauses. Coasting did not cause it to stop (but only for a few seconds). Putting the wheel back on the ground caused the workout to pause. So it’s definitely using some speed sensor.

so, next step is to just carry the bike for 50 or 100 feet outside without the wheels turning (hold the brake!) and see if it also starts….

all the app based ones i’ve tried only use GPS ir perhaps GPS and accelerometer for movement detection.

 

[dynamic]

so, next step is to just carry the bike for 50 or 100 feet outside without the wheels turning (hold the brake!) and see if it also starts….

all the app based ones i’ve tried only use GPS ir perhaps GPS and accelerometer for movement detection.

Or, you know, just ride it while off. ;p

 

[mschwett]

Or, you know, just ride it while off. ;p

no, because you don’t know that the behavior when a sensor isn’t present is the same as when a sensor is present but returning 0mph/rpm

 

[dynamic]

no, because you don’t know that the behavior when a sensor isn’t present is the same as when a sensor is present but returning 0mph/rpm

True. Basically will it trust GPS only in the presence of other sensors doing nothing. I already know it pauses when coasting (and possibly in other scenarios).

I am also going to see if it always happens while coasting. If that is the case, maybe there is an issue with the speed sensor. Maybe disconnect the spd/cadence and ebike sensors and see if it still does it. Leaves it with power and gps.

Also going to contact garmin.

 

[Stefan Mikes]

So it’s definitely using some speed sensor.

As long as I do not start my e-bike system, Wahoo says the speed is N/A.

 

[dynamic]

As long as I do not start my e-bike system, Wahoo says the speed is N/A.

Can’t it do speed from gps?

 

[Stefan Mikes]

Can’t it do speed from gps?

I know it should be able to! It is because the Roam than I used before works perfectly for the friend who got is and rides a traditional bike.
Maybe I'm wrong and could see the N/A inside the building (no GPS coverage)!

 

[dynamic]

The garmin watch is really impressive. It's objective measurements for things like body battery and training info are really on point. I am crazy exhausted today and will skip any ride (both because tired, and because I have family visiting this weekend blocking my normal ride times). But the garmin is basically telling me to don't do anything, I didn't get enough sleep, I don't have the energy to go on an intense activity. And it is right. My legs are jelly, I have zero energy and if I did do a ride, it would be a half-assed one.

I also don't feel like testing the garmin auto pause issue. I was going to take the bike and ride/carry it up and down the street to see if I could repetitively re-create the auto pause problem. I just can't even focus on that. So I won't.

Also, battery life on it is not as amazing as their specs say. With about an hour a day in full GPS/Sports tracking and the rest "normal", I dropped quite a bit of battery to the point that I would get only a few days, not weeks of usage. Part of this *can* be all the tinkering, and that will go away as I get into a groove with the device. But, if it really is just a few days of battery, that would be pretty disappointing. As the watch would require charging on any basic trip.

Anyway, no ride today. Learning a lot about the idiosyncrasies of the garmin platform. Lots of little oddities. Oh, it's asking me every five seconds if I am enjoying this app. I say no, I hate it every time because it *keeps asking me and won't stop*. I just said no 11 times in 15 minutes of looking through the app.

 

[dynamic]

Anyone know if there is a way to confirm speed/cadence sensors are working correctly? I remember reading that early vado deliveries had a misaligned sensor and the LBS had to get a part and fix it. A speed sensor where the data-stream is slightly unstable might cause a device like the forerunner to interpret breaks in speed as stopping if coasting.

Anyway, there are not a lot of references to this problem (unlike all the 1040 bugs). I want to rule out anything on the bike side before I blame the forerunner for the auto pause issues.

 

[mschwett]

Anyone know if there is a way to confirm speed/cadence sensors are working correctly? I remember reading that early vado deliveries had a misaligned sensor and the LBS had to get a part and fix it. A speed sensor where the data-stream is slightly unstable might cause a device like the forerunner to interpret breaks in speed as stopping if coasting.

Anyway, there are not a lot of references to this problem (unlike all the 1040 bugs). I want to rule out anything on the bike side before I blame the forerunner for the auto pause issues.

i think you’d see bigger problems from that relative to motor assist and error messages (although maybe you are!) but what i’d do is turn off auto-anything and go for a ride with minimal stopping. review the cadence and speed data in strava or tool of your choice. anomalies will be obvious; either shown as dropouts, spikes, or straight ramps from a data point on one side of the gap to the other. set x-axis to time, not distance.