How do you manage multiple bikes in Garmin system?
 

I’ve had an edge 530 for a few weeks now and find it very cumbersome. I used to use the Cyclemeter app which is very intuitive

i have two bikes entered into the Garmin connect app and one is the default but how do I select the other one?

can I assign a bike to an activity profile? If not, how can I tell it the other bike is being used?

It is really easy. Just create individual profiles for each bike. Before you start a ride select a bike and it is all done automatically from there.

I have five bikes on my 530 and each has a slightly profile. They all work fine.

Go to the Garmin Forums for further assistance.

Good luck.

would that work with the ANT+ device too? like lights? I want to leave some lights on one bike the computer has issues when it cant find some lights after while. so I changed the lights from one bike to the other

Activity Profiles and name them according to the bike.

The main screen allows you to scroll from AP to AP.

All sensors are agnostic to which bike you use. Then 530 will read and use whatever sensor is active.

I assign the bike to the activity post-ride in the Garmin Connect app. I use Activity Profiles mainly for separate data page layouts - one for biking with a power meter, another profile for biking without a power meter.

The actual sensors don't matter - as mentioned by the poster above, the Garmin will connect to whatever registered sensors that are active anyway.

Multiple configurations are best handled with heavy drinking , and experience in programming, and more drinking.
Nobody does either well.

Resign yourself to several minutes setting up and verifying any setup you change.
The folks that are happy with their set ups seem to not have many ,and have stable configurations.
Complexity adds variables in an exponential fashion.

If you get 80% performance, you have beat the average, bigly.
Nobody appear to have cracked the code for multiple bikes with differing sensors.
It appears to be a bigger programming challenge with more variables than can be easily sorted out.
Best approach I have found (3 bikes and trainer),, is to make a checklist of the things you want to review before use.
Only adds 5 minutes to a pre ride prep

Just set up multiple profiles. One for each ride. I have a 1030 so I am not sure how it works on the 530 but I have three bikes,indoor trainer, daily rider and my pretty bike. All three have different profiles with different set ups. All three have stand alone sensors that the Garmin finds in seconds. I find it very easy to use.
Depending on the software you use for data that can be a bit more complicated to sort out. Connect isn't the best but use that and golden cheetah for my actual training data deciphering. Just depends how much time you want to spend looking at data really.

Bit of an ignorance question, what is the purpose of having different bike profiles? I've got 2 garmin, a 130 and an explore and I just grab and go typically with the 130 and whichever bike I have. I just select the ride type.

In my world, I set up the data screens differently in the profiles. The bikes with Di2 show me the gear(s) I’m sitting in as example, the road bike with the 105 group doesn’t have that data.

Garmin should export the profile used in the dump to Connect. It would show you monthly/yearly usage of particular bikes. I do that as a manual edit in rides in RWGPS. Tells me as example that last time I rode my 16 yr. old Stumperjumper was 12/6/19.

Steve B. Hit it correctly also only one of my bikes has a power meter so I don't need that metric on my other two bikes. Infact my indoor bike I only see very little data. My daily rider/training bike I get TONS of data. It is handy to have the profiles. And if your committed you can separate the data on each bike. Some don't care but some of us do. To each their own of course.

I save the bikes under “gears”, and after a ride when I view the activity on garmin connect, I add the gears to the activity. I wish it has nested gears (as in when you “add” the bike to the activity it adds all the associated gears like chain, cassette, tires etc), so I wouldn’t have to add cassette, chain etc to the ride every time.

To bump and seek clarification/expansion -

After several months with a 530, I'm finally getting around to setting this up for multiple bikes. I've got an Activity profile named after each bike (just two at this point, one road, one gravel). I have the data screens set up as desired for each bike/activity profile, with appropriate fields for the given sensors on each bike.

Is this as far as it goes? Now I just select/confirm the correct Activity Profile prior to a ride? Is there a way for the 530 to do this automagically based upon available sensors detected? Is there even a way to associate specific sensors with specific bikes/Activity Profiles?

What about the bike under your Gear? Do you still need to change it post-ride if you're not riding your default bike or is there some way of associating the a bike entry under Gear with an Activity Profile?

Thanks in advance!

Yes, that’s it. Activity Profiles could be a better feature if Garmin would get off their collective asses and have that data ported to the Connect app as a completed ride upload. I asked for it about 5 years ago, zip. It would be useful if you could link a pan activity to a particular bike, would the automatically assign a completed activity to a particular “gear” or bike. Right now that’s not available and you have to manually edit the ride info.

The way Garmin deals with sensors is smart. They are agnostic as to which bike or activity you use. The device sees the active sensor and uses the data, thus no need to manually swap or tell the device which sensor is in use. It works, which is not always the case with Garmin stuff, thus I’d leave that alone.

Having to go back and edit the ride to change bikes is a major flaw for a dedicated cycling computer in my opinion. There are 87 other settings for an activity, why not the bike/gear? Doesn't seem like it was designed by a cyclist, that's for sure. I'm slowly getting used to the software but it really is a lousy UI all around.

I think the point is that the Garmin devices (whether they be cycling computers or watches or whatever) are gear-agnostic. They don't even have any gear information on them. On the other hand, the Garmin Connect platform provides the option to link an activity to gear -- another point being "gear" in this sense is a generic categorization which you can apply to just about any sort of equipment: bike, wheels, chain, tires, pedals, shoes, etc.

If you want to track miles for gear and maintenance, then that is more the realm of site or software you use to view your ride data that the cyclometer/gps provides. Despite the fact we think of them as sophisticated devices, they really pale in computing power and resources when compared to your PC, Mac or even your own smartphone.

Trying to have everything done by the device is probably asking for disaster, more cost and more complication using them than most of us want.

Not asking for anything except that part of the completed ride data include the Activity Profile. I mentioned this to a Garmin tech support guy years ago, he thought it was a good feature and told me to write it up and send it in. I was like "why don't you send it in ?".