John_V 

Thanks! I've tried searching Wahoo's Support page and nothing came up on deleting routes from the Bolt.

JohnJ80

The "jitter" from the computer orienting the map in the direction of travel can become a problem if you zoom way into the map and you're on a twisty path/road. Same happens on other brands as well. Zoom out and it diminishes rapidly.

01 CAt Man Do

( using Locus app ) ...Seems if I switch from internal compass to GPS compass it also is a lot smoother. Zooming out helps a lot too. Still need to test it while on a ride to see how much the screen moves.

Dreaded1

I went out on a 71 mile over the weekend and we both have a Bolt. When I first got my Bolt I set the wheel size for 700x25, but have since changed it to auto dectect. I helped him install and set up his Bolt when he got it and it is still set for the 700x25 wheel. During the ride Saturday his bolt was consistently showin more mileage than mine. At the end his said that he rode a total of 73-74 miles, mine showed 71.1. When we uploaded to Strava it showed us both at 71.1. I know I set up the wheel size correctly in his, but we cannot understand why his consistently shows a larger distance than mine.

Perhaps on the next ride I will change his to auto detect and see if we are closer in mileage.

2TriMaster2

Agree!! Perfect review.

zacster

Sorry to bring up an oldish thread, but there is a lot of good info in it, and the device is current.

A couple of things caught my eye. First, the issue with cadence sensors freezing up is something I found in the setup instructions of the sensor. It must be oriented the right way otherwise the signal or the sensing, I don't know which, doesn't work well. I've been using mine on my shoe and it must be oriented so that the sensor's long axis is parallel with your foot, not at right angles. It is also important on the crank mount but I haven't tried that. It was the same whether using the Bolt, my phone or a computer app.

Second, using auto circumference is dead accurate in choosing wheel size. It eliminates the variability in the tires by measuring against a known distance using GPS, and it can do it over a longer distance than you would even measure manually. The only problem with this is when you use it on your indoor trainer. There's no GPS! But indoors it doesn't really matter as indoor miles and speed are just a guess in any case. Maybe your wheel traveled that far, but would your power output have taken you that far? I always just take it with a grain of salt, but still include it in my totals as there is nothing else. And in the case of Strava showing a different result, it probably used the GPS data to get distance.

Overall though, I agree with the general opinion of the thread, this is a great device.

shelbyfv

If Bluetooth is enabled on the phone and a text comes in, can the Bolt be set to display something? If so what? Just who it's from or the actual text? Sorry if this is very basic, just trying to think of more reasons why I might need another gadget.

JohnJ80

It shows you all of that. Sender, text etc... or you can dismiss it.

shelbyfv

Cool, thanks!

zacster

It also rings when a phone call comes in. What's that you ask? You know, when you talk, and somebody talks back. Pretty cool really. It'll replace text some day.

torero310

I haven't been able to use it yet (treating it for Christmas so I will have to wait) but I am under the impression that the ELEMNT products are only functional the way they are to be simple meaning that they can't be given what they're not told (also why they have the world map rather than downloading by area and etc.) which means that unless the app you download the map from gives turn by turn, it cannot do it intuitively for you. So it's essentially a calculator rather than a slow search engine.

rollingsteel

I have the Elemnt, and I consistently got errors between strava and the Wahoo, or my riding buddies and my wahoo when I measured my wheel. I did it a few times and am certain I was spot on. When I use auto-detect it is very close to what I'd expect. Only thing I can think of is maybe when you sit on the bike and roll the weight changes the circumference?

zacster

I checked this morning, and the auto-detect circumference for my 700x23 tires was 2008, not 2096. That's enough of a difference to show up on a ride.

John_V 

I believe the problem is Strava and not the Bolt. I've have been consistently getting portions of a mile dropped when sending my ride to Strava. I can do a 40.4 mile ride and send the file to Strava and Strava will display it as 39.9. I have also had it where Strava dropped an entire mile off my ride. I also send my rides to Endomondo and RWGPS and both those sites show exactly what I see on the Bolt. If I upload a file from a 40.6 mile ride, it displays properly. I'm thinking Strava needs to look into their FIT parsing engine because I don't think it's working right.

Steve B.

Why do I have this thought that Strava doesn't use the fit file, instead uses the actual GPS track. That could explain the miles shortage (cutting the corners)

John_V 

From everything I've read, the Wahoo companion app syncs the FIT file from the Bolt to the phone and sends the file to Strava and whatever authorized site you have set up. To send the data, it would have to convert the file and send it in GPX, TCX or KML format, which are pretty big files and will use up more data. The FIT file size for today's 60 mile ride is only 505KB compared to the same ride file in TCX format which is 8.79MB. I'm not 100% sure what the FIT file actually contains as I have not found a suitable free or shareware FIT file editor so I can actually see the file contents.

Steve B.

On further thought I think you are correct if for no other reason that relying on GPS data only would render the unit, and data, useless if used indoors.

Dragonzdk

Hi there, like many on here i find the bolt and indespensible piece of kit these days. However today, for the first time, I accidentally deleted my ride and was wondering if anyone has had any success in recovering the fit file?

I’ve tried quite a few apps on windows to recover the file however none of them can access the files in the elemnt.

Ordinarily it wouldnt bother me too much but today was my first foray back into the real world after a forced 3 month sabbatical to recover from a fractured femur!! Worst case I do the ride again and log it manually...but was hoping it was possible to recover the file as I doubt its completely vanished as that rarely happens as far as I understand it.

I’ve also logged a ticket with wahoo and should I get some valuable info. I will share it here if no-one knows.

Cheers

unterhausen

FIT files are binary whereas the other formats are plain text. So editing a FIT file requires some translation out of binary. Here is a link to the fit sdk which has a document that describes the format. https://www.thisisant.com/resources/fit/

Binary vs. text explains a lot of the size discrepancy. I'm not sure why they would prefer other, more verbose formats over FIT.

njkayaker

The text files are XML files. There's a strong preference for XML files over binary files pretty-much everywhere.

As text files go, XML is very wordy (the tags/names for data are long and repeated many times.

XML is a standard for data interchange. Binary formats aren't.

njkayaker

Golden Cheetah?

Tcx should be the most complete representation of what's in the fit file.

One reason to use the text (the files are XML) formats is because it makes it easy to see the file contents.

John_V 

TCX, GPX and KML files are modified XML files. The difference between them is the header and any data placed, by the device/app, at the end of the last data record. The header is replaced with the standard XML header and any data after the last record is stripped and parsed separately. This is done because databases like SQL Server and Oracle use, as you said, XML as their standard for data interchange. An XLM file is instantly recognized as a data table in SQL Server and will insert that data into a temp table. This sets off a trigger in the temp table that runs one or more stored procedures that moves the data into the main database.

What I'm actually looking for is an app that will open a FIT2 file so I can see/modify the actual data. I ran upon one, a while ago, but the guy wanted way too much money for something that I would not use enough to pay for it's price. I'll look into that Golden Cheetah app and see if it will do what I want.

John_V 

OOOPS! I quoted the wrong person on my last post. Please see my last post for my response.

I don't want to get the SDK because I'm now retired, I no longer have my language compilers on my PC and I don't want to have to write an app in order to do the conversion.

John_V 

Well, the newest update for the Elemnt and Bolt came out on Thursday. Checked the support site and they say that the newest version (v1836) has an updated popup notification window for turn by turn. I'll download one of my routes and see what they did. I hope they made it to where you can read the notification window.

airforce1

Looks like mostly positive reviews here.


Anyone here previously use a Garmin 520 and moved to the Bolt?


Also, has anyone tried integrating the Bolt to Garmin Vector 3 power meter pedals?


Thanks!