Sy Reene

Anyone yet solved the inane ride naming conventions these devices give (ie. instead of perhaps just using the same name that we gave the route we followed)?

njkayaker

The 1030 isn't slow.

The 820 and 520+ were kind of dogs (slow and not great battery life), unfortunately. (The 520 might be OK.)

njkayaker

???

You mean the names of the recorded rides?

You don't need to use a course to record a ride. So "using the same name" wouldn't always work.

You might also use the same course. There's nothing stopping people from using the same course more than once in the same day. So you'd need more than just "the same name" to distinguish different rides. It's natural to use the date to make the file names unique.

There's also a limit to the length of names. So, combining the course name and the date wouldn't work.

Using the date (and time) for the recorded ride always works.

njkayaker

Some people prefer buttons (there's nothing wrong with that preference). Buttons tend to not work that well beyond simple things.

What people do with smartphones isn't necessarily how riders use the Edges with touch-screens.

Screwing around with buttons going down a long hill is probably a dumb thing to do.

In practice, the touch screens on the Edges doesn't seem to be a problem.

Sy Reene

Yeah.. recorded rides. I ride a route I created and named.. and end result is I get:
Garmin Connect: "NYC Cycling"
Strava: "Morning Ride"
Ride wGPS: Typically named as the Date of the ride

Nothing is consistently named the same. This is the kinda stoopid software stuff that should have been easily solved years ago. If I don't ride a course, then perhaps it could default to something generic.. and maybe somehow Garmin could push the same ride name to Strava and RWGPS when it forwards?

FYI.. I don't need a different ride name for each time I ride the same course. As it is, every eg. Strava activity that I start in the morning, are all named "Morning Ride". At least every time I ride the same course, it would be obvious what route I took or where I went without having to open up every one of them to look.

njkayaker

The name in Garmin Connect is really the date (and time).

I haven't seen what Strava does but it probably uses the date too.

So. Garmin uses the date, RWPGPS uses the data, and (probably), Strava does too. So, it is consistent.

(Actually, the activity is stored using a unique number. RWGPS does that too. The number is even more consistent but not meaningful to people at all.)

The "NYC cycling" is a label that you can change to be something more meaningful to you.

The "NYC cycling" label is pretty generic. It's the location of the start, which might not be so bad for places other than large places like "NYC".

You want it to be even more generic (like "my ride" for every one of them?). That seems much less useful. You'd have to change it in either case.

Using the course name doesn't make that much sense. You can not use a course, you can use a course later, you can use more than one course. And people often have useless names for courses.

It's three different companies. It's a concern that not many people are bothered by (I now know of one such person). It's not something worth dealing with. Especially, when somebody will be unhappy with what they would choose to do.

justonwo

If their firmware worked as advertised, I'd be a happy camper. It almost never does, though. I'm glad after a year of having my 530 sit on the shelf in my office that I can finally use it. I used to take it out for a ride every time a new firmware release came out just to check if there were still multiple sensor dropouts . . . it only took Garmin a year to (mostly) fix that issue. So only in the last month have I been able to use it. The 510 was so bad, my shop upgraded me to the 520 no questions asked after it came out.

But for the most part the low tech suits me just fine. I'd have a lot more respect for Garmin if their stuff worked reliably. Now that the 530 doesn't drop sensors, it works well enough. Its navigation capabilities are better compared to the 520, but not something I would use out on the road if I wanted to explore a new city. I've spent more than my fair share of time on the phone with Garmin customer service. Argh.

If I really wanted a large computer with navigation, I would do everything I could to avoid a Garmin. In the many years and many generations I've been using them, I've never found their navigation to be anything more than clunky. The 530 is the first one I would call adequate. I just don't see that the 1030 is worth the extra expenditure.

Sy Reene

Not sure what to say here.. I want the opposite of "generic" which is what currently gets uploaded.

For example, I might typically might name a route something like "Bear Mtn via Rte 9W". Now if I ride that route, it would be nice if my ride is named this, instead of "Morning Activity" or 07/11/20 or NYC Cycling which is how the 3 different apps default in naming the same ride.

Here's a random snapshot from a RWGPS ride log.. these ride names (the first column) are fairly meaningless since there's another column that includes the ride date. The starting point is next to meaningless (since most of my rides start near home). All of these rides I followed a garmin route/course that had a name that has more meaning. And yes, I realize I can go into all 3 of my software accounts and manually change the ride names and add descriptions after they're uploaded, but it's a hassle that could be unnecessary. Realize that the Garmin device has the route name already, and Garmin is the one sending the same ride data to their own Connect site, as well as Strava and RWGPS.



Edit... figured I might as well illustrate the Garmin and Strava ride name methodology while I'm at it.

Strava

Garmin

mstateglfr 

My lezyne super GPS is distant in popularity to Garmin and wahoo but my goodness the complaints about so many different parts of the Garmin devices makes me not feel like I am missing something better.
my lezyne connects quickly, gpx/GPS routes are easy to load, and I've never had an error when riding. It isnt touch or color screen though, so its for sure lower tech.

Seattle Forrest

​​​​​​For what it's worth, each of those services comes up with its own name according to its own rules. Garmin's are always the location and the activity type, like NYC cycling, Seattle running, Winthrop skiing, etc. Strava goes with time of day, so you get names like afternoon ride. I don't think the name gets synced, and even if it did, Garmin sends your data off to other sites immediately as soon as it hits the server, but you can't rename it until it's on the server.

It's a good idea about using the course name if there was a course. If you make a custom activity, you'll get its name - I made a "physical therapy" activity in my watch and on Connect that's what those activities are called. They go in as yoga because that's what I used for a starting point, and slightly descriptive. I'm not sure if Edge units understand non cycling activities?

njkayaker

??? You said it could be something generic if you didn't ride a course. Which is a common case.

There's no course information in the recorded file.

??? So, you want the naming process to look at your other rides and use the same name for rides that are kinda the same?

njkayaker

That's not really practical. There's no course information in the FIT file being uploaded.

You'd have exceptions if the course was started after the ride. Or if another course was used.

Sy Reene

1. Yes, if I just go for a ride and start recording, then defaulting to the generic naming convention would be fine or expected.

2. OTOH, the fact that there is no course name information in the uploaded ride activity, when it's a result of having loaded and ridden a course via my garmin, and my head unit knows this (I even get congratulatory beeping noises and a message when I finish), is part of the stoopid software thing. A quick google search of Garmin support forums on Activity naming yields the fact there's a long history of some confusion on what is and isn't possible.

3. What I want is simple. If I create or name a course, then ride that course which has been loaded and followed on my garmin, then the saved activity should be named after that course.

njkayaker

That's a lot of cases. The name provided is already generic (but less generic than what you propose).

The way these basically work is that the recording and navigation are separate processes. The navigation is an optional thing. On many rides (maybe, even most of them), people aren't using navigation at all.

I'd have to see what they actually say to really comment. It could be that people want all sorts of different things.

I suspect a small percentage of recorded rides use courses. And, while it's clear that you want this, it's not clear at all that many other people want it. It requires making changes in the firmware. Either on multiple devices OR on a few (and making things inconsistent). For a feature that it doesn't seem many people care much about. It's probably not as simple as you think.

Sy Reene

I don't agree. For example, a local cycling club here runs many hundreds of group rides each year, with each having lots of participants. Every posted ride has an associated course link that you're somewhat expected to have downloaded from and be able to follow (eg. in case you find yourself at the head of the group for a while). Especially with the GPS units that don't have very good mapping (eg. lower tier Garmin 500 series etc, I would guess a heavily used feature of these units is the turn-by-turn capability that comes with following a course.

njkayaker

What if you start the course after starting the activity?
What if you start the wrong course and change it?
What if you change the course in the middle of the ride?

You saying it's "simple" isn't meaningful either. End users typically underestimate the cost of changes and overestimate the benefits.

The "simple" change would have to be made to the firmware of multiple devices and tested on multiple devices. The "simple" feature would have to be more compelling than other features that fix real problems or make the devices easier to sell. It also doesn't seem like there are lots of people complaining about the lack of this feature.

The number of people who would be happy with the change might not be much different than the number of people who would be unhappy with the change. Could could make it optional but that makes it not so "simple" and will lead other people to complain that it makes the device more complicated to use (and there are a lot of people who complain that the devices are too complicated).

"For example, a local cycling club here runs many hundreds of group rides each year..."

And most of the riders don't have GPS units (maybe, 80%+ don't have them). Of the ones who do, maybe, 20% use routes. That's changing but it's a recent change.

And, there are many people who aren't in clubs.

fooferdoggie 

yes so many more button pushes and confusion. it is a real hassle if you don't want to save a ride. I have one touch and one not and it has a pain to go back and forth.

Steve B.

This thread took a weird turn, but I'm agreeing with NJKayaker here that the majority of GPS cycling devices are not using navigation for their typical rides, they are just using them as fitness trackers. This is clear in that many of the units are not well configured for navigation, Bolt, 530, 130, etc... don't well display maps as opposed to pricier units..

I'd guess that the completed ride could be called anything as the user will end up editing the ride info. somewhere - Connect, RWGPS, Strava, etc... I do this as I also add other information, which bike, who was on the ride, weather, etc.....as RWGPS readily lets me sort data to view later, thus naming is not an effort and I'm OK doing it online vs. on the device.

I do think that GPS devices are becoming prevalent. I was the first in my group of 6 regulars and that was 5 years ago. 4 of us are now on Garmins and one guy just started tracking via the free RWGPS app. We are rarely using navigation, or as the ride leader, I will only if it's a new course and the rest just follow.

Seattle Forrest

​​​​​​Are you sure?

On Connect, the website not the app, when you look at a ride you've done, there's a dropdown labeled course. Usually empty. If I follow a course, the correct one is filled in automatically. They could figure that out by matching your upload against all your courses, but that's a lot of unnecessary computation. I guess I should tell my watch to navigate and then do a different ride and see how it handles it.

Seattle Forrest

Any software change is always 5x more complicated than you expect. Rule of nature. You can't just write code for the thing you're trying to accomplish, you have to basically cover every possibility ahead of time. So many bugs exist because a manager somewhere said "nah people won't do that" without giving it any thought.

Iride01 

A course or route is something that you map out and follow. A ride or activity log that you upload is what you actually did including when you might have went off course and it contains what the GPS recorded as your actual position.

The garmin connect feature, like on other sites is just for organizational purposes so you can group all your activity of that same route under that route or course.

But yes course or route data is a different thing than the metrics and coordinates of what you actually did.

Sy Reene

I'm not sure what these distinctions are or mean. Getting away from Garmin GPS unit for a moment, it's the same darn thing with Zwift. If I ride a Zwift event or do one their workouts, it's all fine and dandy on my Zwift Activity page. Has the name of what the event/ride was eg. "L'etape du Tour Stage 1" or somesuch. I download that activity, and upload to Garmin Connect (which in turn pushes it to Strava and RWGPS).. I have the same useless generic activity names, in these cases they're all "Virtual Cycling" in Garmin Connect or "Lunch Activity" in Strava.

Steve B.

As NJKayaker explained, in the Garmin world a completed ride is something the device records while you are riding. A navigable route, or "course" as Garmin calls it (they call the recorded ride a route, while RideWithGPS calls the created route just that, a Route), is something you created (or had the device create), then downloaded to the device and is what you are following as Turn-By-Turn directions. They are considered different things. The Garmin units do not grab the name of a /course/route you created and downloaded to follow, no point as there's a probability you might divert from that course, so what would you call it ?. In reality, the name of the route/course you download is really only to keep track of for management purposes when looking at the list.

Sy Reene

And.. all this makes it stoopid software that could have been improved ages ago. If I do an activity (eg. on Zwift), and that Activity has a name, and I download that activity and upload it to another software platform, why does the Activity name disappear? For that matter, why is every software giving the same activity a different name?

I'm sure there are technical reasons, just like you (a long time ago) couldn't give a file name more than 8.3 character lengths -- but even Microsoft figured out how to fix this.

Seattle Forrest

All the different services come up with different names because they're different. Strava programmers (well their bosses) didn't think writing their own code to make the same names as Garmin was worthwhile. Most of their customers don't really care, most people only look at the data on one site.