Wahoo Bolt v2 Nav Lagging, Auto Stop/Stop delayed
 

Anyone experience these issues with their Bolt v2's?

• During navigation, turn prompts are late by 50-75 ft while on the road. Meaning I'm at the turn, but its showing I still have 50-75 ft to go till the turn.
• When stopped it usually takes a few seconds for it to pause the ride. Rarely will is pause within a second of stopping.
• When riding slow, sub 4 mph in the woods it'll sometimes auto-pause and resume randomly.

Another odd behaviour, I pulled a RWGPS route for a bike path which crossed a number of streets. When approaching some of the crossings, it was suggesting I turn left or right at the street... when I simply needed to cross it.

I just bought a lezyne after having a Garmin and a magellan and I had to buy speed sensors for my mtn bikes with the lezyne. I bought a couple of super cheap Tusy speed/cadence sensors off amazon for $12 and that took care of my auto pause issues with low speed mtn bike climbs.

I have read a lot of reviews that have included the same problems you have posted. Do you have the latest firmware updates? I saw on the Wahoo website that an update that came out mid Sept this year address GPS functionality.

Today, I did a little test. Started with a RWGPS road route I created, STOPPED at the start of each "turn" and the results can be seen below. The turn cue lagged on average 29 ft, with one being off 92 ft.

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...1e47216fb3.jpg
https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...b0f92acd46.jpg
https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...7e1b058ee9.jpg
https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...dd41967eff.jpg
https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...f0a32477a6.jpg

Okay, not so bad... but what happens as you approach the turn and are NOT stopping... on average is was lagging by 74 ft, with a max discrepancy of 93 ft.


To me that's a large error, at the point you need to start turning its way off.

Funny enough, they must have just released an update... because I checked for updates in the last couple days. I was running WA27-13671 and now its WA27-13917. In terms of recording rides, it seems to do fine... how accurately, I can't say. It'll navigate and reroute as needed... so on a high-level it works. The details are troublesome.

Thanks for the info. With the accuracy of GPS systems these days being less than 10 feet, Wahoo has a problem it needs to fix and urgently. I cant imagine being able to trust this Bolt v2 on a mountain bike trail. It would be useless.

When I was having auto pause issues with my Garmin back in 2010, I went into the setting for auto pause and changed it from "when stopped" to "when less than 3 mph" and never had an auto pause issue again. Don't know if Wahoo allows you to do that.

GPS position drifts constantly. To see it, turn your auto pause off, then start the timer or whatever on Wahoo records the ride on your device and leave it in one place for 10 minutes. Then stop the timer, save the ride and then zoom in on the map and you will see where at different times during that 10 minutes the device is shown as 10, 20 or even 30 feet away from where it was sitting.

You can only enable or disable auto start/stop not the thresholds.

Tried the same test with my iPhone 12... while on the move, the turn cue is only delayed 25', whereas the Bolt v2 is 75' on average.

I've been looking into this via Youtube videos. I saw one that claimed the lagging issues were in large cities. Are you guys who are having problems in large cities, the suburbs or rural areas?

Suburbs...

Went for 2hr MTB ride, lots of slow sections. The unit tracked 2-3 mph consistently. It did auto start/stop a few times, but over 2 hrs...

It's annoying, but like I originally stated... I'm not seeing a problem related to it. Do is it just boil down to GPS signal strength in your area and would that affect any GPS unit equally?

Geez, I guess I'll stick with my original Bolt for a while.

Gosh, it doesn’t look bad in the vids to me; I see the turn direction lights are all already indicating when you start each video segment, and then a beeps goes off right after you completed the turn, which I imagine is the signal to indicate you should have made the turn. Is there a beep before the turn, like perhaps when the turn direction lights start, to indicate the turn is coming up?

I certainly see the issue you’re talking about with displayed distance to turn; it would be nice if that were more accurate, and I can understand there are some road and trail situations where relying on the distance-to-turn reading could cause confusion and put one on the wrong course.

I suppose, though, having used GPS nav on phones for vehicle driving so long, I don’t have any expectation of great accuracy in the 20ft range, and I rely on a combination of the “hey, a turn is coming up” indications, a quick glance at the map, and then a real-time look at road possibilities. In most cases where I drive, that’s pretty effective because possible turn options (e.g. intersections, alleys, etc.) aren’t that closely spaced so it’s easy for me to figure the turn indicated in 25ft must be the one I’m right on top of because the next one is way more than 25ft feet away.

Now that’s on a phone sampling at 1hz, so if I’m moving at 50mph and GPS is generally accurate within 32ft (10m), that’s a lot ground covered in 1sec that’s not properly accounted for in addition to normal error distance. A bike traveling at 15mph is doing 22ft per second, so again, it seems like being 25ft off the mark is pretty much on par with what we’d expect could be the error at a sampling rate of once per second (assuming Bolt and other head units sample at 1hz, which I think is pretty standard).

In my car, when I need greater GPS accuracy, I have a high-speed, 10hz (10 cycles per second) GPS unit so that I can get accurate acceleration readings for things like 0-60mph and 1/4mi runs. The 1hz sampling rate of phone GPS is too inaccurate for reliable measurements at those speeds and intervals.

I haven’t used turn-by-turn nav on a cycling GPS unit— I have the v.1 Bolt, so have to watch the screen and know my turns are upcoming— but there, too, I don’t get anywhere near 100% location accuracy with regards to my indicated position on the route, and it’s pretty typical for the map to lag in updating after completing a turn, so the issues the OP is highlighting are not unfamilar, but I also don’t think they’re outside of the normal range of operation for any cycling GPS unit.

Heck, I’d be well stoked to get an audible heads-up for upcoming turns; that’d really improve my cycling life! As I said earlier, I see the indicator lights are firing in the OP’s vid saying, essentially, “make next turn,” but I’m really curious if there’s an audible call out to go along with that.

I’ve never used a Karoo, but it’s supposed to have better nav— for whatever reason— than any other cycling computer, so that might be something for the OP to look into and see what it’s about if Bolt is not worth adapting to (or should I say, second guessing?!). Again, I’m not a heavy TbT nav user myself and don’t have familiarity with all the performance nuances, but certainly get how the displayed performance would be very frustrating for someone wanting to rely on the nav to take the worry out of finding the way.

To the extent Bolt v.2 has other issues, I dunno, but certainly the combo of disappointment and bugs would be maddening. I’ve been wanting to upgrade from Bolt to Bolt v2, but this thread has alerted me to the fact I need to take a closer look at how the new unit is performing. I know DC Rainmaker was frustrated with it, but that was back upon release, like 1 year ago, so I was kind of assuming the issues were resolved, but apparently they may not be based on what I’m hearing here.

Start/Stop lag.
 

With the original Bolt and Roam you can get better Start/Stop results by pairing a Wahoo Speed Sensor.
Detecting you have stopped using GPS is tough and subject to interference or low signal.
Detecting you have stopped using a Speed Sensor.... immediate.

BTW, Don't calibrate the speed Sensor to the Wheel diameter, let the Bolt/Roam automatic process do that.

Barry

bmwpowere36m3 does the unit give an audible alert to turn when the visual indicator lights start?

I'd have to double check, I know it beeps after a turn is complete... it may also depend on which page you have up. I seem to recall an audible with a notification for upcoming turn when not on the map page.

If you would, I’d appreciate it! I can only imagine it must, otherwise having turn-by-turn nav would be pretty useless if it required constant map (or lights) monitoring.

That, as a user, you’re not sure if it does is concerning, though, because it suggests the audible call-out is not prominent. Knowing how I use the breadcrumb nav on the old Bolt, I really want any new unit I might get to be aggressive, like, “Yo dummy! Turn upcoming, next right!” and loud enough that my clubmates wonder what I did to make my Bolt hate me!

In the past, I've used Ride With GPS on my iPhone for navigation when I've needed it. I liked that it also notified me on my Garmin 820 screen (at least it used to when the Bluetooth worked on my 820 with my phone), but it doesn't now. So I could live with the glitches with the Wahoo navigation as long as the Bluetooth was reliable with my iPhone. But these reports of the V2 unit auto pausing when clearly moving is disturbing. How fast where you folks going when it auto paused?

I have no issue with the BT connection, nor BT/ANT sensors (HR and Cadence). Usually auto start/stop glitches at low speeds, sub 5 mph and in a covered areas. When riding road/gravel I can't recall more than on one hand, the times it glitched. Now, while riding MTB... it certainly happens more. However, I've had long slow, sub 3 mph climbs without pausing. So I think the slow speeds contribute, but overhead "cover" and loss in GPS signal strength is likely what really causes it.

Repeated test with iPhone 12... on average at turn initiation:

• Bolt v2 delayed cue by: 69 ft
• iPhone 12 delayed cue by: 20 ft

I see the issue, but I don’t see the problem. The Bolt is alerting you to the upcoming turn well in advance in all cases, and the turn is properly indicated on the map. In those cases, there is no possibility of confusion, despite the numeric distance to the turn being off by tens of feet. I think in most road circumstances it would be a non-problem, though as I said before, I can certainly imagine scenarios where it would be confusing.

As an academic matter, it is interesting to understand why the accuracy is not better. Perhaps Bolt GPS samples at slower rate than a phone in order to extend battery life?

Reality for me, I don't use nav much (right now)... my last gravel ride, a couple months ago, where I relied on the unit I didn't have the map up. Instead hoping the nav cues (green banner with ETA to turn) off one of the parameter pages. I missed a few turns during the route thinking it was the next turn. You might be right, that as soon as the LED indicator fires, its literally the next turn. On roads, that's likely fine... got me thinking on trails, that could be deceiving.

The screen is small and having to really focus down on the map for nav makes it kind of less useful... this, auto start/stop and Strava live segments dropping out while underway are a few things I've noticed. I was hoping the nav would be as good or better than my phone.

50% of its use for me is recording rides, which it does and the other 50 is parameters (time, distance, speed, etc...).

I'll add Wahoo stated the performance of the unit is "subpar" and will exchange for a factory refurb unit... I'm skeptical the replacement will be any better. I could return this unit still to REI and go for something else. Maybe my expectations are a bit high for a unit like this.

I've been waiting to get the Wahoo Bolt V2 due to all the negative reviews here at Bike Forums. But after watching that video, I don't see the problem. Perhaps there could be a problem with unmarked dirt paths with mountain biking, but the roads are labeled with road signs and there's a bread crumb path on the Wahoo.

I think I'm buying mine when I go to my local bike shop on Thursday.