Mtracer

I've had a Garmin Varia for several months and use it with my Garmin Edge 530. It has worked fine until recently.

What I first noticed was the red light on the side of the Varia that indicates recording was not coming on automatically. I had to press it. The light would come on. This started about 3-4 rides ago. Yesterday, I noticed when I did this, it then went off again. It is quite posisble it was doing this on previous rides, but I simply didn't notice.

I used the Vartia app and discovered that somehow the camera got set to always off, instead of continuously on. Okay, I figured problem solved.

Two things are still not working right.

1) It used to work that the Varia would turn on and off automatically when I turned on the Garmin Edge. This no longer happens. I have to turn the Varia on and off manually. The Garmin manual makes one brief mention that if the device LED is blinking blue it is in "Smart Mode" and should turn on and off automatically. The LED does pulse blue. There is no other information on "Smart Mode" in the manual. Is there some way I may have disable "Smart Mode"? If so, I've been unable to find anywhere to enable this.

2) When on, the Garmin Edge correctly shows the radar icon in the upper right corner as on and connected. But it no longer shows the red dot that indicates the Varia is recording, yet the Varia record LED is on. I'm guessing this may be related to the above issue.

Anyone have an idea what might be going on?

Thanks in advance.

Polaris OBark

They recently pushed a firmware update. Try that, if you don't have the most recent version.

Mtracer

As far as I can tell, I have the latest firmware versions for both the Edge 530 and the Varia 715. That's what the Edge 530 says itself, and the Varia in the Varia app, as well as both in Garmin Express. I'm more suspicious that the issue might be becasue of an update, but I can't find a history of Gamin updates to see if they might have done something in the last week or so.

Iride01 

If you don't get a solution from someone here soon, then call Garmin Support. They'll help you with it. When your call hits the phone queue, you'll have the option to leave your callback number. And they do call you back in a timely manner.

Mtracer

I called the Garmin support line and they got it working. First off, the problem seemed to be that the Garmin was seeing the radar but not the light on its light network. Apparently it is the light network connection that provides the control for having the Varia turn on and off with the Edge 530. Also, the light network icon was not showing up at the top of the Edge screen.

Garmin support had me remove the Varia as a sensor and then redo the pairing of the Varia. After doing this, the Varia showed up as part of the light network and things seem to be working normally again. Oddly, I had actually gone through this yesterday. All I can assume is the pairing is perhaps a bit unstable and I somehow got the radar paired but not the light.

Thanks for providing the Garmin support number. Very odd to be able to get customer support on the phone immediately. With the exception of a rather lengthy menu of options, and not clear where cycling fell in those options, it was excellent service.

The idea of calling customer support never occurs to me anymore because most don't even have phone numbers for this, or if they do, they also say "Your call is very important to us. We have a high call volume and are busy helping other customers. You are in line for the next available agent, when hell freezes over". I added the last part.

So a few Brownie points for Garmin and Iride01 too. Thanks

Iride01 

It's been awhile since I've needed it, but Garmin Support is willing to help with devices that are out of warranty too.

As long as it's just verbal help, they'll tell you pretty much anything you need to know to get any of their devices configured properly and working. If they can't get it working, then that's where the warranty comes in. If a device is out of warranty, then for certain devices they have what they call a flat rate repair charge. Which essentially is you send them your device plus pay a fee and they send you a refurbished unit. Depending on the device, that flat fee is sometimes worth it over buying a new device. Particularly if you aren't needing a different model just because your model is dated.

Mtracer

Unfortunately, the setup seems to be less than reliable. While it seemed to be working fine after I got done with Garmin support. It went south again. I played around and got it back working. It seems to be very finicky. While maybe there is something wrong with either my Edge 530 or the Varia. This feels a lot more like a software bug. I'm thinking Garmin screwed something up in an update. Or the setup is just finicky (i.e. a bug you can work around) and once I get it working it will stay that way as long as I don't look at it wrong.