Wireless Downloading to Garmin Edge

[Bill Watts]

I have been very encouraged by recent reports about the Wahoo Bolt, and, if I were in the market now for a GPS unit, I think I would give that a try.  But, because my Garmin Edge 820 is less than a year old, I am determined to stick with it for a couple of years, and to get the most out of it I can. (Besides, I have to say that it is the best Garmin I have had so far; some who had bad luck in the early stages of its release might be more happy after installing the recent software updates.)

In terms of getting the most out of the unit, I was very pleasantly surprised recently to discover an app an app that lets you transfer routes wirelessly to the 820 (and, presumably, to the 810 and 1000 as well).  It's called "routeCOURSE," and you get it through the Garmin "Connect IQ" site.  You download the app to your Garmin, and then you create an account on your computer--curiously, at a website called "DynamicWatch."  The way it works is that you upload courses to a cloud server through the DynamicWatch website, and these courses are then transferred wirelessly to your Garmin, once you have your account set up.

It's not completely smooth or intuitive, but it is workable.  One thing I especially like is that you can put a link to a course RideWithGPS, and then you will be able to download it to your Garmin.  Unfortunately, courseSEARCH does not have a smartphone app, like the Wahoo, but they say that their website is set up so that it can be used from a smartphone.  I haven't tried this yet, but, in theory at least, you should be able to do everything from a smartphone, and bypass your computer altogether.  To me, this will be a great advantege on multi-day tours, where your route might not be fixed for each day.  This allows a bit of spontaneity without dragging along a computer.

I think it will be better if and when there is a smartphone app, and I wold really like to see RideWithGPS build this kind of functionality into their website, so that you could pull up a route their and download it to your unit wirelessly with the touch of a button.  Surely this will happen sometime in the near future.

I have a question for those who have followed me thus far, and are conversant in the ways of Garmin.  Do you think I have to have an internet connection to download wirelessly to my Garmin?  Or could I have a good cellular connection to my phone, and download routes through that?  To put this another way, can my Garmin reach to the clouds through my cell phone connection, or does it have to have its own connection to the internet?

Best wishes,

Bill Watts

RUSA 5365

[David Markun]

Bill,

Sorry, I cannot answer your question about routeCOURSE.   But I have very recent experience in trying to solve the same problems, and I have two solutions that I will take with me on a multi-week cycle tour coming up soon.

One known good solution for me: there is another Connect IQ app called gimporter, with a corresponding Android-only app called gexporter, that works fairly intuitively.  For example, I have visited RideWithGps.com website on my Android phone, downloaded from there a track in the same way I would download it to my PC, then used gimporter/gexporter to load it into my Edge 1000.   The code on both Connect IQ  and Android sides is open source and the developer is actively maintaining it.

gimporter/gexporter use Bluetooth pairing between the phone and the Edge to move the data, so the Edge does not need to connect to the Internet or make any WiFi connection.  Gimporter on the Edge offers you a menu of all the .FIT files in your Android's Downloads directory, when the Gexporter app is running on your phone and the two are paired.

A second known good solution for me,: A still simpler (but not wireless) way to avoid dragging along a larger computer than your smartphone is to use an OTG ("On the Go") cable to connect your phone to your Garmin via USB.   Then it works just like your larger computer would work, with the smartphone mounting the Edge as a storage device. If you are comfortable with mounting your Garmin as a storage device and loading routes and pulling off your activity tracks from your PC or Mac, you can maybe do the same from your smartphone with an OTG cable.  This works for me on my Android Nexus 6P phone; I don't know about iphones.   Current Android releases have a built in file explorer; older releases require a third party app to let you move files around from the phone's storage to the OTG-attached external storage that is your Edge.  To me this method seems more reliable than gimporter/gexporter,  even though it's not as convenient because not wireless.  So this method is my backup.

Best regards,

David

PS: I can tell you that DynamicWatch refers to the fact that Garmin is selling a lot of GPS watches, and the Connect IQ system is designed to support them.  The Edge family is based on that wearables technology and .FIT files.  ​That background is why Edge actually sucks for touring cyclists and anybody who wants to have their device give them full information about lots of waypoints.   I'm going to leave my Edge 1000 at home (capacity 200 waypoint names and no waypoint text) and will tour on my new Oregon 700 (capacity 10,000 waypoints with full descriptive text).  The Oregon and the eTrex family are oriented toward hikers, who care a lot about waypoints and navigation.   And they let you swap in new AA batteries so you can keep going forever.

​

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[Mark Beaver]

Bill, I've been using RouteCourse for the last six months.  It uses the bluetooth in your phone/ipad to transfer the files.  You can load up a file to the RouteCourse app from iPad or phone without wifi.  It is not without its problems - the principal one being that I have well over two hundred ridewithgps routes that I've designed over the last 8+ years, and only 100 show up on the Garmin to download.

Mark Beaver

Randonneurs Nova Scotia

On Tuesday, July 4, 2017 at 1:54:02 PM UTC-3, Bill Watts wrote:

<snip>

[Bill Watts]

Thanks for you response, David, I learned a lot from it.  This is the first I have heard of OTG cables, and this seems a good backup plan to me.  I have one question, though: Does it matter which way the cable runs?  My garmin has a micro USB connection, and my smartphone has a USB-C connection.  Do I run a regular connection to my smartphone, and then use a USB female to male adopter at the other end, or do I do it the other way around--a regular micro USB into the garmin and an adopter at the other end? Or does it matter?

Bill

Bill,

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[Bill Watts]

Thanks for your response, Mark.  Since I am only starting to use routeCOURSE, I am glad to know that you have used it successfully for some time.  I am also grateful to know that I don't have to have a wifi connection to use it.  One question, though: When you say you can only see 100 of your 200 RWGPS routes, you have chosen the 100 routes on display, haven't you, by pasting the link into DynamicWatch?  You're complaint isn't that you can't get to all of your routes, but that you cannot have them at hand through routeCOURSE, right?  If that's the case, I don't think this will bother me.  I probably also a couple of hundred routes on RWGPS, but I don't feel that I need work with more than a handful at a time.

Bill

[David Markun]

Hi Bill,

The best answer is:  See https://www.howtogeek.com/129800/how-to-use-usb-drives-with-the-nexus-7-and-other-android-devices/  

But here's the answer I wrote before finding the best answer:

OTG involves some complexity in the internal wiring of the cables, so it's not just a matter of getting plugs that will mate with the respective jacks physically.  I can tell you that from experience. 

My OTG rig for talking to the Edge consists of:

1) An OTG-specific cable that has USB-C male to plug into the Nexus 6P phone, and USB-A female at the other end.   USB-A female is the old standard size for chargers and is the jack you'd see coming out of a PC since around year 2000.

2) A generic USB-A male to USB Micro male plug that connects from the OTG cable to the Edge. 

In this configuration, your phone is supplying power to the Edge too, or to whatever else you might plug into the OTG cable's USB-A female jack (e.g. USB keyboard, USB flashdrive).   I have seen OTGs that looked like they would allow for an additional input of external power, but I didn't need that for my current uses so did not dig into it.  My phone's battery is big enough to power the Edge briefly while I do the file transfers.  (And my USB-Werk can recharge the phone slowly from dynamo power).

When accessing the Edge as external storage, just as on a PC,  you want to cleanly Eject it before you unplug it (especially if you have written to it).  Eject in Android is hidden in the Settings for Storage -- see the above linked article.

Best regards,

David

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[adam...@spottedfoobar.com]

FYI: the APIs for downloading a route from an HTTP link (via your phone) are in recent versions of ConnectIQ.  RWGPS or someone else could fairly easily build a ConnectIQ app using this functionality.  i'm a bit surprised RWGPS hasn't done so already.

[Dan Diehn]

It looks like only electrical engineers will be able to ride bikes in the near future.

Dan

[Russ Loomis]

I got tired of all this Garmin hassle years ago. As soon as Wahoo put the ELEMNT on the market I bought one. I have never been happier. I no longer have to jump hoops and hope for the best using a gps. I can make a route or download one from an organized ride directly into the ELEMNT using my phone. I never need to be with my computer. The ELEMNT flawlessly follows the route and gives turn by turn direction and also has an led display that, in the dark, show me which direction to turn. It has never failed me. I have used this for over a year now including 200-600k brevet. It easily charges from an external battery or from a generator hub if the ride is over 16 hours. I have never regretted dropping Garmin.

Russ
The not yet ready for prime time cyclist

[Sven-Olof Johansson]

Thanks! That was exactly the information I was looking for. I ordered the ELEMNT Bolt earlier today, and I was a bit worried if it was possible to use the gps while charging it.

Do you use a buffer battery when you charge it from the dynohub?

Cheers,

Sven-Olof



> 5 juli 2017 kl. 18:07 Russ Loomis <cycle...@gmail.com>:

[Bill Gobie]

I have ridden about 500 km with a Bolt and am pleased with it. I recently used it for three days of touring. I kept it charged using a Sinewave converter powered by a SON26 hub.

When I tried powering the Bolt from my pass-through cache battery (a Goal Zero Flip 20), the battery discharged into the Bolt instead of passing through current from the Sinewave. That seemed pointless so I ran the Bolt directly from the Sinewave for the rest of the time, except when I needed to charge my phone. After running on its internal battery while I charged the phone, the Bolt recharged quickly. (I am not convinced the Bolt's battery level display is accurate -- it seemed to discharge faster than I expected for the claimed 14 hr runtime, and it recharged very quickly, so the state of charge indication may not be very accurate when the battery is full.)

I ran my lights for a while as an experiment (IQ Cyo Premium and Seculite Plus). The Bolt displayed 100% charge, so the SON26 was able to provide enough power for the lights and gps simultaneously.

I was able to load all the routes I needed for my trip before I left home. Before I left, I experimented with the Bolt's wifi connection at a public hotspot (a Starbucks). I was able to load routes from RwGPS as if I were at home.

There has been some discussion elsewhere about the Bolt not reacquiring sensors after a stop (hr monitor, speed sensor).

Bill

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[Bill Watts]

Your comment inspired me to write to RidwithGPS to ask them why they don't do this.  Will Laubernds wrote this to me:

In terms of sending to device, we do have plan to make that connection seamless. Right now, to the best of my knowledge that hinges on needing to export to .FIT file format which we do not currently do. We offer TCX and GPX devices, which are not supported by the IQ app schema. My assumption is that the app your reference is doing the conversion and only offering .FIT format to simplify the process.

 

We have some big projects right now, but I know our user advocate team and the developers are discussing what options exist and what needs to be done to seamless sync routes with Garmin's using the IQ app program. 

[adam...@spottedfoobar.com]

"

ownloadable Content (2.2)

The makeWebRequest API has additional expected response types for GPX and FIT files. These new content types can be used to download GPX or FIT files containing Waypoints, Workouts, Courses, Tracks, or Routes to the device. When files are downloaded to the device, the elements in that file will be added to the system storage for their respective types (see Persisted Content)."

[David Markun]

Adam,

You can see this api called in the working Connect IQ app "gimporter" available on the Connect IQ app store (for free).  Source code calling this API is at https://github.com/gimportexportdevs/gimporter/blob/master/source/gimporterApp.mc

In gimporter, the app is sending these requests (over Bluetooth) to an HTTP server that is implemented in the gexporter Android app and running on your Android smartphone.  (Source is also available for that gexporter side).

For those not into coding your own,  you can just download the gimporter/gexporter apps to be offered a menu on your Edge of all the GPX or .FIT files present in your Android phone's Downloads directory.

Best regards,

David

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[gmcal...@gmail.com]

This looks like a very handy tool the only thing I noticed is that it doesn't seem to support TCX file types which are the ones I usually end up downloading.

Thanks

Grant