I have spent yet another night reading forums and the like. Then in the garage fluffin about will wheels and cranks and magnets.
What I found was this.
1: GPS reception on the 500 is not as good as the larger hand held units. This is because of the physical size and there not being enough room to put a bigger antenna in. As a result the unit will from time to time skip a beat or go ofcourse slightly when the fix becomes weaker.
2: It WILL use the gsc10 for Speed/Distance and Cadence when it is paired and a wheel size is selected.
3: In auto select for the wheel size it might from time to time "Hick up" and try to recalculate the wheel size (this might be due to a bad GPS fix) and the chances are the wheel size will be slightly different.
4: There is a button on the GSC10 when you push this button it will flash green every time the wheel magnet passes by and red everytime the crank magnet passes.
5: I am an idiot and didn't settup my GSC10 correctly.

Hi guys, just wondering where people have found the best place to buy these things from? Thanks

dc wrote:Hi guys, just wondering where people have found the best place to buy these things from? Thanks

I got mine from a certain british megga store starting with W but only because it was on special at the time and I had a voucher for a further 20% off. I believe there are some very competative places here in NZ but haven't really researched them.

ArjanH wrote:

dc wrote:Hi guys, just wondering where people have found the best place to buy these things from? Thanks

I got mine from a certain british megga store starting with W but only because it was on special at the time and I had a voucher for a further 20% off. I believe there are some very competative places here in NZ but haven't really researched them.

If you want to buy online and locally then http://www.finda.co.nz/business/listing/3xc/kiwigps/ has good deals. I got mine from the bicycle architects in Chch and they gave me a good deal.

Just my 2c worth here, but I have been using mine now for approx a month and a half, mainly on the roadie, setup with the speed/cadence sensor, paired coreectly when I first set it up, also a little on the MTB, and also inside with Sat turned off on the wind trainer. Riding has varied form commuting, training and some hard out racing(including Main Divide and Queenstown Alpine Classic), and gentle MTB'ing. I have done a bit over 1850 km in that time and found it to perform faultlessly, with no sign of any problems at all. And the data is truely awesome in what it shows you.

I have noticed on a out and back MTB ride under fairly heavy tree cover, the track points are not exactly overlaying each other, probably due to bad reception, but they wouldn't be out by more than 10 metres at the most, and as an interesting side point, having done the same track a couple of times, and downloading and comparing the TCX files, it is the leg with the fastest split time where accuracy in the trees seems to be reduced.

Another quirk I have found if you are hill climbing directly into a rapidly building southerly, it screws up the altitude a bit (reading high), but then this is sort of expected anyway given that it is a Barometric altimeter, otherwise the altimeter seems to work perfectly. Also have found the Gradient feature great for destroying the morale of opponents in a race if they are struggling up an incline, a simple comment of "this is only 8%, it gets up 15% ahead" is a sure way to watch them wither and die at the prospect...

My only complaint if any would be the when starting off it takes a while to locate satelites, so mornings and afternoons, you can't wheel it out of a building turn it on and jump on and have it pick up immedately, which in all reality is only an issue when commuting, most other rides if I turn it on, sit the bike at the garage door while I fluff around getting my helmet and shoes on, it is all good by the time I am ready to leave.

Spyder wrote:

ArjanH wrote:

dc wrote:Hi guys, just wondering where people have found the best place to buy these things from? Thanks

I got mine from a certain british megga store starting with W but only because it was on special at the time and I had a voucher for a further 20% off. I believe there are some very competative places here in NZ but haven't really researched them.

If you want to buy online and locally then http://www.finda.co.nz/business/listing/3xc/kiwigps/ has good deals. I got mine from the bicycle architects in Chch and they gave me a good deal.

The guy at KiwiGPS is Tony. What he doesn't know about Garmin units isn't worth knowing. I highly recomend him. Even though I didn't buy this particular unit of him I have dealt with him frequently in the past.

I have just had to charge my edge 500 for the first time after a couple of weeks of use. Its only been used in commuting so far due to weekend commitments, but I got 11 hours riding out of the battery and probably another half an hour of tinkering in that time. Is that similar to what other people have seen? Quite a bit less than the 18 hours quoted, but I guess that might be from using the light a bit in the mornings and running mainly courses so the little hamster inside spends quite a bit of time calculating with its abacus.

The courses seem a little ropey and tend to drop off course at every change in direction, and then take 30 secs or so to come back on again. It is a good incentive to keep riding at a high level and keep ahead of best times.
I like the alarms which I have set at 30 minutes as a reminder to have another drink, and the tone is good at attracting attention, even in traffic.
Gradient is a little ropey, and seems to flip out everytime I come to a stop, with the flat road registering 5-7% and then back to flat.
The unit ran out of battery on the way home today and GC couldn't upload the file, but wouldn't give me any reasons.
I am enjoying tallying up elevation gains, and will get a ride on sunday to see if I how much I can climb.
Is there anyway of using mapmyride or other to create a route and then download it onto the edge to create a course, rather than having to actually ride it and then name it as a course?

I got my Dad one of these when we got him a new bike. He has no idea how to use it but he is happy

Mom downloaded the info onto the website and then it downloaded a new firmware. All of his settings I put on the pages has been lost and has gone back to its initial setup.

My question is this
Is there a way to save the pages or do you have to set the pages every time new firmware is installed.
Please bare in mind both of my parents are not the flashest with computers so the more detail you can give with this the better as I will just be cutting and pasting it to an email to Mom.

Fanx berry march
Imperial Walker

On my 705 the settings get reset when you install new firmware. I assume it's the same with the 500.

Spyder wrote:From the Garmin forums;

This may be a thick question, but why do we need to reinput our settings each time there's a firmware upgrade? Can they not be stored in GTC or something?

The settings are saved in Sports/Cycling.fit, Settings/Settings.fit and Elevations/Elevations.fit. If you backup these three files and copy them to folder NewFiles after updating, your settings are retrieved. Attention: After the update you have to switch on one time beforehand!
Not sure whether retrieving will work with all f/w updates, though.

Not that I'm sure that this classifies as being ok for non-computer people, but here is how you do it.

Just updated to 2.3. Seamless and no need to update all of the settings etc. Will try it out tonight (weather permitting), but the feedback on the Garmin forums indicates it's all good.

Had it on the boat down at Benmore over the weekend, top speed 87.3km/h. Unfortunately I forgot to take it for the poker run on Sunday. 40mins with the throttle wide open - awesome fun!

I am considering an Edge 500 or 305 which is the better computer and why?

The 500 - that way you get to be part of the bleeding-edge worldwide debugging team. You'll miss out on that experience with the 305 because it's all sorted now

But seriously, the 500 is the newest unit. It lost one ride of mine, but other than that I've had no problems and love it. It doesn't have the map display functionality of the 305/705, so it's smaller and has much better battery life. If you want to download a proper mapped course to see where you should be going then the 305/705 are the only options. If you just want to record your riding for naval gazing later, then the 500 is all you need.

Spyder wrote:Just updated to 2.3. Seamless and no need to update all of the settings etc. Will try it out tonight (weather permitting), but the feedback on the Garmin forums indicates it's all good.

Had it on the boat down at Benmore over the weekend, top speed 87.3km/h. Unfortunately I forgot to take it for the poker run on Sunday. 40mins with the throttle wide open - awesome fun!

What's in the update? .... I am not near an interwebby connection other than my pda phone ... funny you should mention other uses ... i figured out the other day that it's small enough to fit in my RC hotliner and give me data.

ArjanH wrote:

Spyder wrote:Just updated to 2.3. Seamless and no need to update all of the settings etc. Will try it out tonight (weather permitting), but the feedback on the Garmin forums indicates it's all good.

Had it on the boat down at Benmore over the weekend, top speed 87.3km/h. Unfortunately I forgot to take it for the poker run on Sunday. 40mins with the throttle wide open - awesome fun!

What's in the update? .... I am not near an interwebby connection other than my pda phone ... funny you should mention other uses ... i figured out the other day that it's small enough to fit in my RC hotliner and give me data.

Can't find the list, but it's not extensive. Something about Ant updates. The word on the Garmin forums is that the updates run a bit deeper than that, but Garmin don't want to own up to it because it would mean admitting that there were other issues. One change is that you can't go back from 2.3 though. Used it tonight and it seems to work well. There have also been updates to Garmin Connect. These are quite good.