Attn: Garmin 910xt owners - possible showstopper v2.7 firmware bug
After updating the firmware on the 910xt to v2.7 some people are experiencing a serious problem with the watch. The problem appears to be an issue that effects some 910xt owners units after it has been updated to 2.7 firmware. The bug is being discussed the Garmin & slowtwitch forums. I lost my bike and run data at San Juan 70.3.
The main symptom appears when using the unit in Multi-Sport mode that has an open water swim, the Latitude and Longitude of the segments after the swim (T1, Bike, T2 and Run) will be 0,0 (which happens to be off the west coast of Africa in the Gulf of Guinea). You will not get mile spits or other distance based reminders while it's happening.
I suspect It has not effected a lot of people yet as the 2.7 firmware was released on November 28th, which is off-season for most of the Northern Hemisphere. It would not surprise me at all if good handful of people come back from Oceanside 70.3 this weekend and post here about this problem.
Apparently, Garmin is not saying there's a problem and are not offering a "downgrade to 2.6". I have come up with a (non-Garmin approved) solution to send the 2.6 firmware to the 910xt if you are experiencing this problem. I've got a decription of the problem links of the forums posts and a walkthrough of how to get the 2.6 firmware back on your 910xt written up on this page:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/74924/Garm...mware.html
Comments
Based on your post, I will hold off on the firmware upgrade.
Robert, FWIW - the problem definitely does not effect every unit that is updated, probably only a small percentage.
I'm on 2.70 and haven't seen this yet. Although I am not saying it doesn't exists. From the knowledge I have from all my GPS units, it is always recommend when moving to a location several hundred miles away from your last location or when the unit hasn't been turned on for a while, that you need to turn it on and set it outside or on the window sill for a few hours in the same location to re-calibrate and and lock in on the satellites. I'll have to keep this in mind when I drive up to Lake Placid in a another month for a course preview ride and see if it occurs. I'm sure Garmin is also recommending a hard reset with the sames steps to fix the location correctly.
Can you post the links to the discussions?
Thanks!
Darren:
This has nothing to do with the move more than XXX miles between last use and it'll need a while to find the new location. It's something else completely. It looks like your unit is w/o the issue. I put a lot of detail including the forum links in the write up:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/74924/Garm...mware.html
Since you asked...
In the garmin forums:
https://forums.garmin.com/showthrea...sport-mode
Slowtwitch:
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/gforum.cgi?post=4456867;
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/gforum.cgi?post=4482116;
Thanks Cary, I'll keep an eye on this to see if it occurs.
Do a "pretend triathlon with OWS", set the watch to MultSport with OWS as the first sport. Then go on a "pretend swim", walk around for 10 minutes, then do a mock T1, then do a "pretend bike" (or a real one if you like) of 10 minutes or more, do a faux T2, then go for a "Pretend run" (or an actual one).
You'll notice durring this pretend tri if you're not accruing distance or getting distance alerts after the "swim ". Download your data and if your bike or run looks like the image in the first post, your unit has the problem.
Wow, someone really didn't measure that swim course
On a related note, I have had two Garmin 910s have their elevation system go bad. Very short version is that it picks an arbitrary elevation (sometimes the max possible, sometimes not) and just flat-lines there. You can go into "diagnostic mode" and find out if yours is broken the way mine have been....
Power Forerunner 910XT off
Look at the "baro" readings
Are the values fluctuating? (No = bad)
Are the values roughly around zero or 16 million? (Yes = bad)
Is the "baro temp" a nutty number? (yes = bad)
If you're facing similar symptoms, don't hesitate to contact them. I don't know what they are charging for non-warrantee replacements on this issue, but I've gotten two free warrantee-replacements. (Bad sign...but at least good service.) Since you can otherwise use the watch, you probably want the "send me the watch first, and I'll send you the bum one back" service. They temporarily place a charge on your card, but you don't lose days of not having anything to use.
Update/FYI: Garmin has posted an official response to the issue: http://forums.garmin.com/showthread...g-Location
Please note that our Engineering team have determined a reason for an issue where the 910XT will stop tracking location once transitioning out of an Open Water Swim activity. A fix is being developed that will correct the issue with a software update. Until the software update becomes available the best approach to prevent this problem from occurring is to revert the software on your device to our previous 2.60 release. If you need assistance with reverting the software on your device please contact social.support@garmin.com for assistance. We hope to have a software update to provide to our customers soon but do not have a date to provide at this time. We appreciate your patience and apologize for the inconvenience that this issue has caused.
Nemo - you may need to do an OWS in the "Mock Tri" test. It seems as if the continued loss of sat signal may be one of the factors that causes the bug. So evens if it's a 10 minute swim followed by a 10 min bike and run, give it a try.
I have been on the "Help" line with Garmin three times about my 910 xt. They updated the software and reset the watch, but it still has problems. The OWS will often give a crazy random distance for an interval. My history disappeared two months ago, so I was hoping the update would help. Sunday, my screen filled up in the middle of a bike workout with the words, something like "Your old history is about to be deleted." I only had 3 workouts older than one month on it! Crazy watch! All my run paces were 24 seconds for every interval, however long! Etc. Etc.
Garmin is sending me a "refurbished" watch, charging my credit card $199, which will be put back on when I return my old watch. I'm hoping this refurbished one is nice, because my watch was only a few months old. Sheesh! I need this thing to work for IMLP!
Question: Do you wear your Garmin with the Quick Release attachment in an IM swim? I had a friend get kicked in the arm at IMLP, and his Garmin sunk to the bottom of Mirror Lake. The Garmin help desk said not to wear it if there is any chance of contact with another swimmer! LOL! As if...
For the reasons you mention, I do not use the QR attachment. What computer are you running on the bike and are you using power? I wear the 910 xt w/ the stock band and program the bike portion of the multi-sport program to provide slightly different information from what is displayed on my Garmin 500. Oddly enough, I like to see time of day on scrolling on my wrist, among a few other odds & ends. Using two devices allows the font to be larger for my "mature" eyes :-)
I saw that update posted, and decided to stay at 2.7, even though I've had OWS issues. Reason being - the 910xt has been plagued so much with firmware issues (ie, OWS and MS worked in 2.6, and then broke in 2.7) that I don't trust Garmin enough to upgrade my unit 10 days before a race.
The workaround is to commit each leg independantly and not treat it as a multisport workout. Over the course of an IM, this adds perhaps 10 seconds to a very long day. Much better to have to deal with that than find there's some bug in 2.8 that is not yet discovered - I'd rather not discover it on race day.
Just throwing my $0.02 out there as an opposing point of view (in a situation where I truly hope I am wrong
)
I'm hoping the below two fixes correct the problem as it looks like what I'm seeing.
1) Smoother elevation recording.
2) Fix occasional elevation spike at the beginning of an activity.
Still haven't seen the Multi-Sport issue and it has been used for a couple races.
Going for a ride tomorrow so I'll let you know if I see anything. If any strange happens I'll probably role back to 2.7
I'm running 2.6 now (since march when I discovered the issue) and I don't plan to update until after IMLP.
@Darren - looking forward to your feedback.
Not a good sign.. I'm starting to think my barometer is toast. I'm going to give it another shot this evening when I go out for a run, but first I'm going to turn on my watch and set it on the window to see if it was something from locking on the satellites. I'll set the display to shot the altitude as well to view it. I've done the barometer check on the firmware diagnostics but am not totally sure if that is the problem or not.
Anyway.. If that doesn't work I'll maybe do a hard reset. If worse comes to worse I'll buy a second watch before IMLP.
Elevation Gain: 90,590 ft
Elevation Loss: 90,590 ft
Min Elevation: 60 ft
Max Elevation: 22,614 ft
Saturday July 20th - 8 days before IMLP
I did a couple calibration test and then took it out for a run to test the elevation.
Details of calibration attempt..
Turned it on with the elevation and accuracy fields displayed and attempted to re-calibrate it. Elevations started out at 65k feet and started ticking down so I let it sit in the window. The first time it was going down very quickly and I watched for a bit and it went quickly near the elevation I'm at, but at one point it shot back up to 65k feet and started again but ticking down only more slowly. So I let it sit for about an hour and when I came back the elevation was correctly displayed and stable at 65 feet. I did this a couple times to make sure it was correct and pulled out my heavy duty Magellan Explorist XL to confirm the value and which has WAAS GPS on it and they were very close and stable. My guess is the first calibration attempt uses the barometer and if that fails it uses the satellite calculated elevation as a backup to get the stable elevation value I was seeing.
After the calibration I turned it off to see if the stable elevation would stick around and found that it didn't and had to go through the calibration process once again. After again getting a stable calibration value I left it on and took it out for a run . Everything was fine when I went out side and hit the start button.. Started running and it was looking good.. Went to my other display and about five minutes later checked the elevation and it was firmly pegged at 65k feet. I was thinking "Nutz!... right before IMLP" Anywho.. after that test I pretty much confirm the barometer was shot.
Monday morning July 22 - 6 days before IMLP
Finally was able to call Garmin this morning.. very easily went through the warranty replacement since my watch was purchased at the end of September last year. There is a 3 month warranty on the replacement unit so it give me actually one more month on my original warranty. $199.00 was the replacement deposit until I return my broken unit, a non-warranty replacement cost is $99 (non-refundable). I asked about how quickly they could get me the replacement unit since I'm leaving for IMLP on Wednesday July 24 . Initially they quoted 2-3 day ground shipping for about 5 dollars or so (I forget) so I asked about overnight.. They said about $28 for overnight next day delivery in the afternoon and no later than first thing Wednesday morning. The other option was overnight first thing in Tuesday tomorrow morning at about $100. So opted for the overnight afternoon delivery since my arrival time on Wednesday is pretty flexible. Lastly once they totaled everything up the support person said he was able to get me the overnight shipping for $12 instead of $28.. Sweet! Win!
Oh, one more thing.. I asked about what firmware version it would ship with and was told the latest version (2.8) is typically what they ship. So I shouldn't have to go through the upgrade process and it will be tested when I receive it.
Overall, I'm very happy with the Garmin customer service. If you need a last minute replacement definitely call them and do it as they can get it to you next day!
@Darren - When you get the replacement unit, check the firmware. If it's at 2.7 I'd upgrade it to 2.8 right away. Good Luck and see you in LP.
Tuesday July 23rd - 5 days before IMLP
I received my replacement at about 1pm today. Opened the box and found what looked like a 100% brand new watch without the fancy packaging and accessories. I was impressed as I thought the casing would be slightly beat up or something but that wasn't the case.. Like new... When I turned it on it displayed the 2.7 firmware which I promptly upgraded once I had it completely charged. The upgrade went smoothly without any problems. As a test case I made sure the elevation locked on quickly and was correct and was stable without any obvious issues.
Later that day I headed to the pool to do a few laps and didn't experience any issues. All seemed to be good so far. I should be ready for IMLP.
Friday July 26rd - 2 days before IMLP
Took my 910xt out for the EN group open water swim did one loop of the course in Mirror Lake. No issues identified or experienced.. Data and altimeter looks good. Water was a fantastic 74 degrees.
Saturday July 27rd - 1 day before IMLP
One last 30 minute open water swim in Mirror Lake.. No known issues.. All systems go.
Sunday July 28rd - Race Day IMLP
I have to say my 910xt performed flawlessly for the entire race. No issues, data glitches or altitude spikes.. Very happy with the data results.. Thanks Garmin!!
If you haven't already I would encourage you to upgrade to 2.8.
Warranty Note: I'm putting this hear because another EN member had a similar issue with his watch which was out of warranty. If your 910xt is out of warranty Garmin will charge you $99 to replace an out of warranty unit. After that everything else is the same.
So, all good on 2.8 then? That's encouraging. I stayed with 2.7 and manually reset and switched activities during T1 and T2 - so I got all the important information. I just didn't want to upgrade/downgrade to a new version just before the event and potentially have to deal with demons I didn't know. After working for 13 years in the software industry, there are some rules I've learned to follow - like no changes after 12PM on Friday
Anyone else have anything to report with using 2.8 at IMLP? Wild success? Intermittent issues? etc?
@Ryan - Yes, everything worked great. I used Multisport mode without a single issue at IMLP.
I have to admit that I'm right there with you regarding software upgrades (usually.. lol) I'm usually the last to upgrade.. At work a few years ago, I was trying to upgrade an application and it took me two years before I found a version from our vendor that didn't have some critical flaw that I didn't think was a show stopper.
New 3.0 version of 910XT firmware available. Major changes are below. I'll wait and see if any bugs get flushed out with this one before upgrading.
Latest release date: September 11, 2013
Changes made from version 2.80 to 3.00: