Garmin sensors to two garmin devices

[TigaSefi]

After Garmin 810 let me down by freezing up and losing a section of my ride on flatlands 600. I am going to travel with both Edge 500 and 810 from now on. My question is that can the Garmin sensors of speed, cadence and HRM be attached to two recording devices at the same time?

[fuaran]

Yes, it works fine.
Ant+ sensors can be paired with multiple devices.

[Feanor]

Not answering your actual question, but I've had my 810 crash and freeze a few times too, bu I've always been able to recover the data.

You will probably find there is a fit file in the Activities folder corresponding to the lost section of ride.
It will be corrupt, and so won't show up on the device's list of actvities, or upload to Garmin Connect.
But connected to a PC, you will find there are more FIT files than shown on the list, you can see the corrupted ones too.

Every time it crashes, it will leave a corrupted FIT file containing data up to the point where it crashed.
The corruption is minor: the file just isn't correctly closed out.   The actual ride data up to that point is probably fine.

I use the FIT file repair tool to import the FIT files and splice them back together into a single FIT file which I can then upload to Garmin Connect etc.

If you find that you have a collection of FIT files that might be recoverable, I'd be happy to run them through the repair tool for you.

[TigaSefi]

Feanor, I've tried this. It worked for Straight outta hackney but not this time I have 6 files for flatlands 600. I used fitfiletools to put them all together and it came out as 323 miles. so the bit I lost is definitely lost. I have also uploaded all 6 files individually perfectly  fine and none of them corresponds to the missing section. I have checked the activities file and there no other file corresponding to 10th September

On the other hand, I'll email them tonight to you if you like. Can double check if I have done it right.

Yes, it works fine.
Ant+ sensors can be paired with multiple devices.

Excellent! I shall try it out on Greenwich mean climb this weekend!

[Greenbank]

I've got my PowerTap hub, GSC-10 speed/cadence sensor and HRM strap all paired with both my Edge 705 and my Forerunner 920xt watch and I often go out recording the ride data on both of the devices.

The only annoyance is that my Edge 705 can't pair with my HRM-Run strap, I have to use an old HRM-1 strap if I want to record HR on the Edge 705. I think I'll look out for a newer second-hand Garmin (that has mapping) for long distance riding.

The Edge 705 not doing .fit files is annoying too. I can't get my 24h TT file uploaded to Garmin Connect because it's too big as a .tcx file and everything I've tried to convert it to a .fit file either strips out some data (HR or Power) or produces something that's just corrupt.

[Feanor]

Have you tried using this tool to load your TCX and export it as FIT?

http://fitfilerepairtool.info/

It's not free, but I've had good results with it.

[Feanor]

For the record, Greenbank sent me the .tcx files and using the software I linked to above, I was able to export them to a .fit file which Garmin Connect seemed happy enough with.

If you are in the habit of using Edge-type devices which use .fit files and are also somewhat prone to crashing, then I'd recommend this tool as a fixer of corrupted files ( usually just not-properly-closed-out files ) and a splicer of multiple files ( when you re-set the device at 200k or 300k intervals  for fear of crashing on longer rides ).

[Greenbank]

Indeed, thank you Feanor. If I don't buy that tool I'll certainly paypal the author a contribution.

I think that with a possible GPS upgrade (the fact that my Edge 705 can't pair with my HRM-Run HR strap makes this probable) I may need a full purchase though. Garmin do seem to improve the unreliability and number of bugs with every new release or firmware upgrade.

I need something that will record power and display maps so I'm looking at a minimum of the Edge 820. Ugh. £329.99 although looks like I could get rid of my trusty Edge 705 for £100 or so to soften the blow.