Hey, John here 😂 One more data point, seems if you manually import the gpx into connect (i.e. export from Strava, use as an import into Connect new course rather than auto transfer) then it rewrites but doesn't offset. Feels important...
I really enjoy this vlog with great information style. Since the 540 and 840 leak happened by a retailer last week, we did know they're not far off. Looking forward to your thoughts on them.
I haven't read all of the comments, but what I do, THAT WORKS [VERY] WELL, is: >> Create route in Strava >> Export as GPX >> Copy file to NEWFILES folder on the 1040 unit This is so accurate that as it counts me down to the start of a climb, I laugh at how it nails it to the meter. Same when I top out - super accurate.
I made a route with Komoot, which was smoothed and inaccurate. I exported and loaded into RWGPS - still smoothed. I loaded the same file into Strava and the elevation data is corrected, and I can download to the device using GPX and Newfiles. I have not tried a “native” RWGPS route downloaded to the Garmin yet, to see if that has accurate elevations. At the moment Strava seemed the way to go
Thank you @Gplama, that‘s incredible! I noticed this almost every time on a 530 with routes synced from strava -> GC -> Head Unit as this is my usual workflow. I never bothered too much looking into it though. Thanks for making this public!
Had exactly the same experience on my longer rides. On a 100mile ride last year I couldn’t understand why ClimbPro had me still climbing when I’d reached the top and was cruising down hills. Great piece of detective work by Jeff. And thanks for the workaround Shane . Looking forward to a fix from Garmin / Strava. Although as someone else has said below. I can imagine a bit of buck passing before it gets sorted.
Always wondered what was happening on the odd longer ride when I'd be halfway down the far side of a climb or some such and Climb Pro had me still ascending at 15%...great bit of investigation and info, thanks 👍
Thanks a lot for your work to find out what‘s wrong. I have just switched ClimbPro off because it annoyed me so much. There is a lot of work to do for Garmin (and others in this segment). They need to understand that it has to be absolutely rock solid quality for us cyclists.
100% noticed the shift as the rides got longer. It was exceptionally bad on the 105 mile Rebecca's Private Idaho race last year. And yes that course has some climbs that are nice to have a heads up on.
Great detective work 🕵️♀️ I have notice this issue before, but never understood exactly what was happening. I guess with this work of yours, garmin have now the tools to start fixing this issue properly
Great report, as it clarifies why Climbpro has bamboozled me this entire time, so much so I junked using this feature. While I note your point it's not a Garmin fault per se I still think Garmin needs to appreciate the Climbpro feature is just sub par. For me, I don't want to have to load a route all the time to use Climbpro. Rather, it should auto-detect when a climb is coming up. On this Garmin are well behind the pack in providing this feature. The load route approach to access climbs is just altogether clumsy and in part lazy programming. A major rewrite of this feature should have happened ages ago. Kudos to the guys and gals who have been networking with you on this issue
I encounter the problem too. I thought it was due to a poor satelite network and therefore a "delay" in figuring out where my real position is. But it seems more complicated than this... Thanks for the quality of the video
Such a good 'bug report', but my guess is it will take longer to fix because the culprit can be in multiple places that's owned by multiple companies (in this case Strava or Garmin Connect). Appreciate the leakproofness as well.
Experiencing same issue, riding in Tenerife recently up to 2,300 meters from sea level, it was soon out by around 1km. Not ideal for my sanity! Thank you for the work around and great video.
Makes you wonder how many Garmin employees use their products. Or, it makes you wonder how much Garmin encourages employees to share their user experiences with the company's products. How does a performance flaw like this persist so long without being addressed? Seems to me that Garmin really needs to look at itself in the mirror more often . 1030+ owner here. P.S. As always, GREAT VIDEO!!! 🙌👏🙌👏🙌👏
So you make the assumption that only if someone uses gradient on the device he/she actually uses it? That is ridiculous. I use my 1040 a lot and never ever did I feel the need to use the gradient percentage on my device. I look at the road and see when the climb starts/finished. I understand that some people want to use it, totally fine. But your assumption about using the products is ridiculous.
@@PhilippSt No need to get mean spirited. For you and me this is just an electronic appliance that makes life a little nicer. But for Garmin, the Edge is a core cycling product so I would think they'd want to have it perform at the highest level possible. Taking advantage of, and following-up on, user feedback, including employee feedback, seems a reasonable thing for a company to do in their quest to produce a quality product. Surely some of their employees use Climb Pro. 🤔 Unless all Garmin R&D centers are located at the beach with only flat roads.
I also have the a lagging ClimbPro on my 1040, the routes was saved from previous rides in Connect. I also really like the videeo format, much better than talking head videos.
Excellent work! I am surprised that the shift happens after a number of km, I would have expected that there would be proportional shift due to something like rounding errors. But on you route it started after 10km then was the same shift throughout the rest of the route. But then you showed someone else's where the shift kicked in after about 30km. Weirdness. Secondly, I want to know more about the "Komoot smoothing", as I'm a regular user of Komoot. And about to climb of the Pyrenean climbs which I had planned in Koomot but you have wondering if I should use RideWithGPS. I have a Karoo2 so would use the Hammerhead dashboard to bring the planned routes across to the Karoo2.
Yep. Discovered this on my first ride with a 1040 Solar, which was an Audax Super Randonnee 600kms/10,000vm brevet out of Auckland in Oct 2022. Luckily I still had my ancient Wahoo ELEMNT, as all climb profiles on the Garmin 1040 were rubbish, but the old ELEMNT was good. Subsequent firmware upgrades to the 1040 (I’m in the Beta tester group) have improved, but the climbs are regularly out of whack. GPX files always from RWGPS, through Garmin Connect.
That is what I was wondering as I go RWGPS - Garmin Connect - Edge 840 Solar and haven't had this setup long enough to see if this bug exists with this workflow.
Really enjoyed this video, you have great camera work considering you are solo. Looking to purchase a garmin bike computer and watch soon so thankyou for the investigation and taking us along for the ride
I live in the flattest part of Melbourne so it hasn't been a problem on my Garmin 1040. Thanks for the videoand collaboration, tremendously interesting!
The issue description does look like a server-side GIS map calculation issue. 🗺️ Offset issues on geospatial calculations are often geoid (🌐🌏 model of the earth's bumps, e.g. WGS84 / AUSGeoid2020) errors, but this looks more like a cumulative rounding error as it trends worse. One dataset probably has 'map' position Lat & Lon, and another the elevation. Taking a wild guess, the server code might loop along the GPX route feeding the Lat & Lon into a function to get the elevation, but there's an error so the distance along the route is rounded. Complete GIS speculation, but would explain the 'phase shift' with Lat & Lon correct, but height progressively diverging.
When I had this happen, I thought it was because a was on a really remote place :D :D :D Happy to see that it wasn't the case. And, as other mentioned, can't wait for your review on the new Edge 540-840 ;)
This has definitely happened to me, almost exactly as you are describing, most notably on a long ride. I figured it was an issue with a low quality gpx track or something coming out of Strava and never looked any further. It was incredibly frustrating and I also stopped using the feature. Hopefully they can resolve the issue, at least in the meantime this is a good workaround!
Hi Shane great report and amazing scenery. On our club ride on Sunday on a 1.5 mile climb we noticed the pro climb ended way before the climb did. We all had the same route which was created on Garmin connect. Will be interested to see how this plays out. Thanks.
Hmm... if it was created on Garmin Connect it should be fine for this rando-offset issue which looks at this point to be introduced somehow from Strava. Might be worth playing around with the exports to see how it looks from different sources.
Had exactly the same issues with routes created from scratch (by clicking through map) on Garmin connect on a bikepacking trip in Belgium/Luxembourg last year. I finally got frustrated with the very sight of the Climb Pro garbage and disabled the screen. I just figured it was yet another crap Garmin feature to be ignored, but if you guys could get it it to work that would be great!
I use RWGPS / 830 and have found slight discrepancies over the last few years . Not as far out as the garmin connect route … It would be interesting if you could create a course then try a direct sync by pinning in the phone app or PC and seeing how you get on… Great video 👍👍
Not a Climb Pro issue but a Connect data issue...I push Zwift rides to Connect and when I first set up the integration from Zwift to Connect, the Strava integration broke. So while it was broken, I exported the GPX file from Connect, manually uploaded to Strava and almost all of the elevation data was trimmed, like from 2200' to something seemingly random like 520'. Weird. The data was fine in Connect but the export was munging data for GPX and TCX formats. It was fine, however, if I chose "Export original" which emits a zipped FIT file. That had the correct climbing data. Anyway, this may be a useful data point or just more YT comment noise. :-D
Great video, I note the climbs on my Garmin but am usually puffing too much to worry about if its reporting correctly, but nevertheless it should be right. Beautiful route too.
Nice video - it’s making me wonder whether the Wahoo or Hammerhead devices might be a better option for now. People seem so passionate about those but all I keep hearing about Garmin devices is problems.
Noticed this for a while but it was always small enough to be dismissed as a GPS error. I love the climb pro on unfamiliar courses but this does make it lose some of the utility.
Brilliant video and super helpful. In the UK and in Girona, a lot of rides and local guides ship routes on Komoot which you pioint out has a lot of accuracy issues. If you export from Koomoot into say Strava and then into Garmin will there be any improvements ? I was horrified by how off climb pro was on a ride yesterday!
As a new 1030+ user I noticed this lag on my first rides and was pretty disappointed. I was using Komoot auto loaded route, and noticed the excessive smoothing as well. Good to know to avoid Komoot generated routes directly. Might be able to pass the Komoot GPX through Strava or RWGPS to generate a clean GPX and then load it via newfiles. It’s a shame to have to mess around like this, so that all the integration is rendered useless, and I have to revert to the method I used to use on my old Edge 800!
I used a Garmin 1040 Solar on a 900km bike packing trip across Spain last fall. Used Ride With GPS to build my daily routes. A few slight issues with climb pro, but 99% of the time worked really well. Maybe I just got lucky 🤷♂️
Yea, definitely notice this very laggy start to climb pro. My club push routes through ride with gps, which does the through connect to device. Also, (sounds similar to kamoot) I think it smooths the ride, so many hills are not classified as climbs. Will define you try the Strava gpx direct method. Thank you
The lag is a bit random. It seems to happen with all sorts of triggers. First time I saw it was a route generated on a 1030 from Conwy to Betwsycoed. The next day a route from Trawsfynydd to Dolgellau was perfect.
Jeff is so John on club rides from now on. 🤣 We are all using the same Strava routes on our rides and have all experienced this with Garmins with climbpro.
Interesting video, thanks. I’ve never loaded routes to my 530 via Garmin Connect, always just plug in and drag into the New Files folder so have never struck this issue. I do however often find ClimbPro doesn’t start the climb until after I’m already climbing but also often says Climb Complete when I’m still going up, typically only 10-20 metres out but enough to be annoying. Suspect there’s maybe some calibration step I should do, but never researched it.
I live in a relatively flat part of Germany. So the only climbs I'm getting on Climb Pro are short ramps and it was never very accurate. So I thought it might be because the climbs aren't long enough. Good to know it also doesn't work on longer climbs. With the amount of data both Garmin and Strava have from devices with barometric pressure sensors their elevation data is really bad. Couldn't they simply take the real world data from their user base and calculate some form of average or median? Eliminate any outliers, even ban certain devices/users (for these calculations) if their data is repeatedly inconsistent (e.g. faulty sensor). And Strava should then take this data and fix their segments. There are segments in my area with ridiculous stats like 40% over 137 meter and when I rode it my Roam recorded 11 meter gain for the whole trip.
Great timing to identify such a serious issue, Garmin marketing must be having kittens given they are imminently launching their new head units.....! hard to sell their latest and greatest with such an annoying flaw
Same here and being in Malaysia (Asia unit); we are last during any updates and we wait with anticipation when some of the folks in forum says that climbpro is fixed only to be disappointed upon updating to latest firmware... Vicious cycle 😅
I can't believe that Garmin doesn't reinterpret the route data from strava (or komoot). I am very sure that hammerhead does this, which is why it works. It should not be that climb pro depends on imported height data. Crazy. But surely a fun detective video.
I too have noticed lagging elevation issues with Garmin. Don't use ClimbPro I can see the bloody climb in front of regardless. Even different Edge units record climbing and even distance differently. That should not happen.
I download routes from Ride with GPS, most event courses here in the UK deliver their route via this way. I drop the Ride with GPS file to Garmin New Files so it shows on my 1040. I rode yesterday, 23 April, and the lag remained.
My experience - load a route (pretty sure it was strata) - Start route. Take an unplanned deviation. (Go gaet a coke down at the gas station 0.3k away and return). BAM! Climb Pro and elevation map are off by approx 0.6K. Elevation data is NOT embedded in the route and not collected by GPS. It can be correct after the ride.
That’s interesting, and might explain the accumulating discrepency as the ride progresses. Would suggest that the elevation data is being mapped onto distance actually travelled (which could potentially correspond to the theoretical route) but diversions from the route, or just accumulated errors will lead to elevations not matching actual position. Would seem too obvious an error to not be fixed though …
I imagine the issue with ClimbPro is a combination of problems. 1) Which Satellite Constellation you're utilizing (I was getting constant U-Turn alerts with GPS+GLONASS, but now I'm running GPS only and that issue has subsided). 2) The other issue is likely the Digital Terrain Model Garmin is utilizing (It's a Global Model, which means lower resolution). 3) Parallax Issue (As you travel Poleward from North or South 30 Degrees, it becomes a real issue). Satellite Constellation + Terrain Model + Parallax Issue will cause discrepancies with your location in both the horizontal and vertical axes. This is a prime example why a Professional Land Surveyor is the only professional legally able to provide an accurate location.
There could also be an issue with the 'Built In' Altimeter. A case/housing on the unit will have an effect on the internal air pressure monitor. Also, if you've dropped the unit a few times that will also mess with calibration.
I might make this my next GIS Conference Presentation. These problems were all known 20 years ago in the Geocaching World, but it was not an operational issue when you're only walking 2 to 5 mph. However, cycling unravels this problem really fast. Especially as this hobby gets more and more data driven.
I am 100% waiting on firm details of the leak...... holding off buying a updated head unit till i know what the details are. 2 weeks ago i was waiting till i got paid to go 1040 solar. Now holding off for 840 solar providing spec is what i want. Hoping i can get my hands on one before Whitsun as off to the Pyrenees and be nice to have a new gadget. Funny enough "Climb Pro" is one of the features i wanted the upgrade for along with "Stamina" and multi band GPS etc..... as i am on an old 520+ currently.
I've always remade the Strava routes on Garmin connect and then resynced as even the navigation seems a lot better when you use a Garmin connect route vs Strava route. I cancelled my Strava subscription BC of it...
I know that some of the Garmin watches have a 3D distance function that I've always had turned off. Never looked for it on my Edge 530. It looks a lot like cosine error.
Using Edge 1040 and same problem when using the 'open' source maps, no course loaded. Start and end points out by considerable distances. The whole idea behind climb pro is lost!
Not sure if related but I’ve noticed that my little pace partner graph at the bottom of the map for some of my routes, also lags behind road elevations. Seems very random as well
Is it only on rides made on Strava that goes through Garmin Connect? What about routes created on Garmin Connect or routes made from previous routes (also technically Garmin Connect routes) GPX format is a fairly straightforward format. I am guessing this issue is on the way Strava is exporting data to Garmin Connect. 🤔 Thanks for the deep dive down the rabbit hole 🐇 👌
Doesn’t work even with routes built in Connect. Or at least it didn’t on the 830 when I used to use that piece of junk. No more garmin head units ever again for me.
I did the 250km Liege-Bastogne-Liege cyclo and this happened to me. It was out by 1.4 km by the last of the 25 big climbs, so totally useless. Had to rely on my mates with Wahoos.
Odd, I have the opposite issue. The climb starts and ends a tad early. I create all my routes from the laptop in Garmin connect and send to my 830 or 1040. Both are behaving the same. But I’d rather have it start and end a tad early than late I guess. 😂
Wasting precious water. Tsk tsk. Love the bush scenery as you narrate. Keep up the excellent work. I have not noticed this issue with climb pro but then again I turned it off as I found it too distracting.
Does climb pro on garmin flag climbs as completed if you take a break? I bought a wahoo elemnt roam v2 and on long single track mtn bike climbs (per wahoo support) the expected behavior is to mark a climb section completed (doesn’t resume) if you stop or come to a near stop. In the Rockies with 2k+ foot steep single track climbs, we stop regularly. Want to get a garmin if it keeps the climb segment alive until summit is reached for that climb!
Does this bug still exist if you import the route via the strava routes Garmin Connect IQ plug-in for the head unit? Great Video btw. Keep up the good work!
Thank you Shane, and let us hope Garmin fixes this now. I've have the same problem with all route that is synced throug Garmin Connect. Strava, RWGPS and Garmin own routes. All have Climp Pro lag. I've been using the GPX directly from Strava and RWGPS for a long time. And it should be posible for Garmin to send the RAW data direcly to the units. By the way, will the review of the unit you cannot talk about be released this month ? x40, looking forward.
ClimbPro has never really worked on my Edge 830 😫... I mainly use the Round-trip automated course.. is there a setting I should look out for ? I've reset the device, and so nothing to it. 🧐
Hi Shane, we need your expertise to sort out the mystery of how Strava live segments can be made to appear on a route you follow. Seems to be completely hit and miss. I think the route has to be created after you have starred the segment for it to work but I'd love to know if there is a definite sequence to follow to get these to pop up reliably out on the road. I'm almost tempted to go back to Wahoo this is so bad on the Garmin.
It may be an issue with the Route API, which is the interface that third parties like Strava use to sync routes to Garmin. The problem with creating routes directly on Garmin Connect is that Garmin will "correct" the elevation, which often results in incorrect elevation information for the course. So unfortunately it sounds like the best solution is to go back to plugging in the head unit to a computer and loading the Strava course files manually.
Do you mean that the elevation data in courses created in Garmin Connect is inaccurate? E.g., you're creating a route which Strava, RideWithGPS and others say has, let's say 800 m elevation gain, Garmin will say it has e.g. 1100 m? Or do you mean what it refers to here in the video, that the elevation gain overall is correct, but that the timing of when e.g. a climb starts is off/delayed?
@@tbone-ip5fi Garmin applies elevation correction to courses created in Garmin Connect. Courses uploaded to Garmin Connect via the Routes API is not elevation corrected. So yes: courses created in Garmin Connect usually have inaccurate elevation. Try it yourself: create a course in Strava and see what it reports for total elevation gain of the course. Export the GPX for that course then import it to Garmin Connect. You should see a different total elevation.
@@kcfwpi1 I have done a lot of testing regarding this, and what you're saying is my experience, as well. How much the Garmin Connect elevation gain is off from those reported by RWGPS, Strava and others can, in my experience, vary from almost nothing (most of the time, where I live) to sometimes really a lot. In my experience it depends on the geographical region in which you're drawing the route, and I've come to understand that the accuracy of the underlying topographical data Garmin Connect uses can vary significantly from area to area. And also change in the same area from one year to another (if Garmin updates their underlying topograhical data). I will paste a link in a separate comment with an in-depth discussion about this from Garmin forums which I've contributed to with data. The interesting thing here, though, as I understand it from Shane's video, is that for this issue the problem really starts on Strava's side, with a discrepancy between their gps and topograhical data (they are shifted, as per Shane's blue dot).
Pasting a URL doesn't work (I assume because of anti-spam measures activated by Shane, which, let's be honest, are often much needed on RU-vid videos), but if you google "Garmin Connect Courses elevation gain grossly overestimated" you will find the thread, which you might find interesting, given your own research in this issue. Whether you are 1) creating a new course in Garmin Connect, 2) manually importing a course file from elsewhere into Garmin Connect, or 3) are sending a course file from elsewhere to your device, but via Garmin Connect, the result is the same, i.e. the elevation gain/loss numbers reported by Garmin Connect will prevail, and override any elevation numbers from a separate source. And sometimes (but not always!) be incorrect.
How come the gradient and watts shown for each climb on my 1040 head unit don’t match with what shows on the finished activity in Garmin Connect? GC shows much lower values for both
Komoot has the same issue, plus smoothing and sometimes inaccurate elevations (in my limited experience in France). Even loading via Newfiles will not fix this. But transferring the route from Komoot to Strava and downloading TCX will fix it.
Not so up to date to all the Garmin stuff lately. Does Garmin plan to implement something similar like that predictive path tech from Hammerhead in the future (if it hasn't yet)? Really would like to see that climbing stuff pop up without a preloaded route that you follow.
I create my routes in Komoot, which then syncs to Garmin (not using the Komoot connect IQ app) I've experienced "weird" climbs, but not in the way you describe. It's more like the opposite, they end *too soon* - especially frustrating on long climbs when you want to do a final push over the top and it ends up being 100m more. I'll pay more attention to it on my next rides. Though I think the issue of Komoot tracks including too few climbs might be true as well.
@@gplama I contacted komoot about this, they basically said that it's due to the base dataset they use, which apparently includes the smoothing or rather contains to few datapoints to be accurate. (a GPX exported from Garmin Connect contains about 20% more data points than the same route exported from komoot). They need to update the underlying data, which they currently don't have a way to do.
@@gplama I contacted komoot about this, turns out the base map they're using simply has not enough data points. They are aware of this but have no easy way to fix it. I just found out that I can simply create a copy of the synced komoot tour in Connect which then automatically updates the elevation data, so I can have the proper route data in one click.
If the route is created in Garmin Connect, is the climb pro data correct? Is it possible then to export that as a GPX .and import or compare that with a Strava created GPX file. What would happen if the GPX from Garmin connect is exported, imported in to Strava and then exported again, how would it compare with the original Garmin created GPX?
Ive found both on the 830 and the 1040 Solar that the majority of the time its fine though tends to end short of the summit by about 20m or so. There was one hilly sportive Ive done twice where I think the route was created in RideWithGPS which I imported into Strava and then synced to the units via Garmin Connect. Climbpro was unusable and about a km out. I was finishing climbs as it was telling me I was approaching it!
I've been doing a LOT of 'climb feature' rides lately with different GPS units and +-20m on a summit is normal. I've done more tests tonight with route import/export/import and the results are wild, no doubting this is the cause of your route being about 1km off.
@@gplama My biggest issue atm is the 1040 Solar sensor disconnect issues after the last Firmware update failed to address it. Garmin beta testing continued 🙄….
