Garmin Edge 305, then 705, now 820
I had a Garmin Edge 305, but it fell off the bike and broke.
Then I had a replacement Garmin Edge 305, but I managed to lose it or get it stolen.
Then I replaced it with a Garmin Edge 705… until the buttons failed… but I found a FOAF to repair them and I still have it.
Then the Edge 705 fell of the bike and was run over by four cars and broke… so I sent it to Garmin for an out-of-warranty repair.
Moderately nice concept, but woeful software that’s prone to locking up and flattening the battery if you look at it wrong, if you disconnect it the wrong way, or sometimes just if its decides that today is a day that ends in the letter “y”. I think Garmin will have to drastically improve whatever is the next model since most of the functionality is already there in an iPhone or Android phone.
Eventually the 820 came out and it seemed to have more of the features I was interested in, plus by now the 705 was distinctly worn – the power button in particular took a carefully placed push to activate, and was very slow to turn on. Once more into the breech, out with the credit card and acquire the latest incarnation.
Small, slippery, shapped a bit too much like a bar of soap, one day as I went to walk out to the bike it flipped out of my hand and landed smack down on the concrete. The display now has cracks from one side to the other, but hasn’t failed yet.
Hints
Useful snippets for the care and feeding of same:
How to reset the Edge
- Soft reset: Press mode and lap/reset at the same time.
- Hard reset: While the unit is off, press mode while pressing the power button. You should be asked if you want to erase all user data. Select Yes.
GPSbabel
Seem to need to remove the module garmin_gps, with /sbin/rmmod.
Example commands to read the data from the Edge:
sudo gpsbabel -t -r -w -i garmin -f usb: -o kml -F 20070305.kml
sudo gpsbabel -t -r -w -i garmin -f usb: -o gpx -F 20070305.gpx
