Garmin Forerunner 201 Problems

"Joe" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...

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I've been using the Forerunner

Joe, See the name? Atre you running on "all fours"? You need
to do that to make it work. Really, go out and try it right
now. Nevermind the looks the neighborhood kids will give
you, and if you appeal enough to a great dane, you just
might end up getting lucky.

I just bought a Forerunner two weeks ago, and when I wear
the unit on my shoulder, where the Timex unit's sensor would
normally go. It is my assessment that the Garmin is 97-98%
accurate in trees, where as the Timex was about 95% accurate
in trees. If I wear the Garmin on my wrist, I actually get
worse performance due to my body blocking the signal.

Even if the Garmin was only as accurate as the Timex, I
would prefer it over the Timex, because of the ability to
dump the data (at least on the 201) to your computer, and
then use software like TopoFusion to display the data on a
map of the area. That ability is just fantastic, and makes
the unit head and shoulders above the Timex. You can display
the accuracy of the unit in meaningful terms, rather than
just guessing how bad it is.

-jeremy

--
+================================================================+
Jeremy Hallum, System Manager , Astronomy, University of Michigan
[email hidden]::[email hidden]
"Audentis Fortuna Iuvat"

<[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...

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In article <[email hidden]-
thlink.net>, Joe

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When I wore them both on a run today, the Forerunner
ended up giving me a reading of 8.14 while the Timex
was at
8.005.

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I've also noticed some strange behavior with the
Forerunner where the distance I'm looking at will
actually decrease by .01 or .02 at some

point.

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What version of forerunner software? I believe 3.30 was
supposed to have fixed this. Also what smoothing level do
you have set?

I've got version 3.30, which is indicated under the "About
Garmin" menu. The smoothing level is set to "more". Was this
a major issue with versions prior to 3.30 software?

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This happened on 3 occassions where one occassion the
distance actually decreased by .14 miles, leaving me
puzzled. I have never had problems

with

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the Timex losing signal and teh Forerunner never
actually tells me it

has

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lost the signal or that the signal is weak. Any of you
had any problems like this with the Forerunner. I"m
thinking about returning it.

I have both too. The forerunner loses signal a lot whereas
the timex doesn't. But the timex appears to interfere with
the forerunner so I can't use both at once.

Some people recommend strapping the forerunner to your
upper arm using the supplied extension strap as it gives
them a better signal.

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I just wish the Timex had the same features like the
auto lap and the pace/lap features, which I really like.

Ditto.

Paul

Thanks for the info. I will try that before returning it.
Weird thing is, I think the thing can give pretty accurate
results. One of the first times I tried a time test I wore
both the Timex and the Forerunner. I did notice the first
mile was off by a little bit (< .05 miles) (and I did wait
for the GPS Signal to be located). The rest of the 5 miles
were about dead on match with the mile splits for the Timex
I have. I was just outside a moment ago with it just to test
something out. I started the forerunner and just let it sit
on the top of my car. Just from sitting there, it was
registering accumulated distance, however, not much, it was
continaually increasing by 2 or 3 feet every 1 or 2 seconds.

At first I thought adjusting smoothing may help, but doesn't
smoothing only try to correct the reading for the pace
readout and not the distance? Thanks for your info.

Joe

<[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...

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In article <[email hidden]-
thlink.net>, Joe

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<[email hidden]> wrote

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Joe wrote:

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> I've also noticed some strange behavior with the
> Forerunner where the distance I'm looking at will
> actually decrease by .01 or .02 at some point.

Quoted message said:

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What version of forerunner software? I believe 3.30 was
supposed to

have

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

fixed this. Also what smoothing level do you have set?

Quoted message said:

I've got version 3.30, which is indicated under the
"About Garmin" menu. The smoothing level is set to
"more". Was this a major issue with versions prior to
3.30 software?

I read somewhere that it was and somebody said it was
fixed in 3.30,

probably

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in the yahoo garminf group but I can't find it now. The
problem will be due to the pace averaging. If you reduce
the smoothing, the problem should lessen.

Paul

Quoted message said:

I read somewhere that it was and somebody said it was
fixed in 3.30, probably in the yahoo garminf group but I
can't find it now. The problem will be due to the pace
averaging. If you reduce the smoothing, the problem
should lessen.

Paul

sports.groups.yahoo.comGarminFOpen ↗

In article said:

Just from sitting there, it was registering accumulated
distance, however, not much, it was continaually
increasing by 2 or 3 feet every 1 or 2 seconds.

Quoted message said:

At first I thought adjusting smoothing may help, but
doesn't smoothing only try to correct the reading for the
pace readout and not the distance?

It appears to be smoothing the position rather than
the pace...

Paul