I’ve been using a Garmin edge 500 for the last couple of years and its been fine, over the last two weeks its started auto pausing when I’m moving. Sometimes it’ll miss a couple of miles of a ride, last night it missed 6 miles, this morning 2 miles.

It seems to be getting worse and doing it on every ride now.

Anyone else experienced this? Apart from turning off auto pause is there any solution?

Have you got a speed/cadence sensor?

Could be that the speed part of the sensor it is being intermittent. The reed switch in them breaks.

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/fixing-a-garmin-speed-sensor

Or the GPS receiver is dropping in and out. Either due to fault with 500 or poor signal reception. Which can happen in woodland areas as the tree canopy can block the GPS.

Its not poor signal reception as its on my commute so no change from before. I use the garmin on 3 bikes so I’ll see how it performs on the other bikes and that’ll tell me if its a sensor issue. But I don’t use a magnet on the rear wheel for speed.

Personally I’d turn off the auto pause anyway, especially if you’re using Strava as they will work out the stops anyway, and from experience with other devices, auto pause can screw up things on Strava.

As for why it’s started doing it, no idea except maybe a setting has been changed. I assume there’s a threshold setting somewhere. Also as said, if it’s having GPS issues then maybe it thinks you’ve stopped.

Personally I’d turn off the auto pause anyway, especially if you’re using Strava as they will work out the stops anyway, and from experience with other devices, auto pause can screw up things on Strava.

Never had a problem with that myself, always use auto start/stop.

If you’re not using the speed sensor I’d check the satellite signal, is it weak? Not that I can think why that would happen suddenly, other than a dead Garmin!

Interestingly its only started happening since a new bus depot has opened on my route. Probably coincidence but wonder if they’re comms kit is blocking the signal to the garmin.

You can turn the auto pause down to something like 0.1 mph.

njee20 – Member
Never had a problem with that myself, always use auto start/stop.

I used auto pause on my old Nokia, okay not a Garmin, and it would give me KOMs on any climb so steep that I either stopped or pushed up. Always seemed to think I’d done it in a couple of seconds. Strava that is. They claimed it couldn’t do it as it works by start and end time of the segments, but still it did. I don’t mind the KOMs 😀 but I kept getting rides flagged. Turned off the auto pause and it was fine after that.

Anyway, Strava don’t need auto pause basically as they work out when you’ve stopped, so if that’s all you use the Garmin for then it’s fine to turn it off.

If it persists, maybe try a hard reset. If you google it, you’ll get an explanation from the Garmin support pages with details of the files you need to save and then put back on so you still have the right settings etc.

I’ve got an Edge 500 and while it’s never done this particular thing, it is a very flakey product. Each firmware update seems to introduce new issues.
My latest is the page/menu button gradually losing responsiveness until you can’t use it. But, you need it to do the hard reset, so it took me about 2hrs of turning it on and off the other night to get it to reset. (Hard reset is page/menu, power and start/stop at the same time, until the Garmin logo appears and then disappears).
When mine first started doing it, I assumed it was the button failing, but a software reset temporarily cures it, only for it to gradually deteriorate again.

You can turn the auto pause down to something like 0.1 mph.

You can turn it to be when you’re stopped completely, but if you’re pushing up a steep climb in the trees it will often think you have stopped.

Clearly that’s not what’s happening here. I’d check the satellite signal if you know where it’s dropping out. A reset may help, but sounds like it could be hardware based.

Anyway, Strava don’t need auto pause basically as they work out when you’ve stopped, so if that’s all you use the Garmin for then it’s fine to turn it off.

Strava include stopped time (on a Garmin) in a segment – if you start a segment and ride for a minute, stop for a minute (with auto pause), then ride another minute you will get a segment time of 3 minutes. It does mess the speed up slightly as it assumes the data drops out, so if it knows you were doing 10 mph the last time before you stopped it will assume that you actually kept moving, and show a gradual slowing until its next data point (ie when you move again).