Garmin

220 watchers

larkim May 2022 4:50pm, 9 May 2022 17,843 posts	0 larkim Hoping to be pretty non-stop tbh but obviously charging at a stop break would be ideal. Some screen saving mode would be good, but I don't think the 645 has that. I tried ultratrac with a walk and the GPS trace was next to useless, so I don't plan to use that.
K5 Gus May 2022 5:16pm, 9 May 2022 5,133 posts	0 K5 Gus I've got a Fenix, not sure if you can do this on a 645 I've just set up a new Power Manager profile, ie an alternative to UltraTrac - lots of configurable stuff, ie I've left GPS at "normal" but set Screen Display to "timeout". I've left Maps on for Nav as Ultratrac switches that off For each item it shows what change it will have on the battery time for fully charged, ie +7 hours for Display timeout, +1 for Backlight Off, etc
Badger May 2022 6:10pm, 9 May 2022 15,157 posts	0 Badger Otherwise, does smart recording vs 'every second' make any real difference? I saw a comment from a Garmin engineer on their forums that the new GPS chips are so power light that there's a measurable difference in power consumption from the reduced number of writes to the memory. That's not to say it's large, just measurable, but might be worth doing if you're trying to get every extra minute you can. There's no difference in GPS power usage.
Badger May 2022 6:33pm, 9 May 2022 15,158 posts	0 Badger To add to my last post, changing the smart/every second setting doesn't change the battery life estimates on a fenix 6x at all.
flanker May 2022 12:45am, 10 May 2022 20,546 posts	0 flanker I don't think this is relevant to Larkim, but will be to Fenix/945 owners ... Take the predictions of the Power Manager with a large bucket of salt. I set up a power manager profile for ultras (no BT, no HRM, straight GPS, maps on, screen always on) that promised 60hrs battery. Used it for just under 22hrs at Fellsman and had 25% battery left (and as the battery measure on the fenix isn't as linear as it could be, that's probably more like 20% in reality). When the screen is set to go off, do you have to press a button to reactivate it, or will the glance motion turn it back on (as you can do with the backlight)?
Big_G May 2022 7:33am, 10 May 2022 1,726 posts	0 Big_G flanker, I’ve got a power profile where the screen is off by default, but when I glance at the watch the screen is displayed.
Badger May 2022 7:49am, 10 May 2022 15,161 posts	0 Badger Completely agree, the battery predictions are very optimistic. I've been doing a bit of analysis from the battery records in the fit files and think my 6x would realistically do about 35 hours with my standard settings, where the manager predicts closer to 60.
flanker May 2022 4:29pm, 10 May 2022 20,549 posts	0 flanker Thanks Big-G. Might incorporate that into my ultra profile. And maybe even my every day one - if I'm not looking at it, why show it?! I guess the question is - how much juice does it take to power up the screen, and if you're looking a it frequently does it actually make consumption worse? From what I remember, it shouldn't. I hadn't realised there were battery records inside the FIT files, though it makes sense. I sense another distraction coming on
Badger May 2022 4:38pm, 10 May 2022 15,166 posts	0 Badger Integer percentage logged once every ten minutes on recent units (I think it is not on the F3 and introduced in later F5 firmware), undocumented but it's message number 104. From the always useful https://github.com/scrapper/fit4ruby: # Not part of the official ANT SDK doc message 104, 'battery' field 0, 'uint16', 'unit_voltage', :unit => 'V', :scale => 1000 field 1, 'sint16', 'undocumented_field_1' field 2, 'uint8', 'percent', :unit => '%' field 3, 'sint8', 'current', :unit => 'mA' # just a wild guess field 253, 'uint32', 'timestamp', :type => 'date_time' Probably makes more sense on longer activities where the quantization is a bit less significant
flanker May 2022 5:48pm, 10 May 2022 20,550 posts	0 flanker Ta