I’m having frustrating connectivity issues between my edge 1050 & Varia 820. Every ride seeks like a coin flip if the Varia will fully connect to my edge and end up showing vehicles. My Varia always turns on when I power on my edge, I see the lights and I can actively change the light setting in my edge. But when I go to ride, it stays connected and doesn’t show a single car.
The radar alert is turned on, I deleted my iOS Varia app, and I never adjust settings.
The only way I have found to fix it is delete the radar and light, force restart the Edge by holding down the power button, and re-adding the Varia. The process is driving me nuts and surely there is a better way, am I doing anything wrong?
I share frustration. I think Garmin connectivity with Connect IQ apps and sensors should be FAR better. a lot of room for improvement with consistant stability. Make sure you push all the updates to Varia via the iOS app.
There is definitely something wrong with how the new 820 connects. I used the 515 with my 1050, 1040, 840, etc. it always started right up with the computer and joined the network immediately. The new 820 very frequently doesn’t join the network, or I can’t even pair it. I’m also getting a fascinating error intermittently - Radar Data Stale. I amuse myself trying to figure out what that even means. Surely we’ll get a new firmware soon.
I had similar issues with my Varia 515 and Wahoo Bolt, and thought my Varia was old so I tried the wahoo radar. Wahoo had issues of constantly dropping the radar then re-connecting.
Garmin edge better but now it’s iffy if I even connect. The problem is it’s hard to tell before I start my ride. Issue is both solo riding and in a group peloton.
I’ve had issues from time to time with my Edge 530 and Varia 510 along with all my other sensors. I either have to go in to the sensor list and manually pick connect on each one or do a fill power down. I do have a lot of sensors across multiple bikes and I suspect that’s the issue. GP Lama had a video a while ago on sensors that touched on it.
I’ve abandoned use of the Varia 820 and gone back to the 515. The 820 is not much good when riding in a group. It picks up riders behind, and very often shows them as a car. Meanwhile, it keeps my 1050 active, too. A friend of mine sent his 820 back because the group ride issue gave him so many false positives he no longer trusted the unit at all.
I’ve had issues lately with my Edge 840 and Varia 515. Same thing as OP. Both power on fine and connect, but no cars register on the edge. Rebooting the edge is the only thing that has fixed it for me. It seems to happen about every three rides or so.
It’s not like I’m overloading my 1050 with connections. Currently I have the Rearvue 820 light/radar, sram axs shifting, polar H10, and power Wahoo pedals. Idk if music plays into the connections but obviously I can control that too.
I’ve had similar issues recently. It seems to work better if you charge the varia and hold the power button down for several seconds until it flashes while charging. This is some kind of reset. Albeit I don’t charge it every ride and it’s intermittent. It was fine for years until about 2 months ago.
Interesting that so many have these problems. I use the old RVR315 with a Bolt v2 and it connects pretty much immediately all of the time. Every once in a while radar will disconnect during a ride, but it usually reconnects within a minute. Looks like the 515 is now cheaper than the 315!
