Ionic apparently unable to handle long bike rides

[LimpEmu]

I am hugely disappointed. I did a 109-mile ride today with approximately 9,000 feet of climbing and wanted to load the bike ride in Strava. I have done this many times, but never for a ride this long. 

The bike ride does show up in my fitbit app, but there are no GPS data at all. It shows the average heart rate, length of the ride and average speed but no GPS data and hence no TCX file that can be uploaded to Strava.

When I try to load the ride on my computer, the busy signal shows up for a while then I get error. When I try to open the ride on my phone, the busy signal just keeps going (I have a faint hope that this is because it is transferring data from the ionic to the phone, but it's been going for hours now).

Is there any way to access the stored data on the Ionic directly as it is possible with my Garmin (unfortunately my Garmin died at 82 miles, the Ionic was my backup, but apparently is not able to store GPX data for long rides). If you can help me retrieve the GPS data I would much appreciate it. The Ionic had 30% power left at the end of the ride.

[bbarrera]

@LimpEmu Sorry to hear that. Last year I did a 12:40:51 double century (16.5 hour elapsed) and used my iPhone 7 as backup. Just put phone into airplane mode, and use RideWithGPS app - its pretty easy to get 18 hours out of the phone battery. Thats almost double Ionic GPS tracking, plus its easy to recharge phone and GPS bike computer during the ride.

My Garmin Edge 520 lasts about 7-8 hours when following a course, so I have a small lipstick size Anker battery and long USB cable. You can charge most/all of the Garmin Edge bike computers while riding. With one recharge mid-ride I was able to track the entire 200 mile ride on Edge 520. Never took the Edge 520 off its mount. I also recharged my Garmin Varia rear radar a couple times during the ride, and my Bontrager Flare RT rear light.

[LimpEmu]

Well, I must say, Fitbit support is impressive. I called this morning to ask whether there was anything they could do with the recorded data, and now I am finding the complete route on Strava! The ride still does not show with the GPS route on my Fitbit dashboard, and loading the ride results in an error, but that's all right.

bbarrera: Thank you for your note. I have a Garmin 510, three years old, only had problem once with it before. I think, I must have accidentally increased the display brightness which results in higher power use since it really should not have trouble with rides just a little over 100 miles. For a double century, it's definitely important to carry a power bank. I have another century coming up, will look into taking a power bank and the ability to charge while riding for that one.

[Cyclismo]

I have experienced exactly the same problem with my 106 mile ride I did last weekend. I’ve uploaded hundreds of rides from my Ionic before with no problems, but this one - the longest by a good 25 miles - won’t fully upload to the Fitbit app or website, and therefore I can’t export to Strava. On my dashboard  the Activities minifeed shows the map of my ride, so I know the GPS has been captured, but when I try to view the activity nothing comes up. Im REALLY hoping Fitbit can fix it but so far after countless emails and messages all I’ve had back has been ‘we’re looking into it’.  Sooooooo frustrating!!

[LimpEmu]

I just waited and kept trying to upload it on the Fitbit site. At some point - after trying for several days - it worked. The ride when this happened to me, I inadvertently had set my Garmin to 100% brightness, so the Garmin battery died at mile 87, and I was happy that my Fitbit was there as a "backup." All I can recommend is to keep trying the upload.

Really disappointing and frustrating, I so understand. I am only using the Fitbit as a backup device and use a Garmin as my primary device. I have also had trouble with the Fitbit in that it just stops the recording during a bike ride, so I do not consider this device as very reliable.

[bbarrera]

@LimpEmu I'm not familiar with the 510. On the 520 I have backlighting turn high, and separately a setting that will switch to 0% backlight after 15 or 30 seconds (can't recall exactly). That helps save on battery, although I do need to switch pages to wake up the display if lighting is poor.

[Metalman007]

I'm noticing this issue as well, though my Fitbit app shows only a small dot in the center of the map while my Strava app gets the entire route accurately.  A few rides did show up just fine in the fitbit and strava apps, but they were only slightly shorter.  My runs are mapped out just fine on both apps.  My last ride was only 25 miles but the fitbit app only showed me a small dot as a route on a blank background while the strava app got the whole thing.  Frustrating.

[LimpEmu]

I have given up using the Ionic for bike rides. Of the last 10 rides I recorded, half were truncated. I did not stop recording the ride, the device just decided to stop recording. The GPS wears out the battery a lot faster, too (I bought my Ionic a year ago). The elevation gain is always too high. And of course, the number of steps credited for a long bike ride (100km) is ridiculously low (interestingly when I do not  turn any recording on for a bike ride, the steps credited is more than twice as high compared to when I record as a bike ride).

The syncing with the Ionic is terrible as well, takes forever. With my Garmin I finish the ride, and the upload is complete before I can even get my phone out.

So for now, I am using the Ionic for runs only, which works well except for the syncing issue. Just about every time for a run to sync, I have to restart the Ionic and my phone.

Fitbit definitely still has some work to do with this device. 

[LimpEmu]

Not a feature for the 510, but I have learned my lesson and always make sure the brightness is at the lowest setting. Will pass your note on to my husband though, he uses a 520!