Tag: garmin

February 28th – After some grim weather over the last few days, I thought I’d seek out a weather app for the Edge, the Garmin GPS based bike computer I use. I’ve tried Accuweather, and it’s really rather good.

Accuweather loads via the Garmin IQ App Store, and uses a paired iPhone or similar to access internet weather data; it then gives what I’ve found to be fairly accurate predictions of wind and precipitin for the next two hours. It’s in an easy to read format, and if free of charge.

Being a widget, it’s accessed by swiping sideways from the pull down status screen, which had me fooled for a bit. It only loads data when accessed, so it’s power and phone plan friendly to boot.

It accurately predicted the rain that dappled the screen…

January 27th – That was a cold one, and quite a fun ride, too. Coldest for a while. Wrapped up well, the roads weren’t particularly icy but there was a hard hoar frost.

It was the kind of morning when your breath burns in your throat and your forehead hurts in the headwind, but still a joy to ride in for the sheer challenge.

All we need now is a decent snowfall and it’ll be a proper winter…

January 4th – it has been a temperate commute in the morning, spoiled only by ten minutes of rain, but it felt reasonable for first day back, but in the evening my return was a shock. Not dressed for sub-zero temperatures, and on a bike without ice tyres, I gingerly picked my way through lanes and backstreets chilly and nervous.

That’s the trouble with having time off; you need to sharpen your commuting game on your return, because you get out of the habit.

November 22nd – Despite a bit of a slow ride back up the Chester Road (though powering down into Brownhills from the crossroads is always a joy) a couple of things stood out as I glanced at the computer at the lights at Shire Oak. The first was it felt warmer than it had for a while, and secondly the sunset was now coming up to 4pm.

The temperature though, was not even 4 degrees celsius, which means I must be getting used to the cold again, something I’ve had trouble with this year. I also noted that the elevation was horribly inaccurate – at least 70m out. Normally fairly accurate, the elevation was automatically calibrated when I set out in the morning, and is based on air pressure, so it shows that during the day, atmospheric pressure rose.

Perhaps we’re in for better weather. I do hope so.

Jun 2nd – This is a bit of a geeky one for fellow owners of Garmin Edge bike GPS units: I notice now that under the Garmin ConnectIQ brand, there are a selection of installable, free apps to give new screens and data fields for your device. Most of the stuff available is fitness related, and doesn’t appeal to me; but this app – called My Edge – giving an analogue-style speedometer with clever max and average speed implementation, with other data fields configurable, is really nice. It has a slight bug in that elevation related fields display in feet, rather than the labelled meters but it’s cool. You can investigate the My Edge app here.

There are other interesting apps too – another I’ve loaded shows the current OS grid position you’re at, which I find nicely geeky.

Check out the Garmin Connect service here.

January 13th – Now, this is winter at last. Riding homeward at 6pm, the air temperature according to the ride computer was -2.4 degrees C. It felt it too.

That morning had shown a light, wet dusting of snow, and it half-heartedly snowed during the late evening, too.

I’d like a bit of snow, or some good hard frosts.Come on then, weather… show us what you’re made of.