I had the opportunity to ride 65 kms on the mountains on the weekend and I loved it, I miss this events, they had been mostly closed on the last one year and half.
So, I had to use my Garmin Edge for navigation and I took a lot of advantage of the wireless remote to change the Edge page!! Seems to work well but seems there is a kind of timeout, that let´s say if I do not change the page for 10 minutes, next time I will get a beep and a message on the Edge saying a remote device was found - this is annoying and is something I wish to improve.
I also took other tries to get Bluetooth and ANT to send data to Garmin datafields and I was stuck on the same issues and previous:
- Bluetooth can only connect once and so to one datafield (and no mobile app also)
- ANT data is received more then one datafield BUT the data drops randomly, like if the issue is to be receiving ANT on more than one datafield
I ended up to use only 2 ANT data fields: motor power and battery SOC, because I needed to manage very well my 500Wh battery for the 65 kms 1800 meter accumulated (which I ended up to use only 2/3 of the 500Wh).
And my wireless remote broke... because I did 3D print almost hollow as can be seen:
And I really hate the VLC5 buttons that I will stop to use them!! As I am preparing our mini cargo bike, that will probably be driven more by my wife, I need buttons that work very well as the user feedback is very limited to the LED. I am thinking that the most operations I really use are:
- turn on/off the motor (although I usually forget it on and no problem found until now)
- change assist level
- use walk assist
- I guess lights but the ones I use are not controlled by TSDZ2
- Garmin Edge page change
I am thinking in moving to the better 850C remote because is much better on the tactile feedback and we can also buy it easily. It has only 3 buttons but that are enough for the most operations I use, If I do not use the "see battery SOC" operation. Also I did open it and is simple not possible to remove the button PCB without damaging it, so, not possible to design and 3D print a custom base. I guess I will keep using a box with the wireless board and battery + the 850C remote. I will try to make this box small as possible and will be an advantage because will be much easier to build than the wireless remote using the VLC5 keypad, as also will work with any 3 buttons or more keypads, like best remote from 860C or KT-LCD3 remote.