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It sounds like everyone hasn't donw the setup of thier Garmin's correctly - 90% of the JCF peloton use Garmins and we have no issues with all the GSC10's, HRM, Power Meters and other Ant+ devices even in a race of 140 riders!
It sounds like that you haven't done a fixed pairing and that you garmin has all the accessory functions set to on and just picks up the nearest accessory rather than being fixed to one uniue ID.
Also if you are doing a unit search you need to be well away from other units as the Garmin device is unable to work out which i your unit or that of another riders.
In regards to moisture issue - the Garmin 500 is utterly crap! When racing Cyclocross I put mine in the radio pocket on my skin suit as it was the only place where it would get any sort of protection from the elements.
IT's weird that the Edges are so sensitive to water. For navigation I usually use a Garmin Dakota 20, which is a bit of a chunky beast compared to the Edges (I've got a 500 for when I don't need navi). However, I've regularly had the Dakota virtually swimming in water - the screen is recessed so it fills up like a lake on rainy rides - with no ill effects. Before I learned how loose fitting the handlebar mount was it also did 2 or 3 "bail out" manoeuvers at 35+ km/h onto hard tarmac and got a few scratches, but continued to work flawlessly. It's also a lot more accurate in deep forest etc. I would have got the Edge 800 if it had been available when I bought the Dakota, but quite glad I didn't!
Well said; surprise surprise Garmin is in business to make money
Nothing wrong with that. It's how they continue to develop and R&D new prdts. I just wish the cycling specific models would be a little more ruggedized as far as firmware and moisture are concerned. I really like the 705 , as a whole , I much prefer button to 'touch' and the batt life is acceptable. I rarely, if ever ride more than 300km at a shot - so the 400km barrier is not a concern.
The Dakota lacks the ANT+ interface of the Edge, which means no support for HRM, cadence sensor, speed sensor or power meter for training.
I didn't see ANT+ mentioned anywhere on the specs page for the Dakota 20 in the Garmin online shop, but the accessories page has all the optional ANT+ sensors, you're right! To me as a potential customer it seems crazy that they leave out the UI for heart rate if the firmware supports logging the data. But I can also see that if they did show HR on screen on a navigation-capable device, it might cannibalize sales of the much more expensive 800. Like Apple, Garmin want to sell you their hardware to run with their software. One protects the margins of the other.
I would much rather use an open source based solution running Android or Linux, where you can add or replace software to realize the potential of the hardware, as I do with commodity broadband routers running DD-WRT (310 days uptime and counting!).
There are too few smart phones out there that include suitable hardware yet (such as ANT+ or BTLE) and and even then, their LCD displays usually draw too much power to permanently keep them on for a HRM display.
With low cost developer boards like the Raspberry Pi credit card size ARM boards and USB GPS receivers and ANT+ adapters, an open source solution seems not beyond reach.