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Day: August 27, 2010

Garmin’s Incomplete Edge 305 Fix

As you may have noticed by now I occasionally fix Garmin Edge 305 cycling GPSs that have a known problem where they will suddenly power off during use. This is caused by the spring contacts for the battery bouncing free from the battery contact and the device momentarily losing power, leaving it in an off state. To remedy this I move the battery wires from the contact PCB directly to test pads on the main board, completely bypassing the iffy spring contacts.

It appears that Garmin is aware of this issue and has tried to remedy it in recent versions of the Edge 305. Tonight when I pulled apart another one apart I found foam rubber stuck under the contacts apparently to provide additional pressure and avoid the problem. Clearly this did not work as otherwise I would not have been repairing this one. I can only hope that Garmin has a much better design in the Edge 500 (and future models) to completely avoid this issue.

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RTV Explosion!

While filling a syringe with RTV I accidentally squeezed the tube in the middle instead of the end, applying enough force that the end of the tube burst all over my arm. Oops. at least I had enough silicone in the syringe to finish up the Garmin Edge 305 that I was fixing.

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