'turning off' GSC10 spd/cdnce sensor?

chatlow

I have this unit on my winter bike, which is used everyday for commutes. Is it possible to remove battery or turn the unit off to save the battery? It will be used with my 800 once a week so I don't want to completely remove it

pblakeney

AFAIK the only way is to remove the battery.
Batteries last for years in mine so I don't bother.

StillGoing

chatlow wrote:

I have this unit on my winter bike, which is used everyday for commutes. Is it possible to remove battery or turn the unit off to save the battery? It will be used with my 800 once a week so I don't want to completely remove it

When it isn't in use, it will just go to standby. My old GSC10 was on my bike for years without resorting to removing the battery and never needed a battery change. CR2032 or whatever they are, are dirt cheap anyway. There is absolutely no need to remove the battery unless, arguably, you're going on a plane.

smoggysteve

Batteries are so dirt cheap its hardly even worth bothering but if you want a better option get the magnetless garmin speed/cadence sensors that just use rubber bands. You can remove them in seconds from the crank arm and the hub where the speed one sits. I find them a lot more reliable anyway since you don't have the mess about lining up magnets to the device which can be tricky with some bladed spokes.

SME

As said above, batteries are dirt cheap, but sensors usually turn off after 20 minute or so without a signal. It's only the magnet passing the sensors induction coil/ pick-up that 'wakes them up' again.

Just don't do what I did and leave your pedals level- any slight knock or movement will turn it on again. My bike is kept indoors so quite often got a slight nudge!

chatlow

thanks, I will leave as is. That said, the comments above saying the sensor will only activate when the magnet passes the coil - this is going to happen when commuting - or do you mean it only uses battery when the signal from the sensor is received and being used by my garmin 800? Either way, the batteries are cheap, so I'll just leave it

Man Of Lard

The sensors do not "care" if any device is listening (a bit like BBC local radio), they transmit if they're activated.

For the speed/cadence sensor, it becomes active if either of the magnetic pickup coils detects a magnet passing by - so, if your wheel spins or your cranks spin.

Either way the batteries last many hundreds of (active) hours and you can easily acquire 10 for less than the price of a pint. Mind you, my experience with the GSC10 is that the sensor itself will fail before the battery runs out (2 in 12 months - the original & the warranty replacement - both died the same way - the cadence sensor stopped detecting the magnet passing the sensor arm)

ForumNewbie

I have GSC10 sensors on two bikes. My Garmin has to be linked to the correct sensor for it to work, e.g. if I ride my second bike but forget to change my settings so that it points to the second bike sensor, the sensor is not activated. So if you set-up another dummy bike in your Garmin settings, and change the settings to point to that bike each time you don't want to use the sensor, I think that would have the same effect as turning it off.

StillGoing

ForumNewbie wrote:

I have GSC10 sensors on two bikes. My Garmin has to be linked to the correct sensor for it to work, e.g. if I ride my second bike but forget to change my settings so that it points to the second bike sensor, the sensor is not activated. So if you set-up another dummy bike in your Garmin settings, and change the settings to point to that bike each time you don't want to use the sensor, I think that would have the same effect as turning it off.

It doesn't turn the sensor off. As posted above, as soon as magnet passes the sensor it will spring in to life. What you're doing is simply just not monitoring it on the Garmin device. But, the batteries are so cheap, it really isn't worth bothering about.

kayakerchris

Each time you open the battery cover you will degrade the waterproofing. Just ignore it. As has been said the batteries last forever and cost pennies. I would certainly expect you to get a couple of years of use from twice daily commuting unless you are Steve Abrahams!

ForumNewbie

philthy3 wrote:

ForumNewbie wrote:

I have GSC10 sensors on two bikes. My Garmin has to be linked to the correct sensor for it to work, e.g. if I ride my second bike but forget to change my settings so that it points to the second bike sensor, the sensor is not activated. So if you set-up another dummy bike in your Garmin settings, and change the settings to point to that bike each time you don't want to use the sensor, I think that would have the same effect as turning it off.

It doesn't turn the sensor off. As posted above, as soon as magnet passes the sensor it will spring in to life. What you're doing is simply just not monitoring it on the Garmin device. But, the batteries are so cheap, it really isn't worth bothering about.

Fair enough, but it doesn't really matter as the batteries last for ages - I've had them on 2 bikes for 4 years, done thousands of miles, and never had to change the batteries.

chatlow

I was going to remove just the wheel magnet to try and save some battery but the crank is still going to set it on anyway, so I am going to leave everything alone. Like ppl have said, you can buy 10 of these batteries for a quid, and they last ages :-D

chris_bass

chatlow wrote:

I was going to remove just the wheel magnet to try and save some battery but the crank is still going to set it on anyway, so I am going to leave everything alone. Like ppl have said, you can buy 10 of these batteries for a quid, and they last ages :-D

you could get a pedal axle magnet for the cadence sensor and then you could remove the magnets if you like and you have the bonus of it looking nicer too!

dennisn

SmoggySteve wrote:

Batteries are so dirt cheap its hardly even worth bothering but if you want a better option get the magnetless garmin speed/cadence sensors that just use rubber bands. You can remove them in seconds from the crank arm and the hub where the speed one sits. I find them a lot more reliable anyway since you don't have the mess about lining up magnets to the device which can be tricky with some bladed spokes.

Why would a cadence sensor have anything to do with spokes?

ForumNewbie

dennisn wrote:

SmoggySteve wrote:

Batteries are so dirt cheap its hardly even worth bothering but if you want a better option get the magnetless garmin speed/cadence sensors that just use rubber bands. You can remove them in seconds from the crank arm and the hub where the speed one sits. I find them a lot more reliable anyway since you don't have the mess about lining up magnets to the device which can be tricky with some bladed spokes.

Why would a cadence sensor have anything to do with spokes?

Because it's also a speed sensor.

markhewitt1978

Yup the GSC10 has to be lined up 'just so' so that it can detect the magnet attached to the crank arm and the magnet attached to the spokes. Always going wrong those things, far far better now that the seperate magnetless sensors are out, and the batteries in those things last for years.

chatlow

markhewitt1978 wrote:

Yup the GSC10 has to be lined up 'just so' so that it can detect the magnet attached to the crank arm and the magnet attached to the spokes. Always going wrong those things, far far better now that the separate magnetless sensors are out, and the batteries in those things last for years.

have to disagree, mine have been perfect for years. detected in seconds. lining up the wheel/crank magnets with the sensor wasn't much of a chore.

to be fair the newer model obviously looks nicer and easier to install, but then costs twice as much.

NeXXus

dennisn wrote:

SmoggySteve wrote:

Batteries are so dirt cheap its hardly even worth bothering but if you want a better option get the magnetless garmin speed/cadence sensors that just use rubber bands. You can remove them in seconds from the crank arm and the hub where the speed one sits. I find them a lot more reliable anyway since you don't have the mess about lining up magnets to the device which can be tricky with some bladed spokes.

Why would a cadence sensor have anything to do with spokes?

The unit has to be aligned correctly so the crank magnet triggers the reed switch and so that the spoke magnet, also triggers it's switch.

The new speed/cadence sensors are accelerometer based and don't need magnets, thus easy to swap between bikes or remove entirely

smoggysteve

chatlow wrote:

markhewitt1978 wrote:

Yup the GSC10 has to be lined up 'just so' so that it can detect the magnet attached to the crank arm and the magnet attached to the spokes. Always going wrong those things, far far better now that the separate magnetless sensors are out, and the batteries in those things last for years.

have to disagree, mine have been perfect for years. detected in seconds. lining up the wheel/crank magnets with the sensor wasn't much of a chore.

to be fair the newer model obviously looks nicer and easier to install, but then costs twice as much.[/quoteĺ]

The placement and reliability of the cadence sensors will differ on different bikes. The chainstay on some may not make it easy to get a good placement for both the cadence and wheel sensors. This was the reason I bought the newer magnetless version. Easy to swap from bike to bike and no zip ties or rubber strips which have damaged paintwork before.