There's at least one older topic on this, but I had the weirdest problem after yesterday's session where I could see the watch on the USB bus in system diagnostics, but it would just fail to mount and give up after a few seconds. Letting the battery drain overnight didn't solve the issue, but I don't think it drained enough to force a full cold reboot.

Then, I did something extremely foolish. I have a Suunto watch that has a very similar connector, so I clamped it on the GW-60 and it fits absolutely perfectly...maybe even better than the Locosys cable. I knew this was foolish and risky, so I took a battery-powered USB brick and plugged the GW-60 to it using the Suunto cable. The screen went dark, so I instantly unplugged it.

The watch didn't wake up on button presses after that and I thought maybe I killed it completely... Then, I plugged the watch using the Locosys cable to the same battery and the screen lights up and a few seconds later the watch beeps and boots up. Sigh of relief... It's working. Unplug from USB brick and into the computer and it immediately mounts up and works perfectly and the track is there too.

Now that was an extremely hazardous way to reboot a GW-60, but proves that sometimes you might need to do that to fix USB connectivity issues. There's probably a safer way to force a reboot if you use a PC. Does anyone know if there's a way to do it from the watch itself?

Also: the thing I did with the Suunto cable could have damaged the watch. It seems it didn't, so kudos to Locosys for potentially protecting the watch when using the wrong cable, but unless you are willing to brick your GW-60, don't ever try the Locosys GW-60 with a Suunto cable. (Just putting this in here so it shows up in Google results - I tried Google to see if anyone had tried this before and couldn't find anything.)

Might not work with a MAC unless you have a windows emulator. But the latest uitiity has a reboot button, by far the easiest and safest way to reboot.

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decrepit said..
Might not work with a MAC unless you have a windows emulator. But the latest uitiity has a reboot button, by far the easiest and safest way to reboot.

I've been using mine for years and this was the first time I just couldn't get it to mount at all. A few minor problems in the past, but nothing like this. I think my next option would have been to just use a friend's Windows laptop to run the utility and see what it can do, so it's good to know that there is a reboot option in there.

I think I flashed the watch firmware using Windows on Parallels Desktop, but that was a very long time ago and I no longer have that running. I have VirtualBox for testing some Linux code I worked on, so I could make a Windows installation for that, but I'm hoping the watch will work well for a couple of years again before needing a reboot. (The strap is starting to crack too, but the watch is securely held in my 3D-printed arm band, so even if one side of the band breaks, it's not going to fall off.)

The Mac OS has a number of checks for USB file systems that Windows does not do. There are times where a USB device like the GW-60 takes a few minutes or even longer to mount, and other times where the mount fails.

I have quite often encountered issues with the GW-60 not connecting to the Mac, so consider yourself lucky that you have not . Sometimes, connecting to a virtual Windows machine on the same Mac would work, even if the watch did not connect to the Mac. At other times, I had to connect the watch to a Windows computer. I encountered similar problems with the original Motion units from time to time, although perhaps not as often (it's been a while since I used either on a regular basis).

Well this is bad news. After using window/pc platform for ages, i decided to downsize and change to an ipad pro. Was about to start a thread to see if there was such a thing as a gw60 to ipad connection. this thread sounds like the gw60 has software connection issues to apple straight up, let alone there being a cable available to connect one to an ipad.

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Subsonic said..
Well this is bad news. After using window/pc platform for ages, i decided to downsize and change to an ipad pro. Was about to start a thread to see if there was such a thing as a gw60 to ipad connection. this thread sounds like the gw60 has software connection issues to apple straight up, let alone there being a cable available to connect one to an ipad.

Then again, it might work just fine. The GW60 in storage mode is very much like a USB memory stick and as you can see from the video I'm linking here, those do work if you have a USB-C iPad Pro. The video gives a pretty good summary of the situation (including calling file management on iPads absolute garbage).



What I don't know is if there's any iPad-native software to analyze and show the track, but in the very least you'll be able to store the tracks and it should be possible to upload them to sites like KA72 etc.

I love iPads, but I wouldn't be comfortable having one as my "only computer". I love them for browsing and watching stuff, but when I need to get real work done, I'm always on a Mac.

GPSSpeadreader was developed on a MAC by boardsurfr. it has MAC, Windwoes and Linux versions.

It has an output to googleearth, so you can see exactly where your tracks are, It can also output the data to your internet browser, which can do a direct download to GPSTC. Beer money donation
ecwindfest.org/GPS/GPSSpeedreader.html

I think GPSResults has a MAC version, but it's less detailed than the windows one.
Trial period before license purchase

GPSARPro runs on java and will work on nay OS that has java installed.
Trial period before license purchase

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JuriM said..
What I don't know is if there's any iPad-native software to analyze and show the track, but in the very least you'll be able to store the tracks and it should be possible to upload them to sites like KA72 etc.

I don't know either. But if you wonder why existing software like the programs decrepit listed, or programs like WindsportTracker for Android, are not available on iPads, you can blame Apple. Apple has limited the tools to develop iPad/iPhone programs to an extremely small number, which at least initially only included ancient languages that nobody wants to use anymore. Then, you have to pay Apple $100 (US) per year, even if you develop freeware, and jump through a very large number of hoops, which increases with just about every new operating system version, to get your software approved by Apple.

Neither of my GW60s will connect through the coM port and app, I now connect as UMS and download gps.log.

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boardsurfr said..
Then, you have to pay Apple $100 (US) per year, even if you develop freeware, and jump through a very large number of hoops, which increases with just about every new operating system version, to get your software approved by Apple.

I get that. For a while about 10 years ago, I wrote iOS apps for a living. Even before the app store times when I was writing Mac applications, I remember the constant changes to APIs that meant that if you had published anything, you spent a lot of time just trying to keep up with the changes.

$100 isn't a whole lot, but it can feel bad if you just want to share something you wrote and not charge for it. I'm facing a somewhat similar situation with my 3D printable model sales with MyMiniFactory charging me a monthly fee and my sales not even covering that fee. At least there I do have the choice of giving away all my models for free (like I did before I quit my programming job) and then not having to pay the fee (or I could start publishing on Printables.com). With Apple though, you don't have any other options for distribution.

I have been an Apple user since 1981 and still like a lot of what they do, but there are weak spots and downright flaws.

I think I used GPS Action Replay (that was the Java app?) back in the early days of GPS speedsurfing, but these days I just upload to KA72 and if I want to look at the track a bit, I drop the KML file from KA72 into Google Earth. So pretty much no special apps required. Not perfect, but minimum software maintenance for me to do.