FAQ: Activity not counting for Garmin Badges / Challenges. Device not showing properly in Garmin

[fulmar2]

People often contact me about their activities not counting for Garmin Challenges or Garmin Badges. This can happen if you're uploading a File from a non-Garmin Platform to Garmin. A good example is if you're using a bike at the gym or Zwift, or some other sort of virtual trainer that does not record to your primary Garmin Device.

Solution:
GOTOES tools can help get your activities count towards your Garmin Challenges and Badges. You will need to have a serial number for a legitimate Garmin Device, and it ought to match the exported device type that you select on GOTOES. I am going to assume that you already own a Garmin Device if you're participating in Garmin Challenges. IF you do not know the serial number of your device, simply upload a FIT file from your Garmin device to GOTOES, and it will display the serial number. Also, GOTOES will store the serial number in the cookies of your browser (Assuming you do an export) - so that next time, it will automatically be inserted into your output field.

In order to fix your activities not counting towards Garmin Challenges and Garmin Badges, you will also need to export from GOTOES as FIT.

To do this, upload your files to the GOTOES Merge tool. The Merge tool is an "all-in-one" GPS fixer that can repair FIT files and allow you to change the device type in your output:


Here is a screen shot of what you need to fill out on the GOTOES "settings" page (this is displayed after you submit your activity file(s):

How to get your GPS activities to count towards Garmin Badges or Challenges.

Screen Shot 2021-10-21 at 1.59.34 PM.png (101.74 KiB) Viewed 6611 times

Solution to Device Not showing in Garmin

Related to the above, Inserting the Serial Number will also help Garmin display your device properly.

This field is only available for TCX and FIT exports; it will be grayed out if you selected GPX in the "Output File Format" field. It allows you to insert the serial number of your device into the final file. Why would you want to do that? If you are uploading to Garmin Connect, in order for some devices and data fields to be properly detected, there needs to be a Garmin serial number in the file. This is also important to get "credit" for participating in Garmin Challenges. Having the serial number in the file does not matter for Strava. Here is an illustration of how GPS detection will look without (left) and with (right) the Serial Number embedded.

With and without serial number embedded

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Here is an illustration of how some data fields (training load in this case) will show with and without a serial number:

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