Wahoo Elemnt Bolt - using custom POI/location warnings

Equipment
1

Hi all.

I recently did a long ride where I had to visit specific checkpoints.
Every rider was free to design their own route, but you had to visit each checkpoint.
I was looking for a way to show a warning on my Wahoo Elemnt Bolt whenever I reached one of these checkpoints to avoid that I rode past it. I also wanted to add some other custom POIs warnings like points where I could refill my water bottles.

I saw that the Wahoo can give a custom warning when reaching a certain amount of distance traveled, so that would more or less do the trick, if you stick to the route and don’t make too many detours.

Does anyone know a better, more reliable, way to make a Wahoo Elemnt Bolt give a custom warning or another indication when you reach a certain location/waypoint?

2

Most folks I know create their routes in RidewithGPS, Strava, or one of the other mapping specific systems and then upload the file to their Wahoo, Garmin, or other bike computer. Within all of these mapping systems, you can add custom cues / messages to let you know when you’re at a POI or something similar.

Most of these mapping systems are free to use when you’re just doing basic stuff like creating a route. Some of the bells and whistles do require a level of payment though.

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3

Wahoo only allow alerts by time, miles or calories burned. This is separate and unrelated to any route. However, if you create and load a route, you can then look at all your POIs and see at what mileage you’d need an alert at. It should be close enough for you to be on the lookout as long as you put the alert ahead of the actual POI.

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I have old bolt and the only way the maps are usable is when the route is created in Ride With GPS, then informations about turns and pois are used in route. It’s free and very pleasant to use.

5

I managed to figure it out.
It only works when using TCX files (not when using GPX files).
RWGPS allows to add these cues (in the paid version).
But you can also add them manually in a TCX file:

  <CoursePoint>
    <Name>Water</Name>
    <Time>2023-10-19T17:13:09Z</Time>
    <Position>
      <LatitudeDegrees>x.xxxx</LatitudeDegrees>
      <LongitudeDegrees>y.yyyy</LongitudeDegrees>
    </Position>
    <PointType>Water</PointType>
    <Notes>Water!</Notes>
  </CoursePoint>

This will give a warning with the text ‘Water!’ when approaching the point, and will show a water tap icon. Other type examples are “Food”, “Danger”

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The fact you asked about this for Wahoo (not Garmin) and then posted a solution from RideWithGPS (Not Strava) is a little ahem timely given the press release from Garmin and Strava one day before your post… I am a fan of open source / standards based solutions rather than proprietary ones just for garmin and strava users… so thanks for sharing!

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7

I have a different free solution using Garmin Connect.

Firstly, I don’t pay for Strava, so can’t access that solution. I believe the RideWithGPS solution also needs a subscription, but am happy to be proved wrong.

I regularly ride with Garmin routes from a friend who marks the cafe as a point of interest. The distance to the cafe comes up on my Wahoo Bolt V2 head unit (always good for tired legs!). I tried to reproduce this, with mixed success, but think I have now cracked it.

The Garmin Connect “Add Course Point” feature lets you label course points/Points of Interest (PoI), and identify them as food stops/climbs/info etc. I save this as a .FIT file, and load it into the Wahoo companion app. The PoI are then shown on the map and workout pages with the feature name and distance; and on the route info, where you can see a list of all the PoI.

In doing this I had various false starts. I’ve previously used .GPX for my friend’s routes, but found limitations:

  1. Sometimes the waypoints would be replaced by turn by turn, and I couldn’t work out what was triggering this - if TbT was displayed, then PoI wouldn’t (I’ve seen this before, and never understood what dictates whether TbT is displayed on Wahoo - seems random).
  2. With a very long route, the head unit reports that there are too many turn by turn instructions. Other posts suggest a 200k limit, but I had problems at lower distances, and eventually found .FIT solved both these problems.

Background: The route I created is a “tour of the tons” visiting place names ending in “ton”. The final route is 178 miles, and has over 100 “tons” marked as PoI, so I can see them coming. Now I’ve worked out how to get notified on my Wahoo, I’m hoping to do the ride soon (more specifically when the British weather improves sufficiently, so maybe not so soon ;o). Here’s the route Garmin Connect

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