Zumo 595LM, Android Phone and Sena 20S

[sennister]

I picked up a Zumo 595LM late last fall so I never really had time to set it up properly. I have been messing with it a little this spring and wanted to see how others have it set up and what your thoughts are as I am struggling a little bit more with this unit than past Garmins.

As the title suggests I have the 595, a Galaxy Note 9 phone and the Sena 20S headset. In an ideal world I would be able to leave the phone in the top box/tank bag/pocket and control everything I want from the 595 but that is where I am struggling a bit. This is basically how I had my Zumo 550 set up. That is still on the bike but in a secondary role and not paired via BT. All the latest and greatest updates have been applied to the Zumo, Note 9 and Sena 20S.

I think a big part of where I am struggling is I have to manually launch Smartphone Link on the phone then click the connect but it keeps dropping the connection. I did recently configure tasker to launch Smartphone Link on BT connect with the zumo but I still to test that. Weather has been cold and rainy so I haven't been on the bike as much. Even when the connection stays up, a lot of the stuff shows disconnected such as Spotify (I might need a premium account), Pandora (should work) or Media Player (should work). I have tried to manually launch the app on the phone but no change. I know the phone is connected because the annoying Smartphone Link notifications constantly pop up for Facebook and other crap I don't care about. I think I did finally get the FB notifications blocked. The weather and weather radar all work. It is just there is nothing that I seem to do that will pass music from the phone through the 595 to the Zumo. Maybe I am better off just doing a pairing direct from the phone to the Sena and putting the Zumo on a second phone pairing but then I can't control the phone/music from the Zumo. I really liked being able to screen phone calls by having Caller ID pop up on the Zumo 550 and be able to reject or accept a call from the GPS. Then go back to my music or XM.

For now I have been just listening to the radio on the 20S while commuting in town but I am taking a longer trip on Sat up to Aerostich and will be out of radio range for the bulk of the ride. I do have a RAM X-Mount on my dash for my phone as well but I don't like using it. Never had a problem with it but something about having a $1200 phone on there doesn't excite me. However the weather is going to be good so I might have it up there.

 

[sennister]

Ok - I have just been out to the garage to fiddle with this - 'cos it was something I wanted to get to grips with. I have a wired intercom (an Autocom) so I don't have the issue with the Bluetooth double set up. I have a 590 - which is similar, but not identical to the 595, and I have SmartLink on a Galaxy A7.

Thanks for doing some testing.

I can get to the same state as you - ie I have the smartphone Link App running, and the Zumo is connected to the Galaxy via Bluetooth and it is registering Phone, SmartPhone Link and Media as being connected. That is when I have it in the bike cradle. The phone drops if I don't have it in the cradle as that is where the autocom connection is.

One of the strange things with Smartphone Link is that I can launch the app but I also seem to have to go through the additional step of clicking on the "Last Connection" at the bottom of the screen and tell it to connect with the popup message. Even doing this, it seems like I have to do this more than once as it connects but seems to drop the connection. When I say this I mean that the phone doesn't drop the BT connection with the GPS but if I go into settings on the Garmin, Go to the connection for the phone, there are check boxes for SmartLink and some of the other stuff and sometimes it is active, sometimes it isn't. Not sure if it is an order of operation thing or what. Should I let the phone pair first or turn on the Sena before powering on the bike/GPS?

The 590 switches the display down if it has been on for a few minutes, or if the battery is deemed to be low. The 595 probably does the same. However, it doesn't drop the Bluetooth connection.

I understand thet the 590 and 595 are both able to connect to two Bluetooth devices at the same time. So I guess if you have rider and pillion Bluetooth, then a Bluetooth link to the phone is not possible - cos that is 3. But I don't have a Bluetooth headset, so I cannot check that.

I ride solo. I don't even have passenger pegs on my bike. You are right that it can connect to two devices. So phone to GPS and GPS to headset shouldn't be an issue. I agree, not sure if there was a second headset in the mix.

When I try to play music from the MP3 files on the Zumo itself, I can Browse and I get screens something like this:


View attachment 238950View attachment 238948

That is similar to my 550 with music loaded on the SD. I think I should put a SD Card in the 595 with music for now. That is kind of a pain because I normally listen to podcasts and it is a pain to pull the SD card every day to update. That is why I would prefer to play from the phone through the GPS.

However, when I click the connection symbol in the top left corner (Circled) and select my Galaxy as the Bluetooth Input for the Music Source:

View attachment 238951

All I get is this:

View attachment 238952

It tells me that the Bluetooth Audio is connected, but the Browse feature is greyed out. I managed to get it to play music by loading an app on my Galaxy to play it, choose a play list as set it off playing. Then, and only then could I hear the music, and it was under control of the Zumo. ie I could pause, skip back a track and skip forward a track.

Hardly the same control as I have with the MP3 files on the Zumo itself.

This is what I can't get to work. Mine just shows disconnected no matter what I do. If SmartLink is open and connected or not. Also not sure that this is available outside North America or if only a 595 feature but there is Spotify and Pandora. No matter what I do, like with the Media Player, it shows disconnected and some message about launching the app on your phone. I do that and make sure SmartLink is connected (for a least a bit) and the check mark is in the bluetooth settings on the GPS but it won't let me check Pandora or Spotify. I did some searching on these issues and found one message on a Spotify support forum or something where someone was complaining about this breaking recently with an update to Spotify. Also I saw something I think on Garmin's support page that it might require the premium version of Spotify ($5/mo) but I don't really listen to that enough to justify and really not going to do that since I have the other issues. I haven't found anything on the Pandora issue but it seems the same.

I'm wondering if maybe I didn't leave it long enough to load in the information about all of the tracks on the Galaxy.

But that is as far as I have got.

I do get the feeling by clicking the tiny Bluetooth Icon at the screen top, that I can configure separate Bluetooth devices to handle one or more of Phone, Smartlink and Media inputs. I can't test this as I have only phones as Bluetooth devices, and as soon as I switch that, it drops everything from the original phone.


In Apps / Smartlink, you can turn off certain notifications.
On the Smartlink screen itself, top left hand corner, the gear icon, there are a few other settings that you can alter which may well stop the popups on the Zumo screen. I do remember seeing them when I first set it up, but I don't get them now.

I had gone into Smartlink a few days ago and found where you can select what apps have permission to push notifications to the GPS. That is how I restricted Facebook and a few other apps that I don't care about from posting notifications to the GPS.

I have been looking in AdvRider and a Zumo forum. It turns out that what I am seeing isn't unique. It seems like others are complaining about disconnects and other bluetooth issues with the 595. Some have had warranty replacements and not had much luck. I might just need to reach out to Garmin and see what they say.

One of the challenges is there is so many different ways to make a connection. With the 550 it worked well as hub for all Bluetooth. The 595 for some reason seems to have an issue with this. It may mean I go back to pairing my phone with the 550, use that as a central hub for phone and music but it isn't A2DP Bluetooth. The 20S can handle multiple BT connections so I could still pair the 550 and 595 at the same time. The biggest reason I went with the 595 was my screen has been starting to crap out every now and then on the 550. Pretty sure the digitizer is starting to go. I do have a new one sitting in the box from ebay but haven't swapped it. Also the maps are getting dated on the 550 and it sucks not having the storage for all of North America on the GPS but that isn't that big of a deal. For how much they charge for the 595 you would think it wouldn't have so many bugs. I was trying to figure out if it is a process of how I do the pairing or the way I am connecting vs the unit causing the issues. I am starting to think it is the Garmin as I shouldn't have this many problems.

 

[SupraSabre]

I have a Sena30K with a Garmin Zumo 660 and a Motorola Smartphone.

I try to keep it simple by connecting my phone and the Sena to the Zumo. That way I can play my mp3 from the Zumo and get phone calls that I can screen.

Ever since last Summer when I had my wife with me, the two 30Ks I have got screwed up and I haven't been able to get the 30Ks re-connected to the Zumo once it has been powered down. After seeing this thread, I decided to check the 30K book. No wonder, I've been connecting it as a phone, instead of a GPS. so now I know what I need to do to connect it as a GPS!

Thanks for the little push I needed to read the book!

 

[sennister]

@sennister - do you know if it is definitley your Bluetooth connection that drops out or the connection between the zumo and the Smartlink Ap.

I noticed that although my phone was still connected, the Zumo was occasionally losing the traffic or weather information - suggesting that although Bluetooth was active, the two bits of software were having a bit of trouble linking - perhaps.

My Garmin Smartphone Link was downloaded last week. It is Version 2.9.8 b30 I don't know if this has been updated recently.

That is exactly the problem. BT is still active. If I look at my phone's bluetooth connections, it shows connected. My headset never drops either. However it seems to mainly be the communication between Smartlink and the 595. I have to go back into the app, then at the bottom of the screen it has a bar that says last connections or something like that. I click on that and it will ask if I want to connect. I can then say yes and it will connect. Once I do that I get weather and traffic again but it is like I have to keep clicking on connect because it keeps dropping. However none of the music stuff has ever worked no matter if it is connected or not. I did check the app version and I am also on 2.9.8 b30. I also performed all map and system updates last month.

I want to say it was doing this late last fall as well when I got it but I didn't really use it much as I only commuted on the bike a handful of times before winter hit. I did use the GPS while on a trip this winter but we were in Las Vegas as I was using the car kit. While normally I would just use my cell phone for navigation in a rental car, we were going to Death Valley and a few other places out in the sticks where I knew I wouldn't get signal and haven't really found an offline version of GPS that I like. The car kit that comes with the 595 is a big reason I went with the 595 over the smaller one. 395 I think is the model.

If it is just an issue with their app, it may be easier to fix. Sometimes the issue though is that there are so many different flavors of Android which I know makes it harder for the companies like Garmin. It is kind of a pain to have to launch the app then tell the app to connect. I don't mind manually launching it. I have an app called Tasker that I can configure to do different things automatically. So that can fire off Smartlink for me as soon as my phone pairs with the Zumo. It is smart enough to be able to tell it specifically which device to watch for. So it will launch the app when I connect to the Zumo but not my car. As far as the Pandora and Spotify stuff. I don't get that. They work over BT in my car and I can remotely control them as well.

So as far as your question, I don't think it is the BT it is in the communication between the apps and the GPS where I seem to have all the issues.