After reading a glowing review of the Garmin Motionbased online service from an Edge 305 owner I was stoked to see what the hype was about. After wading through system errors and software downloads I have to say I just don’t get it.
Motionbased accounts are free and they allow you to do advanced visualization and analysis of your GPS training data (though it seems to work best with Garmin Edge and Forerunner data). The free accounts limit you to your last 10 workouts and if you want to track more you’ll have to pony up at least $95 a year for the privilege.
After using Motionbased for a short time I honestly didn’t see the usefulness of the additional data. Of course I’m not training for the Tour mind you but the Garmin Training Center software that is included with the Edge 305 suits my needs just fine‚ it displays distance, average speed, elevation profile, total climb, heart rate, calories, cadence, and a basic map for all my activities already. Motionbased does add wind speed and temperature data (which is pretty cool actually, they must pull this from local weather reports) and allows you to download your data in various formats (including GPX, very cool). Motionbased displays route maps on a Google Map which is good but what website doesn’t do this already? Motionbased also allows you to share your GPS data with others and this seems like an interesting feature (though I haven’t tried it yet).
Getting your data to the Motionbased website is no easy task and I had to download a special program just to send my (small) workout file from the Training Center application. I recently tried transferring data directly from the Edge 305 to the Motionbased Agent but the software didn’t recognize my GPS. So for now I have to export my Training Center data, open it with the Motionbased Agent, and send it to Motionbased.com for processing. Urgh.
My biggest problem with Motionbased so far seems to be availability. The first time I uploaded my (small) data file I waited almost an hour for the file to be processed‚ only to receive a message saying there was a non-specific problem. The Motionbased help (which is actually just a Wiki, classy) said it could be my fault, it could be theirs‚ try uploading at another time. I tried the next day and my data was uploaded and processed correctly‚ no problems this time. But then today I tried to access my Motionbased account and got this error message: “Authentication service is currently unavailable.” Hmmm, good thing I don’t need access immediate access to my data‚ 33% uptime ain’t good.
Perhaps I’ve missed some of the nuance to Motionbased but I honestly can’t understand the value in paying almost $95 a year for this service. I’ll stick to the (free) Garmin Training Center software for now but I’ll keep trying Motionbased‚ maybe the website will be up one of these days?
