"We deeply apologize to our valued customers for the inconvenience experienced over the past few days with the first generation ELEMNT, BOLT and ROAM Bike Computers. We now fully understand the root cause of the issue relating to older first generation devices, which use a limited 10-bit system to track GPS time. We have been working around the clock on a fix so that users of these devices can continue enjoying riding with them again.
“Given the age of these devices and the several upgrades to our product platform since, we are testing the firmware update to ensure it runs smoothly and hope to release it to users soon."
Wahoo recommends owners of V1 devices keep an eye on this page, which will be updated with more news about the pending firmware fix.
August 25 Update: Wahoo has now released the updated firmware to fix the issue.
Last weekend, I somehow managed to go back in time.
It was 2006, but I was riding a machine that didn't exist yet: a gravel bike equipped with electronic shifting, carbon tubeless wheels and drop-bar hydraulic disc brakes. The culprit: my Wahoo Elemnt Roam, which also insisted it was New Year's Day, while the balmy temperatures and mid-summer morning sun told me it was most certainly not.
It turns out my experience was far from unique. A previously unknown firmware bug hidden deep in Wahoo's older "V1" versions of its Bolt and Roam computers caused substantially all of those head units to go haywire over the weekend, resetting the date nearly 20 years back and wreaking havoc with GPS connections and ride files.
Complaints of issues similar to mine began to pop up on the Wahoo forum, Reddit, and other online communities on Saturday and into Sunday. Not all of the symptoms were identical. Some users reported that entire ride files were useless, while others said they lost between 20-80% of the ride data, and others still had reasonably complete files appended with the wrong date. But there were also common issues, primarily GPS-based and manifesting in bugs like frozen maps, inaccurate route, distance and elevation tracking, or loss of signal entirely, resulting in a speed readout of "-/- mph."
The culprit was nothing malicious, but it's no less frustrating for users. Instead, it relates to a quirk of how GPS systems measure time, and Wahoo's failure to account for a known issue in that technology.
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