Garmin CIRQA update breaks heart-rate broadcasting for some owners

Garmin’s latest CIRQA update seems to have broken Bluetooth heart-rate broadcasting for some owners. ANT+ still works, but Zwift, Rouvy, TrainerRoad and other Bluetooth connections are either failing completely or constantly dropping out.

If you have not installed the new software just yet, you might want to hold off on doing so.

Bluetooth worked before the update

Garmin released firmware 2.50 on August 20 and has now completed the rollout. Its entire changelog consists of “improvements to OHR,” with no mention of Bluetooth or changes to heart-rate broadcasting.

Owners in a growing Garmin Forum thread say the trouble began after installing the update. Reports cover Garmin Edge 530 and 840 computers, Zwift, TrainerRoad, Rouvy, Strava and MyWhoosh across iPhones, iPads and Bluetooth-enabled exercise equipment.

CIRQA is often still detected as an available heart-rate sensor, but it either refuses to connect or gets stuck switching between connected and disconnected. ANT+ appears to be working normally, which points to a Bluetooth-specific problem rather than heart-rate broadcasting failing completely.

That is particularly annoying because broadcasting is one of CIRQA’s more useful training features. As we noted in our Garmin CIRQA and Fitbit Air comparison, it lets the screenless band double as an external sensor for a watch, bike computer or indoor-training setup.

The problem does not affect everyone

The reports do not point to a complete failure across every device. Some owners can still connect CIRQA to an iPhone or Garmin’s Tacx app, while ANT+ broadcasting appears to be working normally.

Removing CIRQA and pairing it again has helped in at least some cases. However, it is possible that these may simply have reconnected through ANT+ rather than repairing the affected Bluetooth connection. So it is not a dependable fix.

A Garmin representative has joined the forum discussion and asked owners for more information about the connection and CIRQA’s status light. The company has not yet confirmed a firmware bug or said when a fix might arrive.

This is not CIRQA’s first problem involving live heart-rate data. Garmin initially restricted the live workout reading to Connect+, before changing course and making it available without a subscription. Now some owners cannot reliably send that data to external apps and equipment over Bluetooth.