Spaced Out ::

I’ve written earlier about [tips and tricks for route planning with the Rider 450](http://www.lecturematerials.co.uk/?x=entry:entry200619-152938), so in this post I wanted to cover tips for actually using the unit on the bike. So in no particular order:

Image does not exist: images/bryton_rider_450.jpg

* **Fit:** out-of-the-box the Rider 450 comes with a standard handlebar mount. It’s cheap and works well enough, but uses up valuable bar space. There are two other options worth considering: a [stem mount](https://www.amazon.co.uk/kwmobile-Bicycle-Garmin-Bryton-CatEye/dp/B07NQL5ZWX/) or [out-in-front mount](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Handlebar-Adjustable-Mountain-Extender-Stopwatch/dp/B07HGQY2PN/). The former is a bit more efficient on space, but perhaps not quite so good if you are tucked down.

* **Learn the Buttons:** it goes without saying, learn how to use the unit.
* *1. Two Operating Modes:* I found it slightly counter intuitive to have two different modes. A “cycling” mode and a “settings” mode which you can switch between. The RightTop is a “start” or “OK” button depending which mode you are in, whilst the RIghtBottom is a “pause/stop” or “Back” button.
* *2. Zoom/Scroll:* the two buttons on the left are for scrolling up and lists, except when you are using the map when they zoom in and out (useful!)
* *3. Map Modes:* the BottomLeft changes between cycling mode screens. There are up to 5 data screens you can set up/switch off (in the app) which support a range of different layouts, followed by a navigating/map screen.
* *4. Power/Light:* the BottomRight is for power and light.
* *5. Reset:* the 450 has frozen twice on me now. To reset you need to hold all four side buttons and then release. It will take the GPS sometime to get satellite lock so be patient.

* **Learn the Icons:** there are a number of icons at the top and bottom of the screen. There is an efficient use of space so know that they mean as they are useful. For example, the arrows indicate if you are riding above or below the average speed.

* **Start/Stop a Ride:** be careful pausing a ride as my natural inclination is that once you pause a ride, you press the same button to start again. **But no!** That stops the ride and all the recording that goes along with it. Unless you really have to, just left the auto-pause kick in and then restart. Leave the buttons alone!

* **Laggy Screens:** all the screens are very responsive **except** for the map and data sync screens. If you load one of these, wait a few seconds for them to complete.

* **Notifications:** these are a step ahead of the competition as you can set up the app to send notifications from **any** app (not just texts). This is great, however bear in mind it is a 3-line notification that is limited to 11 characters (ish) of text per line. It shows the app, the sender’s name and the message. Anything longer that 11 characters will be truncated. This is frustrating because how hard would it be to allow the notification to fill the screen and then enable you to scroll through it? That’s any comments aside regarding how *safe* that might be to do.

* **Sensors:** the Rider 450 supports bluetooth and ANT+ sensors. I’ve fitted a cadence sensor which works flawlessly. No problems there.

* **Bugs:** so far I’ve found the following two significant bugs:
* *Distance to Go:* if you are following a route then the map page which show you distance to go to the finish. Except it overestimates this by 15-20%. Quite why I’m not sure as I know the route length from the route planning application and when I get to the end the distance is the same
* *Auto Lap By Distance:* another useful feature so you can see your splits except I can’t get the setting to sync across from the app to the Rider 450, but you can set it on the Rider 450 itself.

This “bug” took me a while to track down… I have a report which embeds a subreport and returns the data to it. Along the way I realised the subreport needed an additional column. I edited the SQL in the Dataset and then reran the subreport. It loaded correctly. I then went back to my main report and ran it to find that the new column was returning “Error” for all values.

I tried recreating the subreport Dataset, the embedded object in the main report, and eventually the whole subreport itself. None of these worked. What was actually causing the problem was the Visual Studio cache that was created when it first ran the main report. Because I had subsequently edited the subreport, it was returning an extra column which it wasn’t expecting and so throwing an error. I’m not sure if there is front-end way of rebuilding the cache, however the simplest solution was to delete the .data file in the report folder, and the “bin” subfolder. These are then rebuilt the next time the project is opened.

The benefit of [FlatPress](https://www.flatpress.org) is that it *doesn’t* use a database… this approach pivots to the axiom of “keep it simple” which should make the rendered site fast, secure, and portable (for example, when I [ported from Blosxom to FlatPress](http://www.lecturematerials.co.uk/?x=entry:entry190929-135046)). One area where this is particularly evident is backup as all you have to do is copy the content files off the server. You can run this either sever side (putting the files somewhere) or client side (pulling them to a local machine). I’ve opted for the latter approach and my tool of choice is [WinSCP](https://winscp.net/eng/index.php) (and the [portable version](https://portableapps.com/apps/internet/winscp_portable)), an open source FTP client that includes a n extensive number of reliable and extensible tools. I’ve found WinSCP better than FileZilla, not least because it has reliably handled large file transfers and maintains the create dates of any files you transfer.

Of particular importance for automating FlatPress backup are directory [synchronisation](https://winscp.net/eng/docs/task_synchronize_full) and [scripting](https://winscp.net/eng/docs/scripting). In fact, the WinSCP GUI can [generate the script](https://winscp.net/eng/docs/ui_generateurl) for you based upon existing profile settings. For completeness this is the very simple script that runs:

“`
open ftp://: @ftp.yourserver.com
lcd c:`\mywebsitebackup
cd /mywebste.com/htdocs
synchronize local -mirror
close
exit
“`
This opens a connection to the server, changes the local and remote directories before mirroring from the remote to the local. On Windows I can then schedule this to run as a daily task.

A good tool for the arsenal!

The arrival of a new Windows PC precipitated an upgrade from Visual Studio 2015 to Visual Studio 2019. All of my development is for SQL-based reports which are then deployed to SSRS. As Visual Studio is Microsoft’s “one-size-fits-all” approach to programming, you need to make sure you pick the right “flavour”. In this instance that means SQL Server Data Tools. For VS2015 and VS2017 that is a standalone installer and you need to make sure you select the “Data storage and processing” option which then installs SQL Server Data Tools. For VS2019 some of the functionality has been moved out in to Extensions: for me that mean installing the MS Reporting Services Projects extension.

With that rigmarole out of the way I pointed VS2019 at my Solution file and… I got an error message saying that it couldn’t be upgraded! WTF?! I mean, seriously? Microsoft can’t upgrade from two versions ago? Whilst the RDL report file format hasn’t changed, setting up new Solution files would be a time vampire for no valid reason.

It then struck me that it was worth a punt installing VS2017 to see if the intermediary version could upgrade the VS2015 files, and then move on to VS2019 after that. A 1Gb download and 30 minute install later (seriously!) and VS2017 successfully upgraded the Solution files. I then copied these over to my new machine and VS2019 successfully upgraded those too. It’s one extra step but is then seamless!

Designing SSRS reports in Visual Studio is liberating in how easy it is to get them up and running, but every so often you come across a gotcha that you think should be straight forward. One of them is copying a “solution” (VS’s name for a set of project files) to a new location. You might want to do this because you want to back it up, duplicate it for another related project, or just to run some tests against a demo version. What’s missing in VS is a “Save As” for the whole solution (you can do it for individual reports). If you copy the folder containing all the files you can create a new version in a new location, however all of the hard coded file locations will be incorrect and it will then fail to load.

So what is the solution?! Well you could create a new solution, then add in copies of all the existing reports, but then you still have to set it all up again which is just a little self-defeating. Surprisingly, the simplest thing is to copy the solution folder, but keep it within the same directory as the original, just changing the name. You can then open the copied solution from within this folder and all the reports load correctly (as new copies). If you are deploying this to SSRS then you will need to change the name of the solution in the solution properties, but then you are good to go.