Having trouble with my garmin HRM soft strap, just not working the last few days. Have tried replacing the battery and the reset guidelines as specified by Garmin but still no joy. The unit isn’t that old and the strap was only cleaned recently. Hopefully one of you good folk has some experience of getting these things working again.
There is a Gear and Equipment sub-forum, but maybe the mods can move the thread. I've had similar trouble over the years with various straps. First things first, restart your watch! I'm running a Fenix 5 at the moment, and at times, I need to restart the watch before it will connect to my HRM strap, footpod, or bluetooth headphones. So before tinkering any further, restart the watch and see if it will connect. I'm sure a hard-reset would fix it more permanently for me, but it seems like a lot of trouble to go reconfigure the watch from scratch.
Second trick is to short the pins in the HRM strap (without the battery connected apply a piece of conductive metal across the two pins). Not sure the science holds up, but it worked for me at one point. Third suggestion, make sure the pins have not been bent and are making contact with the correct sides of the battery. While on the subject of batteries, make sure it's a decent CR2032 (like a Duracell). Last potential issue - water ingress. Look for moisture. If there is some, it may be 'fooked', but you can try drying it in a hot press, with some silica gel desiccant (those little sachets that you throw away all of the time), rice or other water absorbing agent.