Fitbit app records different sleep patterns

[iTony]

Does anybody know why my Fitbit app (android) records 2 different sleep patterns?
I would like to see a detail of my sleep patterns like the 2nd photo which displays REM sleep.
I do have my Fitbit watch heart rate monitor set to always on and the sleep mode is set to normal (not sensitive).

[JohnnyRow]

Some nights just don't get sleep score or stages.  Usually says couldn't get consistent heart rate readings, though I don't always believe that.  It doesn't have anything to do with settings.  Sometimes it says try not to sleep with tracker under you, and have it tight enough so doesn't move around, but my experience that's often not the case.  Wish I could be more help but seems to just happen sometimes - no use fiddling with settings.

[iTony]

I've never had an issue with the heart rate not reading. This part for me, works flawlessly and is accurate when compared to other medical hr monitors. I always wear my watch on my wrist and it's tight enough that it doesn't slide around.

I've been searching online and did come across this:

Don’t select the ‘begin sleep now’ or ‘I’m awake’ Buttons

This solution may sound a little bit confusing. But we found out that, not checking the sleeping status manually helps to track the sleeping score for many cases. Even there are lots of users in Fitbit forums who claims their Fitbits started to show sleeping score after they ignore the “Begin sleep now” and “I’m awake” buttons.

I always use the "begin sleep now" and "I'm awake" within the Android Fitbit app itself as I thought it was required. Maybe tonight I will not use that part and see what happens.

[JohnnyRow]

Definitely, do not use those buttons: "begin sleep now" and "I'm awake".  It's a shame Fitbit doesn't eliminate them, or warn people.  They are left-overs from the time when fitbit did not have heart rate sensors to detect sleep, and sleep was detected only by the body being quiet.  I suppose that prevented getting sleep detected whenever the body was quiet but not sleeping, like watching TV.  Likewise, the sensitive and normal settings are ignored now with heart rate sensors.  These 2 bits of info both used to be in the Help section but I cannot find them anymore.  I have no idea why these setting are still there in the fitbit app.

  The one use I do find for the "begin sleep now" is when I take a nap of less than an hour, which is too short for fitbit to auto-detect sleep, but it will register sleep if I use "begin sleep now" and 'I'm awake". I will never get sleep stages with that, but never get sleep stages with less than 3 hours anyway so nothing lost, just get credit for sleep time.  By the way, the limits are supposedly 1 hour sleep to get sleep detected, 3 hours to get sleep stages.

P.S.

Interesting article. Had never seen that source.  Will look at further.

[iTony]

Last night, I didn't use the "begin sleep now" and for some odd reason the Fitbit app recorded 2 logs. First a long and then a short log (around 1 hour), but neither displayed sleep score only pattern and it displayed a message that it could not give me a sleep score because it could not consistently detect my heart rate which is weird because I can go back and see that it did detect my heart rate throughout the night as I slept.

I went online and found another forum where people were having the exact same problem as me and one person said to delete the log and then manually add the sleep log to it. I did that and it halfway worked. It did display my awake, rem, light, and deep sleep info, but did not give me a score. I don't care about the score, but I do want that other info. So, I went back and deleted all past sleep logs that only displayed sleep pattern and not score. I then manually added the sleep log and then it displayed the other sleep info that I wanted, and some did have the sleep score with it.

Looks like I will need to add each sleep log to it to get the score info that I want.

[EdmundC]

I've seen the same issues, essentially the Fitbit is sampling data via the LEDs under the device to collect information that is sent to the cloud database to be evaluated (the Fitbit is just collecting, not interpreting, the data) so you may see this happen if the Fitbit is a little loose on your wrist resulting in some data sampling errors.  But you can also see this if the cloud processing takes a while to process the data, occasionally I see error reported as "no data is available" but then an hour later the sleep sometime reappears.

If you have a hairy wrist then shaving the area that your Fitbit sits on can help too.

[iTony]

@EdmundC That "no data is available" was due to the cloud processing taking a long time. About an hour later, all my sleep score appeared. This has happened I guess 2 maybe 3 times already, but it's working. I've used it every night now since my last post (4/13/23) and I only had to manually log my sleep 1 time as the rest was recorded correctly.

I am actually new to using Fitbit watches and using the app. I was given an old Fitbit Blaze and Versa 2 Lite and both still works fine. Surprisingly, the battery still last about 4-5 days on a single charge.

Thank you @JohnnyRow, at least I understand how the Fitbit app works and not to use certain "old" settings.

Thank you @EdmundC, about the data cloud processing as I didn't know that it did this.