Blaze not recording my steps correctly

[EdStrange]

Hey all.. the last two days, the Blaze has stopped recording steps correctly. Its been fairly accurate to the treadmill at the gym.. now, all of the sudden, I'll walk 3.5 miles, and blaze says I did 3.13... losing a good chunk of results.

Anything I can do to fix this? Known issue?

Moderator edit: format

[meresydotes]

The only way I've found to get the blaze to count all my treadmill steps is to keep my blaze hand on my body at all times. I'm actually pretty impressed with what you call "inaccurate," as I've found that it generally counts only about 70% of my steps on the treadmill without keeping my hand on my body.

[EdStrange]

for me its the opposite.. the only way I could get it to record heart rate and steps is to walk normally with the swinging arm motion

[meresydotes]

It definitely won't count steps if you were holding the handrails. I've found that, the more I swing my arms, the fewer steps it counts. And it will only track heartrate accurately if I start a treadmill workout manually.

[Rich_Laue]

The Blaze is attached to the arm, and therefore is monitoring arm motions.. It is looking for arm motions that say the feet are moving. 

@EdStrange I find it interesting that you say it is. It counting steps the tell us about miles.. The two while related are not related.. Steps are counted, miles are calculated steps times stride.. The miles may be off not because of steps but because of stride. As a side note, the stride on a treadmill most likely will not be the stride while on a free run. 

[meresydotes]

@Rich_LaueI guess I don't know how to move my arms, then, as my blaze counts only about 70% of my steps when I move them when walking or running on the treadmill. Keeping my hand on my body is like keeping it in a pocket, except I still get the heartrate function.

[EdStrange]

It must be different for folks...

My confusion is that its measuring my strides differently then... last week, same routine, the fitbit and the treadmill were fairly close. The last two days, the fitbit is reading less for some reason. Nothing else has changed. 

I've not been able to get any fitbit to read heatrate correctly... however, with arm movement (natural walking or running motion) with it placed exactly, I can usually get it to read OK. Usually about 10 beats lower than reality though.

I've come to the conclusion that no matter what I do, it wont work correctly. Same issues with two previous surges..

[bbarrera]

Hit or miss... Frustrating. 

[AngelaMa]

Hello @EdStrange, @meresydotes, @bbarrera and @Rich_Laue! It's great to have you here. @meresydotes thanks for your sharing your experience. @EdStrange are you using the treadmill option on your Blaze or letting your tracker detect the activity with SmartTrack? 

Keep me posted! 

[RodrigoFitbit]

@EdStrange @bbarrera @meresydotes I suggest you all setting your stride length with the following steps to make your distance calculation more accurate:

1. Log into your Fitbit.com Dashboard.
2. Click on the gear icon in the upper right corner of your Dashboard and select "Settings."
3. Go to "Personal Settings" and scroll down until you see a field for Stride Length and Running Stride Length. From here, you can manually enter your personal stride length.
4. Click the "Update Profile" button to save your changes. Note that a sync will be required to update your tracker with your new stride measurements.

Hope it was useful

[meresydotes]

@RodrigoFitbit Did that ages ago. Actually, I don't think it's correct, because I just divided the distance my treadmill said I went by the number of steps, then adjusted from there. I'm only 4'10" and both my stride lengths are in the 2.5' range, so that doesn't seem right. But I'm not really concerned with distance. I'm concerned with steps.

[AlejandraFitbit]

Thanks for the information @meresydotes. I would like to know if you keep having problems with your Blaze accuracy? If you do, I recommend getting in touch directly with our support team, since they have the proper tools to see the information that your tracker is registering. For a faster response you can contact them via chat or phone.

Catch you later.