Bluetooth and Connected GPS Start Up Problems

[trevorms]

I have been having issues trying to start a connected GPS walk or bike exercise on my Blaze.

Nine times out of ten the connected GPS connection to my phone fails when I start an exercise.  The Blaze repots "Phone not found" on these attempts.

I try many combinations like resettng the Blaze, stopping and starting Bluetooth on my phone, connecting/disconnecting the Blaze (Classic) Bluetooth connection, and clearing the cache of the Fitbit app.  In these cases my phone does not produce the GPS icon in the status bar...probaly means that the Fitbit app. did not hear from the Blaze and start the phone's GPS (via the Bluetooth data link).

When the Blaze finally connects, and if I press START at this point, the whole exercise will record my GPS progress as expected (except for the accuracy issues - see other discussions).  If I let the display turn off before I press START, I land up getting the same "Phone not found" message when I try to start the exercise.  In this case the Fitbit app. and my phone show the GPS icon, but I cannot reconnect to my phone from the exercise menu/page on the Blaze.

I have had these issues when using a Samsung Galaxy S3 (Android 4.4) and my new Motorola Moto 3rd gen (Android 6) phones.  I have the latest firmware on my Blaze (17.8.200.3) and the latest Fitbit app. on my phone.

If anyone else is having these connected GPS start up problems or knows how to reliably start a connected GPS session, I would very much like to hear from you.

Thank you.

[FerdinandFitbit]

Hey there @trevorms. Great to see you in the Community! 🙂

You mentioned that you have already tried to restart your tracker. I would also recommend trying to turn of the location services from your phone's settings and enabling it again. Also rebooting your phone could help. It should only have to be done once.

Try that and let me know how it goes!

[trevorms]

Thanks @FerdinandFitbit for the suggestion.  Location services are turned ON on my phone.

Last night I tried connected GPS again for a walk I did.  This time I started the exercise in my house close to my WiFi modem with good WiFi signal.  Previously I would start the exercise at my gate where my WiFi connection is patchy but not poor enought for my phone to switch to mobile data.

These are the steps I followed to achieve a successful connected GPS exercise session:

• With good WiFi connection, opened the Android Fitbit app.
• Waited for the Fitbit app. to sync to fitbit.com, then...
• Waited for the Fitbit app. to sync to my Blaze
• On my Blaze only then did I start a Walk exrecise with connected GPS ON
• The Android Fitbit app. immediately started the phone's GPS location service...and...
• My Blaze reported "Lets go"

It seems that the Android Fitbit app. needs to sync. with fitbit.com and my Blaze first, before I can get a reliable "Lets go" prompt.

If I start the exercise on my Blaze *before* the Android app. has synced with Fitbit.com and my Blaze, then it does not start the GPS location service and I get the no phone found message on my Blaze.  If I start the exercise without opening the Fitbit app. first, I also get the same no phone found message.

I will repeat the same steps above a few times to see if the order in which the app. and exercises are started makes the difference...and post an update tomorrow.

[FerdinandFitbit]

Hey @trevorms. Thanks for getting back.

This is great. Thanks for sharing this solution with us. I'm pretty sure many users will find it helpful.

I think I have a suggestion about this. You mentioned that you need to wait for it to sync to your Wifi and once it has done this you can start your exercise and it will give you no problems. What if you are already far from your Wifi connection but you make sure that your tracker and app sync through your mobile data before you start tracking your activity? I mean, this is for the case where users don't have a wifi connection available.

Thanks for your efforts with this and I'll be anxiously waiting to know how it went!

[trevorms]

I tried this procedure again today,using my WiFi connection, and it worked.

In order to try this procedure with a mobile data connection instead of WiFi, I aborted the exercise I had just started and followed these steps:

• Turned WiFi OFF on my phone and waited for a good 4G mobile data connection
• Opened the Fitbit app., and waited for a fitbit.com and Blaze sync.
• Started a Walk exercise with connected GPS...this failed.

The Blaze sync. failed and I was unable to start a connected GPS exercise and just got the phone not found message.  In this case the Fitbit app. did not start the GPS location service.

It is not all bad news however.  I waited for just over 30 minutes and tried again using 4G mobile data.  This time the Fitbit app. synced with fitbit.com and my Blaze and when I initiated an exercise, the Fitbit app. started the GPS location service and my Blaze reported Lets Go with full green bars.

It appears that once the Fitbit app. has done a sync. with fitbit.com and the Blaze, then it can't sync again with the Blaze until some appreciable time has elapsed.  I get a red ! mark on the Fitbit app. Dashboard This then seems to affect the connected GPS session initiation.

[AZPete]

I do a lot of hiking far away from any WiFi signal and have never had any issues using the Hiking Exercise with Connected GPS. I don't open the phone app. My phone is usually in my pocket, or pack. I just start the Hiking Exercise on the Blaze and when it says Let's Go, I start the exercise using the lower right button. I can also pause and restart the Hike using the lower right button.

Under Mobil networks, my Network mode is set to Global and under Location, my Locating method is set to High accuracy. Your mileage may vary.

Still on original firmware on my Blaze (17.8.102.7), and Android 5.1.1 on my Galaxy Note 5. If it ain't broke...

[Rich_Laue]

Thq5s my experience,  the phone in the pouch, Fotbit running in the background, even every network can be off, location to high accuracy. I just press the button, location found and im off. One startout i had the phone not found. I tuned off/on location and tried again, success. No problems controlling music if the BT headphones are connected.

[TracyV125]

Thank you @Rich_Laue for posting about turning the location on and off.  I've been getting phone not found a lot recently. 

[TracyV125]

Thank you for your post @trevorms.  I only recently started having issues with "phone not found" before going out for a run.  I've been restarting my phone and my Blaze before trying to start a GPS run and it seemed to help some of the time, but not all.  I will do a sync before attempting and also turn on and off location services (as suggested by Rich). 

I ran in a 5 mile race on Memorial Day.  I did all my restarts and then put my phone in the armband and while waiting for the airhorn at start of race got the "phone not found".  I didn't have time to take my phone out and mess around so I just hit the play button in a panic.  Just so you know it kept my pace and still vibrated at each mile for me.  I was at least thankful for that!  I have a Garmin running watch but wanted to have my steps count so went with the Blaze over the Garmin.  It turned out ok since I really just need to see my pace while running.

I'm very grateful for your post!  Thanks again.

[Frank_Huber]

I have a Blaze witn Android 5.1.

Message Notification and sync works fine.

But the Blaze will never connect to the GPS.

I get "connecting" and then "smartphone not found" so they have to have a bug here in the Blaze or the App I guess.

/Frank

[TracyV125]

@Frank_Huber my notifications and syncing work fine with my Android as well.  It's just when trying to start up a GPS activity.  I didn't have trouble until about 2 weeks ago.  Now I never know if it's going to work.  I would sometimes get lucky if I restarted phone & Blaze but not always.  As suggested here by 2 others having issues, I'm going to try forcing a sync and also turning the location services off then back on right before trying to start the activity.  Hopefully this will work for us.

[Frank_Huber]

Thanks for your Answer Tracy.

for me it never worked for the connected GPS.

yesterday evening I factory defaulted my phone and ma blaze and began from scratch. --> nothing.

seems to be a topic of the communication direction.

phone --> blaze = OK

blaze --> phone = never OK.

I have contacted support on this now. let's see, maybe they find the root cause.

in the meantime I will try with my previous phone. maybe more luck here.

br

Frank

[Punnyabrata]

I face the same issue with Blaze & LG G6. My GPS is always on but Blaze cannot connect to phone. Does data also need to be on?