Elliptical Accuracy Off

[RealBlaze]

Not sure if this has been addressed or not.  But I had mentioned this before in a different thread.  Elliptical counting is way off.  An Elliptical Machine has a set stride.  We have a New Nordictrack SE9i.  When I set it to run  different courses or just an oval track.  The amount of time to do that is pretty consistent with the time to do it out on a normal walk or Run.

The distance is constant on the machine.  It knows that say 24 inches times 3000 Strokes = So many miles.  The time to do those Miles like I said is about right in the time.  So I'm figuring the machine is pretty much right.  But the Blaze and really my daughter has a HR Charge and it does the same thing.

It only counts like 1 Step per revolution when it should be 2.  Running a 2.5 Mile course only shows up as say a 1.1 Mile run.  Now I have tried this with the Blaze on my Ankle.  I tie a piece of string on it to get it on my ankle.  Then I have to tap the foot pedal every revolution.  This is a bit more accurate but still a bit off.  When I did this I got 1.97 Miles on that same 2.5 Mile Run.  Closer but still off.

It does recognize the Elliptical motion.  And on my ankle it thinks I'm running.  But still I would like to have it on my arm and for it to be at least some where close to the right distance.  Again sorry if this is a repeat.  But I wanted it to show up as a topic so that it gets recognized as a problem.

[AngelaMa]

Hello @RealBlaze! It's great to have you here. 🙂  just remember that wrist based trackers are specifically designed for your wrist, if you move your body a lot and not your arms or vice versa, you may get a slight difference in activity. This is the reason why you get different readings each time you use the elliptical machine and in this case you may want to Manually Log an Exercise when you forget to wear your tracker or every time you are doing an activity like elliptical. This is going to give you credit for a calorie-burning activity that isn't completely measurable by your tracker (because you are not moving all the time your arms). So, replacing an automatically detected exercise by manually logging it instead may improve your totals.

Hope this helps! 🙂 

[bpetillo]

The elliptical machine I use also has poles for arm movement.  Since the Blaze has "Elliptical" as a selectable exercise it should use that information for more accurate tracking.  I get credit for only 50% of the actual steps taken.

[Rich_Laue]

The elyptical uses Heart rate and time to determine intansiry, and calories. 

As for steps you will needv to do some test counts

[AngelaMa]

Hello @bpetillo and @Rich_Laue hope you are having a very active day! 🙂  @bpetillo Fitbit trackers have a finely tuned algorithm for step counting. The algorithm is designed to look for motion patterns most indicative of people walking. One condition for a motion pattern to be recognized as a step is the motion must be large enough. The algorithm implements this by setting a threshold. If a motion and its subsequent acceleration measurement data meet the threshold, the motion will be counted as a step. If that threshold is not met, the algorithm won't count the motion as a step. This might be why it is not counting all the steps on the elliptical machine. 

Hope this helps! 🙂