Wife's Blaze not correctly counting steps

[Rhobbs0223]

My wife works in a hospital. This means she walks all day. In the evening it says she only has around 4000 steps. Any ideas?

[meresydotes]

@Rhobbs0223 There are several explanations for why steps are undercounting:

1) She is pushing things all day. A wrist worn tracker will have a problem if you're pushing things like shopping carts (wheelchairs...), as it keeps the wrist stationary.

2) She carries things all day - see above.

3) She only walks a few steps at a time, then stops and walks a few more. The tracker looks for a pattern before it determines you're walking and starts counting steps. I find this takes between 5-20 steps to start counting.

4) She swings her arms a lot when she walks. This is a bug in the Blaze firmware. It generally only counts 70% of steps if you swing your arms a lot. No information regarding whether fitbit will be fixing it.

[Driver8666]

The 3rd point of your post @meresydotes I find that it'll pick up after 5 steps. In some cases I've been able to get one step registered. But this is my device. 

[Rich_Laue]

All Fitbits look for 5 steps before they determine your walking, this is to help weed out false steps.. So yes walk 4 steps then stop, no credit, 5 steps and stop you should get credit for 5 steps.

[Driver8666]

That fact is true, I thought it was a bug until I figured out it actually wants to know if you're moving. 

[SunsetRunner]

My wife and I both have a Blaze and the step count for me is fine but my wifes step count is under by about 30%-40%. 

We tried swapping watches and they both worked for me but not my wife.

We have tried everything from restarting, changing watch position on arm, changing settings from non dominent to dominent, manually entering stride length... but none of these worked.

Eventually we found that if my wife unclipped her Blaze and placed it in her pocket when she went on long walks the step count was more or less spot on.

It's far from ideal but until Fitbit fix the problem this is the only way she can get an accurate step count.

[meresydotes]

@SunsetRunner Unfortunately, fitbit has known about this problem since at least April. That's when lots of people started complaining about it. I've been complaining myself since I got my Charge HR months before that. It seems like there might not be a fix coming.

She can try to disable the auto-workouts. I found that my Charge HR/ Blaze were detecting all my workouts as Elliptical and shorting me everyday steps. By disabling the auto-workouts, they at least no longer shorted me everyday steps.

For workout steps, I still just had to stop swinging my arms so much.

[SunsetRunner]

Ok thanks, we haven't tried disabling the auto-workouts so we will give that a go. 

I emailed fitbit regarding this problem but so far I haven't had any reply but I doubt they will suggest anything new that we haven't already tried.

[meresydotes]

@SunsetRunner Generally, which fitbit support will do is send you a replacement. As you've proved by switching trackers with your wife, this is not a problem with the hardware.

[tractorlegs]

@meresydotes excellent answer. I agree with the others that no. 3 is 5 steps, at least in my experience [grin]

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@meresydotes wrote:

@Rhobbs0223 There are several explanations for why steps are undercounting:

1) She is pushing things all day. A wrist worn tracker will have a problem if you're pushing things like shopping carts (wheelchairs...), as it keeps the wrist stationary.

2) She carries things all day - see above.

3) She only walks a few steps at a time, then stops and walks a few more. The tracker looks for a pattern before it determines you're walking and starts counting steps. I find this takes between 5-20 steps to start counting.

4) She swings her arms a lot when she walks. This is a bug in the Blaze firmware. It generally only counts 70% of steps if you swing your arms a lot. No information regarding whether fitbit will be fixing it.

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[meresydotes]

@tractorlegs Thanks! I think it starts counting at 5, but maybe doesn't show the steps between 5 and 20 ish until you've walked 20 ish. I know that I've checked mine after 5 and it's not counting, then I'll check after a few more and it's still not counting. But then, after a few more after that, it takes a big-ish leap. Ish.