Add active minutes to manually logged exercise

[AmandaGeorge]

Every Wednesday I have to manually log my walks because my steps don't get recorded when I'm running my weekly virus scan for some bizarre reason. I have to manually count every step I take for 50 minutes to log it when I get back home - it records the length of time for each walk that I put in but I don't get awarded any active minutes for it!

[LZeeW]

@AmandaGeorge   I think I've read and re-read you post a dozen times, trying to figure out why this is happening to you.  I am not a software engineer, but I know a fair amount of how this stuff works.  Bizarre doesn't even begin to describe what is going on.

• All data is stored on your Inspire until you sync it with your account.  Are the steps showing up on your Inspire while you are walking?
• You say you are running your virus scan.  Does this mean you sync your Inspire using the Fitbit app for Windows 10 on your PC?  How do you sync your Inspire?
• If you are using the Fitbit app for Windows 10, what happens if you log out of the app before you start your virus scan?

[AmandaGeorge]

Thank you so much for trying to help, @LZeeW

• Nope, no steps are recorded anywhere while the virus scan is running... not on my Inspire or in the app or even on the website.  I have to reboot my laptop when the virus scan has finished and restart my Inspire before anything logs again... it hasn't been tracking my sleep since the last virus scan on Wednesday either!
• I've got it constantly syncing via Bluetooth on my Windows 10 laptop... it works absolutely fine the other 6 days of the week and after I've rebooted after the virus scan has finished 
• I've tried logging out and logging back in to the app when this first started happening a few months ago and it just doesn't work unfortunately.  I could understand it if that was the issue, but no automatically logged things (steps/distance/active minutes/calories burned/250 steps an hour) etc) are recorded anywhere (not on my Inspire, not in the app and not on the Fitbit site) just for those few hours and I don't know why not  😞

It's also refusing to log my exercise now too... it's saying I've exercised 3 days out of the 5 even though in reality it's been 6 days of over an hour a day!

[LZeeW]

@AmandaGeorge   If I scratch my head any harder trying to figure this out, I think I will make my scalp bleed.  I am a Mac user.  Of all the platforms, the Windows 10 app is the least familiar to me.

Have you ever tried turning your laptop's Bluetooth off before starting your virus scan?  I can't believe that it might be some weird Bluetooth interference.  The interference should stop when you get out of range.

[MrMarv]

@AmandaGeorge -

As always, @LZeeW , in my opinion, has given you sound advice. May expand on it? It's the "geek" in me I suppose.

Unlike @LZeeW , I am a computer professional, though it has been many, many years since I have coded firmware and even then rarely to bluetooth stacks.

However, @LZeeW 's recommendation to turn off bluetooth before the scan and turning it on after reboot has merit, especially if, like my wife, most of your walks are around the "great room" (20 x 35 ft) or around the pool deck (20 x 55) just outside. She is always within 70 feet of where her computer is, though she syncs to an iOS mobile app and is often carrying it with her.

If so, I suspect the "interference should stop when you get out of range" may not apply here because... 

I just performed a "Find Phone" test using my Versa 2 and iPhone 8 - I sat my phone at the very end of the living room on the hearth and walked out the door and to the end of the deck 90 feet away - and I could hear the phone go off. Good thing I warned my wife, because it is some loud, even from 90 feet and she was at maybe 25 feet!

And virus scan software, while not always completely disabling functions, can sometimes interfere with their proper operation, possibly leading to your device believing it has a clean link when it doesn't and therefore thinking its transmitted data was accumulated cleanly by your Windows 10 machine when it hasn't. Though that would make me think that the sync processes are lacking some needed checksum verification. Not the first time I have seen that in the last 40 years.

So, I would recommend either turning off bluetooth during your virus scan as @LZeeW recommended or schedule it for a time where it will not impact your statistics as much.

Good luck.

[AmandaGeorge]

Thank you @LZeeW - I've hopefully figured out what the issue was and if I'm right, it was a PICNIC.  This morning's stroll with our senior puppy will tell me for sure, but the sleep and days exercising seem to have been fixed now... please keep your fingers crossed that the walk is recorded when I take the puppy out for her walk?  It's recorded my visit to the bathroom while the scan was running, so hopefully it'll record my steps on the walk this morning too  🙂

[AmandaGeorge]

Thank you so much, @MrMarv.  After yesterday afternoon's discovery and the testing of the solution seeming to work, if it records my walk with our senior puppy this morning, then it had nothing to do with the virus scan and was, instead, a PICNIC  😄

[AmandaGeorge]

Just got back from our morning walk and the issue *was* a PICNIC error, 'cos my steps and active minutes and exercise has logged automagically today.

I dunno when I did it, but yesterday's investigation into what might have been going wrong with my sleep not being tracked lead me to try restarting my Inspire again, when that didn't work I was ready to give up permanently with things ever being tracked automatically again but I figured it couldn't hurt to have a look in the settings on my Inspire.  I discovered that at some point I'd set it to "On Clip" so I changed that back to "On Wrist", took our senior puppy out for her evening walkies and it tracked it as exercise and active minutes again, which was awesome, but I didn't want to get my hopes up too high just in case... I wanted to make sure it was logging my sleep overnight as well as today's walks.

That was literally the only thing I changed yesterday but it seems to be what has been going wrong for the last little while and it's working properly again now, so I'm hoping to learn from my mistake and not fiddle with things that work any more lol