Adding heart Rate view to Custom Activity

[SunsetRunner]

I do quite a lot of heavy gardening. I have added a custom activity but when I view a 'workout' all I see is the step count, distance and 'calories' (sic). How do I get a display of heart rate?

(Using Charge 2)

[LanuzaFitbit]

Welcome to the Forums @SunsetRunner.

You are talking about a custom activity and a workout, are you referring to the same activity in this case? Please let me know about that so I can make sure I fully understand what is going on.

Look forward to your reply.

[SunsetRunner]

What is the difference between a Custom Activity and a Workout? I thought a Workout was carrying out a specific (or Custom) activity for a finite period of time, i.e. other than general activity. So if I'm Gardening for several hours I want to see that as a Workout and have my heartrate plotted.

[LanuzaFitbit]

Hello @SunsetRunner.

I'm sorry, I was not clear enough on my post. What I am trying to ask is this: Did you select 'Workout' on your Fitbit or did you manually log a 'Workout' activity directly in your Dashboard?

Hopefully  this makes more sense.

Let me know if there are any further questions in the meantime.

[SunsetRunner]

No. After I finished I went to the web dashboard and created a new Activity
called Gardening. I then set the start/end times to when I was working.
When I clicked to view the activity I was expecting to see heart rate,
steps, distance, etc, as for a walk but could not see heart rate.

How do I select 'Gardening' next time, before or after?

Thanks,

Mark

[LanuzaFitbit]

Hello @SunsetRunner.

Thanks for that clarification.

In this case that is the way that manually logged activities work. My suggestion would be to select a 'Workout' activity the next time you are doing gardening and end the activity once you are finished. After your  Fitbit syncs you should be able to see it reflected as 'Workout' on your Dashboard and get the information you want.

I hope this helps out! Let me know if you have any further questions.

[Colinm39]

@SunsetRunner It works for me.. I either use a created Custom Activity or use Workout on the Ionic and rename it.. Never falters.

For the last year I have been creating a Custom Activity for my sleep period.. Sometimes it doesn't like starting prior to midnight and having many hours. When this occurs I use 12:05 as the start point

Why do this?... Seeing how that correlates to my RHR.

I have just created an activity for TV..

[LanuzaFitbit]

Hello @Colinm39.

The TV activity made me chuckle. Thanks for being around to help!

@SunsetRunner What Fitbit are you using? Perhaps that could clue us to what is going on.

Look forward to your reply.

[SunsetRunner]

I'm using the Charge 2, which I thought records heart rate all the time. It seems you can only see that data when the app designers want you to!

[Colinm39]

@SunsetRunnerA couple of checks for you... On your App, Tap the Resting Heart Rate tile and see if it shows your graph for HR.

If syncing hasn't worked correctly you will only see where the Charge 2 was last synced.

If the HR is there even for the previous data you should be able to create a Custom Activity..

With a BIG BUT.... There is a software issue when you try and create or select the Custom Activity from the PC Fitbit Activity Web browser. I'm not sure if its resloved for some because it still fails for me.. I have many Custom Activities.

If that's a problem I would try and use one via the Exercise App on the phone.  YOU CANNOT create Custom Activities via the phone (Android)  it MUST already be created on the PC...  My Android experience and a known issue.

You can still select a ready made custom activity via the phone..

• Tap the Exercise Tile
• Tap the stopwatch
• enter the activity name or the first character and see what comes up.
• fill in the data
• log it
• Then tap the created activity.. It should have HR provided you have synced.

That may not show up immediately on the phone because it's also communicating with the server..

Warning... Creating manual; activities like this levels out the calories because you overwrite the data because it averages over the time period.  You may lose Active Minutes..

You can delete the manual activity afterwards after you have you HR data.

[LanuzaFitbit]

Hello @SunsetRunner and @Colinm39.

@SunsetRunner Please do try going with what @Colinm39 mentioned, that should definitely help out.

In the same vein as @Colinm39's post, has your Fitbit being syncing properly and consistently? Are you seeing all other information for the day?

Look forward to your reply.

[SunsetRunner]

Yes, I can see the heart rate profile for the whole day and there are no problems with syncing. It's just that setting up a custom activity there is then no way to customise it to include or exclude data that are being recorded. For example, I really am not interested in "calories."

I find it quite complicated setting "workout" start and end on the device. The combination of taps and button presses seems unnecessarily complex, considering that is one of the primary uses!

[Colinm39]

@SunsetRunnerI'm not sure how the Altra HR uses the exercise function but I use the Workout function on the Ionic if there is some activity I want to record and ensure/study my Active Minutes..  I rename the Workout to the type of activity.

On the Ionic it's only a Tap, Swipe, Tap exercise, Tap Workout and press Go.. I have reordered my exercises so that Workout is the first..  Then just a Pause and Finish at the end.

When you create a custom activity there is a good chance you will lose active minutes because it averages the calories over the time period and you may not get your minimum of 10 minutes consecutive activity at 3 times your BMR/minute.  

As a side issue.... Checking today's activity, my Ionic even Smart Tracked a brisk walk through our local shopping mall and it identified it as Walk. I was able to rename that...  100% Active minutes.. It was the type of walking when it's close to closing time and you are moving rapidly between shops, well spread.. with a slight gradient.. There was enough cardio activity for when I slowed down I was still over 5 times my BMR/minute... A good day by accident....

[LanuzaFitbit]

Hello @SunsetRunner and @Colinm39.

Thanks for reaching back.

I'll be sharing all of the feedback to the rest of the team! Please do know that we're always looking for ways to improve the overall Fitbit experience.

For the time being I'd say that manually selecting a workout is the best workaround available for the situation.

Let me know if you have any further questions.