help menu

Join us on the Community Forums!

  • Community Guidelines

    The Fitbit Community is a gathering place for real people who wish to exchange ideas, solutions, tips, techniques, and insight about the Fitbit products and services they love. By joining our Community, you agree to uphold these guidelines, so please take a moment to look them over.

  • Learn the Basics

    Check out our Frequently Asked Questions page for information on Community features, and tips to make the most of your time here.

  • Join the Community!

    Join an existing conversation, or start a new thread to ask your question. Creating your account is completely free, and takes about a minute.

Not finding your answer on the Community Forums?

Cancel
Turn on suggestions
Auto-suggest helps you quickly narrow down your search results by suggesting possible matches as you type.
Showing results for 
Show  only  | Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Inaccurate distance with treadmill mode

Replies are disabled for this topic. Start a new one or visit our Help Center.

‎09-06-2018 08:52

‎09-06-2018 08:52

 Hello to the big fitbit community out there!

 

I have been loitering around in this forum searching for solutions to fix the distance calculated by Ionic for sometime now. Had set up the length in my profile setting in centimetres (we don't use inch that much in my country). 

 

If I understood correctly, the treadmill distance is calculated using walking length instead of running and thus I have recorded the total number of steps and distance I ran on the treadmill with formula below:

 

<Distance in kilometres converted to centimetres> / number of steps to get my walking length in cm. I tested out today and it's still inaccurate by almost half a kilometres difference (fitbit count was lower). 

 

I multiplied my number of steps and the walking length, and sadly, it's not what is calculated by the app / ionic.

 

I tried the running mode with gps off suggested by others, it's still way below what is showing on the treadmill display... 

 

Can someone point out to me, what am I doing wrong here? I used to own fitbit charge HR, fitbit charge 2... the charge 2 was more accurate with automatic settings..albeit minimal variance.. pls help as I just bought my ionic a week ago ;(

Best Answer
0 Votes
2 REPLIES 2

‎09-06-2018 10:50

‎09-06-2018 10:50

Welcome to the forums!

 

If you are holding on to the bars it will not count accurately. Also you not covering an exact distance because you are not moving forward.

 

Also See this thread by MrMarv
It explains it very well

https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Alta-HR/Step-calculation/m-p/2586363/highlight/true#M22198

 

Hope to see you around the forums more!

 

Community Council Member

Wendy | CA | Moto G6 Android

Want to discuss ways to increase your activity? Visit the Lifestyle Forum

Best Answer

‎09-06-2018 11:49

In response to WendyB

‎09-06-2018 11:49

To add to @WendyB's post.

While on a treadmill, since the user is not moving, GPS can not bbe used, therefore the Ionic will not be able to measure distance and must calculate it.

This calculation is done by counting steps then multipling by the distance walked per step. This would be called the stride.

If the step count is off or the stride setting incorrect the distance calculated will be wrong.

Think of it as Fitbit taking an educated guess at the distance walked.

Best Answer