Ionic can it track open water swimming ?

[nikki1234]

Im looking to buy this item but want to track my open water swimming. Can this do that? I have a fitbit charge 2 and a garmin watch so I can track by GPS the distance/stroke/speed just wanted to know what this does for swimming 

thanks in advance.

[bbarrera]

Fitbit does not support open water swimming with Ionic.

[Venkats]

Both heart rate and GPS wont work in open water per published materials. I will leave the rest for your interpretation. 

[tribri]

So far my results suck with ionic in open water. Hate to report, all my fellow swimmers are looking for devices for xmas and keep asking about my results, and no one is looking at or now interested in getting an ionic at this point. Too bad. For all other activities I am very happy with it, I use wallet, starbucks and all the activities and sleep app. But if you are looking for a swim tracker and only swim open water, then this is not the device to spend your money on. Hope they (fitbit) fix this someday.

I am not an expert but my observation is simply add a linear option as "length". It obviously is not counting strokes, so it appears not to be using an accelerometer. So how does it track swims? I tried asking fitbit support but they appear to be clueless on technical information. All the seem to be able to say is the problem is conditions. That has to be BS because conditions and length have not been a factor in my results. I have examples of "pool" flat calm wave-less neutral current to severe chop wind high swells and currents pushing back. No difference in the tracking. If this was an accelerometer why not just track strokes and have a setting for stroke distance (similar to steps).

I have many examples of the inability for the ionic to track open water. Here are two recent ones.

Two recent examples, Sunday the 19th  and today the 22nd. Both swims similar distances, about 1800 yards.

Sunday was windy with very choppy with 1 to 2 foot swells and a strong current strong with us (north). I set "length" to 25 yards.

Today the conditions were calm and as flat as any pool would be. Not a ripple. Less of a current but still

north (with us). I set the length to 100 yards to see any difference. 

As you can see ionic is not able to track anything well except the time (manually started - from the above posts I will try the automatic method).

[bbarrera]

My understanding is that for laps, all vendors use the accelerometer to detect turns at wall. So for lap swimming its counting the number of laps, and getting distance by multiplying lap count by pool distance (the distance you set).

For open water my guess is other vendors do a lot of GPS data smoothing, because when arms are moving in and out of water that will generate a lot of "noise" in the GPS data (bad data when arms in water).

[tribri]

Sounds plausible but ineffective. If the device has all these accelerometers why not count strokes, it counts steps. Counting strokes would just as easy to compute distance. Instead of pool length, use stroke length. That gives you distance. The swimmer can figure out the laps. Or keep the pool length and let the app do the math. Sad that with all the competition for swim trackers this is what they put out at $300. ugh

[Venkats]

Do other watches compute Strokes? for curiosity?....The APIs have gyroscope as a supported sensor. It may be useful.

[tribri]

I really am not watching all the other devices. Been a fitbit wearer for 5 years, from original flex, charge, surge (which was first talked about to be swimable then quickly changed) and now ionic, so very disapointed. Qucik search shows several stroke counters, Samsung fit2, polar v800, ihealth wave, garmin vivoactive... and I am sure still more, so it is not an issue of feature and techincal ability. Just fitbit getting something to the market but looks like it may be their "jumping the shark" moment. I am looking to go apple now, here is a partners screen shot. Seems pretty simple to me.

[Cande]

I think swimming distance should be based simply on number of strokes. Not lapsl My "workaround" for this is that I count my strokes in a pool for a lap length(18).   Then in the open water I count my strokes in my virtual "pool. " When I'm at the" end," I shift direction slightly as if doing a turn and continue swimming , " doing a "turn" after every 18 strokes

[datalore]

It really is just a software issue. For some reason fitbit won't update the software to add open water swimming. 

[Sarahhourani]

My fitbit Ionic screen died after ocean swim. 

[TriAndy]

I've tried a couple different methods to track an open water swim which were unsatisfactory so far and will attempt one more this week.  Before adjusting swim settings in the app, I discovered that GPS is not automatically on for a swim exercise and figured the run setting would at least track my location, distance, and pace on a map.  I connected to satellites, and in the lake I went.  The mapped route was relatively close to where I had been, but showed many different loops and wiggles where the location was confused.  It tracked 1.5 miles where I probably only swam about a mile.  I tried turning the GPS on for swims, and did roughly the same swim.  It said I went 5 lengths at an incredibly slow pace, and it didn't map any of it.  Based on some other posts here in community recommending putting the watch inside your cap (which seems reasonable if the GPS can't function under water but risky for losing the watch, I think) I'm going to try putting it inside the drybag portion of my swim buoy on the run setting again.  More info to follow...

[nikki1234]

I’ve given up and brought a Garmin 735 and it does everything I need with no problems. It’s a shame Fitbit can’t yet match these other sports watches as I loved my Fitbit.

[Duke552]

Maybe a software update soon ?

[TriAndy]

Follow up post:

The only way I’ve found to track an open water swim is to put the watch body in my floating swim buoy on the run setting. If it stays above water the GPS works. There’s no way to access the buttons mid-exercise, but at least the data gets recorded. I can edit the workout later in Strava to make it a swim. This is lame, though. 

[jrhodk]

I did buy my Fitbit Ionic because i thought it could track blodpercent, or what it was called, and because I wanted to track open water swims: Both expectations was dissapointing, so I guess my next watch will be an Apple watch or something other.. Annoying! And i also miss kayaking as an excercise!

[THTP]

You can may be use some external GPS device in conjunction with a watch on the wrist. Say, a phone in a dry bag.

[Dawnphin]

I am really disappointed as I called fitbit for support before buying my ionic and was told yes it's great for both pool and outdoor swimming. As swimming is my hobby I feel that I have been ripped off. So disappointed and sad for fitbit when in the UK alone there is at least 20000 registered  outdoor swimmers and the question is constantly being asked about which watch to buy.. I am also going to check my emails and if I have it in writing I will be taking this to consumer rights. 

[Pondwater79]

I open water swim in the ocean and always breaststroke.  I thought maybe being underwater screwed up the GPS resulting in incorrect distance.  So I placed Fitbit Ionic on my head secured in place by a swim cap so that it would never be underwater.  Tried it in Walk mode and Bike mode and got 0.03 miles and 0.01 miles, respectively, over an actual 0.166 mile distance.  In both bike and walk modes it traced my swim across the water nicely.  In bike mode, it was probably thinking that if this dude is actually biking, the bike would tip over, because I swim very slowly.   In Swim mode, under my swim cap, it registered no distance at all.  Interestingly & confusingly, occasionally, wearing it on my wrist and doing the same swim, it has recorded the correct distance.