Ionic floor counting accuracy

[BMCG]

Ionic counted my motorcycle ride as climbing 88 floors and threw my stats waaay off for the day. Previous Charge 2 never had this issue. Will this be an issue when driving a car as well?? Fitbit pleas have updated firmware soon! My ionic mostly works but so many bugs, considering sending back. 

Moderator edit: edited title for clarity

[MikeF]

Floors are counted through measuring air pressure changes while you’re walking. So, while climbing soverhung is one way of getting air pressure changes, so is the wind and/or long term weather changes passing through.

[NellyG]

Yes I climbed 22 floors today when I was out on my bike. Hills, wind and changes in barometric pressure I think

[taz4352]

Mine too is proving to be quite inaccurate.  I came to work this morning and took an elevator up to the 3rd floor.  After that, the stair count was 1.  I then walked on a treadmill for about 2.5 hours with a zero elevation and then took 4 flights of stairs up to my office.  When I checked the stair count, it was 18.  My Blaze was very accurate with stairs but the Ionic seems to be adding stairs I didn't climb routinely.  This has been happening since I got the Ionic.  Not sure what's wrong.

[Kirsten_C]

I found the same thing happened today.  It is telling me I climbed 14 floors which is very inaccurate.  I would think Fitbit needs to come up with a better way to calculate floors.  Not very fond of false data.

[taz4352]

Additional info on the faulty stair climbing counts:  This morning when I walked on the treadmill, for the first hour and a half I walked with my arms all the way down by my side ( | ) and no stairs were counted.  For the last hour, I walked with my arms at my side but bent at a 90 degree angle ( |_ ) and my Ionic counted 5 flights of stairs even though I was walking on a completely level surface.  I don't believe this has anything to do with a change in barometric pressure as has been posited in other posts regarding this issue. 

[Kirsten_C]

I will add that I did notice if I stand still and do arm exercises that my step count goes up. The iconic needs some functional adjusts. Hopefully sooner than later.

Sent from my iPhone

[SantiR]

@Dawnieheather78 Welcome to the Fitbit family! Have you experience this again?

The are some reasons as to why your watch counted extra floors. The altimeter that your watch has will count floors sensing altitude based on atmospheric pressure. Pressure may change for several reason, like a gust of wind, a change in weather, or opening a door. These things may cause your watch to count extra floors sometimes. 

Also, your watch registers one floor when you've gone up about 10 feet. If the staircase is taller than ten feet you may notice that the amount of floors may not match.

Regarding the heart rate, please check how are you wearing your watch while doing exercise. Please take a look at this post to get the correct placement you need to have when exercising. That should certainly help you out with this.

Try that out and let me know how it goes! 

[Dawnieheather78]

As I mentioned this is working out in my living room in a small area inside an apartment there should be no wind or weather changes or pressure changes. I am 5’2. Putting my arms over my head should not be counted as a floor of stairs. It’s crazy ridiculous. I can be standing in place marching/walking and 1 floor 2 floor on and on it adds them.With my fitbit charge 2 a floor was equal to one time up the full flight of stairs and one time down them fully. So I know its possible for a fitbit to count it right. The Ionic just doesn’t. 

[shipo]

@Dawnieheather78, inside or outside, it doesn't matter; where there are rapid changes in the barometric pressure, such as when a weather front is moving through, the altimeter hardware in your Ionic will track the changes.

[edraac]

I made a trip to my hometown during the weekend, it's a 4 hour drive through a 2000+ meters high mountain, when I arrived my Ionic reported I had climbed 55 floors, which is just unrealistic. Hopefully a fix is coming soon.

[7vrt5]

I have not had a fitbit yet that counted stairs correctly for me. I have had a zip (no stairs), a charge, Blaze and now Ionic. The blaze was worse than the charge. I walk up one flight of stairs at work all day long. and by end of day EVERYDAY it would have me at 22-40 flights of stairs.  I spent hours talking to fitbit help line about it. during one conversation while sitting at my desk it counted 12 flights of stairs in a 20 min period they were even able to see this on their end as I was on phone with them and had Blaze conn. to app. I went through all the trouble shooting. They replaced it for me 2x's before I gave up on it.  The weird thing is it only miscounted stairs at my job.  Everywhere else it was good.  I determined most of the extra counting was occurring while I was sedentary, really weird.  I have not received my ionic yet but do not have high hopes for the altimeter to work correctly.  If Fitbit cant get altimeter to work correctly I just wish they would remove that feature.  I love everything else about it but 40 flights of extra stairs throws off all your other numbers.  It is not like it just counted a few extra flights, that is no big deal, but 40 flights is a huge deal.  I have done a full reset and everything Fitbit advised. Also don't know why it works fine everywhere but at my work.  If I have same issue with the Ionic I will have to return it and give up on Fitbit altogether, because it just throw my stats to far off track and it is to expensive not to work right.

[7vrt5]

Yes Fitbit please let me either manually turn off stairs "altimeter" or be able to manually correct The daily extra 40 flights it gives me!  I have discussed this issue with your help people with all my trackers.  I have done all the resets and have been sent new trackers all with same altimeter issue.

The problem for me seems to be associated with my office building specifically.  It is the only place any of your trackers have miscounted for me.  They mysteriously count stairs while I'm sitting in a chair at my desk average 40 flights a day.  My Charge did it, my Blaze did it now My Ionic does it.  It's hacking me off that your company knows this can be an issue and does not provide a way to turn that function off if user wants to.  You charge to much for your tracker to not have that ability.

[LongRunNick]

8 mile run yesterday- 50 floors. 7 mile run today-52 floors. As far as actual stair climbing I would say 4-5 each day in our 2 story house. My runs had a few hills, but living in Florida, none that I run are big time hills. Curious. Thanks. Nick

[NellyG]

The stair climbing feature works on air pressure, so it can be triggered by atmospheric pressure changes and by wind. I get quite a few floors when out on my bike - some due to hills and some due to wind I think. I tend to just disregard the floor climbing thing, though some people love it. To me is not a very useful thing, but each to there own I guess.

[bbarrera]

Hit or miss. Generally works well if you run or walk stairs. For anything else I ignore it. 

[SunsetRunner]

Yeah, Fitbit could just move this to an Exercise option for folks who like that thing, but it's always been a hit or miss (usually miss) data point. I usual "climb 12 to 14 floors during a morning run.

[jen217]

Restarted it a few times still not working.. 

[taz4352]

I am still having issues with stair counts on my Ionic. This morning as I walked on the treadmill it counted 3 flights of stairs I didn't climb. Does anybody have a guess as to whether this might be a firmware issue or a hardware issue? It's been happening ever since I first got the Ionic and now, with the new firmware update, it is still happening. I have a Blaze that I wore for 2 years and I don't believe it ever did that. It sometimes under counted but never over counted. If I walk on the treadmill with my arms level (90 degree angle) and swinging back and forth it counts a huge amount of stairs climbed. It's the only thing so far that I've had an issue with. Should I be contacting support?

[Stepane]

Support didn’t do much for me. They had me restart, then wanted me to walk a flight of stairs to see if it was accurate. Lol. I told them I didn’t need to climb any stairs to tell me it was wrong. I knew I had gone up my own stairs roughly twice before going to work, but had somehow been given credit for about 15 while walking and driving on flat land. I took it back to Kohl’s and exchanged in the middle of the day for another one that gave me credit for two flights of stairs before I made it home! It did accurately capture my two flights of stairs when I got home.

Don’t know if it is a bad batch, or if this is a problem with the Ionic in general. 

[racertempo]

I promise it is not a problem with the Ionic or a "bad batch". It is the sensors that all companies use to measure "floors". 

I played tennis at the beach a couple of years ago and it recorded 118 floors, while playing tennis!   It is 100% weather/barometric pressure related, it will never be perfectly accurate, but on most days it will be darn close.