Spurious alerts?

[paulkinzelman]

I've been noticing that my Ionic does a "double-Bzzz" quite a bit and I have no idea why. In fact, I was awake last night and it alerted at about 3:18, 3:48, 3:59, 4:12. It happens during the day too, but usually less often.

AFAIK, I have no alarms set, no goal alarms, no stopwatch, no timer, no reminder 10-min before every hour, etc., and when I swipe-up from the clock, it always says "Nothing new here". In fact, I think I've got it hooked to my Android phone, and when I get a text message, I don't get notified on the Ionic. Does anybody have any suggestions about what's going on and how to fix it?

[SantiR]

@paulkinzelman Welcome to the Fitbit family! That is very strange, thanks for reporting that and for checking that you are not receiving those vibrations because of any kind of alarms or reminders! Are you still experiencing the same?

That is very strange because every time an Ionic vibrates and you check the screen right after that it will show the reason why it vibrated. In this case, I'd recommend performing a restart on your Ionic. This should sort this out if it is vibrating just because. 

Also, if you are not getting the text notifications you might like to troubleshoot a bit in order to get this done. Please check this helpful article for steps and details about this. 

What kind/model of mobile device are you using?

Hope this helps. Let me know how it goes! 

[paulkinzelman]

Yes, it's still happening, and no, nothing pops up on the screen, and yes, I've restarted the Ionic lots of times. I'm using a Moto-Z-play Android with the latest updates.

[SantiR]

@paulkinzelman Thanks for your reply and for trying the restart. Have you tried turning off the notifications to check if your Ionic will continue to vibrate?:

• On you Ionic swipe to the right.
• Tap "Notifications" to off.

Let me know if by deactivating them it will continue to vibrate.

I was checking the list of supported devices and the Moto Z Play is not listed. They could be the reason why you are not getting any notifications. However, whenever you have a chance, try the troubleshooting steps for notifications (if you are not getting any) found here to try to sort this out.

Please try this out and let me know how it goes! 

[paulkinzelman]

No, you're misunderstanding me. The swipe-right notifications is off, I turned it off long ago but I still often get notification buzzes on the " I think it was but normally I get no notification other than the buzz. There should always be a message that pops up every time there's a notification. How else does one figure out what the notification is for?

Also, I'm not concerned about not getting notifications on my phone, that's not the issue.

[SantiR]

@paulkinzelman Thanks for your reply. Thanks for confirming this information. The only way to know what notification or reminder you are getting is by checking the Ionic's display whenever it vibrates.

In this case, I'd recommend performing a factory reset on your Fitbit Ionic. There are two way in which you can do this:

1. On you Ionic's settings tap "About", then "Factory Reset".
2. Press and hold the 3 buttons on your Ionic until the screen dims out.

Once you have done this, it should stop vibrating for no reason. 

Let me know how it goes! 

[paulkinzelman]

Please read what I post carefully, saves a lot of extra posts. I said that the Ionic usually does NOT have anything on the screen when it alerts. I've already checked. That's the problem, the whole reason for this post. Occasionally it does, but usually not.

Does the factory reset lose my settings? How do I resync to my phone? What do I lose? Those are important questions to answer when you tell somebody to do a factory reset.

[SantiR]

@paulkinzelman Thanks for your reply and your question!

Factory reset will erase all data that has not synced to your dashboard. It will also erase apps that you have downloaded, settings changed, music, etc. Your Ionic will be just like "out of the box". 

Basically, it will return to its factory settings. I think this could help you out with the situation you are currently experiencing.

Hope this helps. Let me know how it goes! 

[paulkinzelman]

I wonder if there's something broken on mine. I deleted the Ionic from the Android Fitbit app, did a factory reset, then tried pairing it again. Tried several times, rebooted my Android several times, finally got a connect, it spent about 24 minutes doing something, and then progressed to the point of "Update to latest", and now it can't connect. The Ionic and phone are about 5 inches apart so I think that'd be close enough. It says "Not working?" with a few hints about connecting.

[paulkinzelman · Accepted solution]

I finally called tech support and after some fiddling around we got it to connect again.

The trick apparently is that the Ionic must NOT be in the list of available or paired devices when you go look at the list of devices under the phone's Settings | Bluetooth. If it's not paired, then start the Fitbit application for it to establish a connection. Then once the Fitbit app is connected to the Ionic, the Ionic won't appear at all in the phone's list of paired or available bluetooth devices.

Your engineers really need to look at connectivity issues with the phone and with a headset. When I tried to connect a bluetooth headset a week or so ago, all hell broke loose. I finally gave up. I may try again after I make sure that the Ionic-phone bluetooth connection is reliable.

Engineering? Are you listening? You really need to look at bluetooth connectivity issues.

[SantiR]

@paulkinzelman Thanks for your reply and for sharing your experience on this thread. Also, thanks for your feedback.

I'm glad to hear that customer support was able to help you out with this. I'm sure this will be helpful for other users as well!

Also, what exactly happened when you tried to connect your Bluetooth headphones? What kind/model of headphones do you have? What steps have you done in order to sort it out?

Keep me posted! 

[paulkinzelman]

I don't remember exactly, I was pretty new to the fitbit, but I think I had connection issues between the phone and the fitbit as a result of the headset. I don't know the brand, I think it's an off-brand. I was also playing with installing the fitbit on my Windows10 PC so that added to the confusion. The bottom line is that I think your engineers need to figure out a way to select what bluetooth is connected to the fitbit at any one time. I don't see any way to do this currently.

[SantiR]

@paulkinzelman Thanks for your reply and for providing that information! 

I see, have you tried pairing those headsets or any other Bluetooth headsets to your Ionic since customer support resolved for you?

Just in case, if you happen to experience any pairing issues with the headsets; you can try the following:

• Restart your Ionic.
• Un pair your headsets (If they are paired, if not skip this step).
• Pair them back again to your Ionic.

This has helped other users in the past. 

Also, any luck syncing with your Windows 10 App as of now?

Thanks for your feedback, it is appreciated. I was making some research on the Feature Suggestions Board and was able to find this idea which is similar to your feedback. I recommend voting for it and leaving a comment too. The more, the better. If this idea doesn't really represents what you are asking for feel free to search for similar ideas or creating an original one.

Let me know i you create a feature suggestion. Keep me posted! 

[paulkinzelman]

Yes, that topic you pointed me at is what I want too, so I added a comment.

I've kind of given up for the moment, too much other stuff to do to fiddle with headsets, I'll just wait a month or two and see if you guys come out with an update.

However, the original reason for this post is still not solved, the spurious alerts. I even took the Ionic back to factory settings and started over, and I still get random notification alerts even though the 'Notification' Ionic setting is off.

[SantiR]

@paulkinzelman Thanks for your reply and for adding a comment to that thread. 

I'm sure an update will be available. Stay tuned for updates about that! 

I've also went ahead and created a case with customer support regarding the situation of the spurious alerts. Please keep an eye on your email inbox for further steps.

Let me know the outcome! 

[paulkinzelman]

I just wanted to make sure you understood what I think needs to be done.

I don't know if the alerts are spurious or if they're supposed to happen and I've got something set wrong.

The point is that when an alert happens something should appear on the screen for a few seconds to let you know what the alert was for. That is the first thing that should be done and it shouldn't be that hard to implement.