Add swim split times in app

[Jon001]

I think it would be a good idea for you to open-source the software for your trackers so that the community can fix the worst of the problems and omissions that you're too busy to fix.

Maybe it's because I'm using the Windows Phone app, but swim tracking is pretty poor for me. I don't care about calories but I do care about splits, stroke rate etc and none of that's available to view.

But the worst problem would be the simplest to fix: the time per 100m stat. At the end of my swim I can see the correct value, which takes account of any pauses. Good. But when I view the session in "Today" either on the watch or in the phone app the value is clearly being calculated from the *total* time for the session instead of the active time. 

Oh, and check out the screenshot - although I don't care about calories you've managed to put it in the way of the thing I do care about (which you calculated wrong). Give the code to someone who cares! Screenshot: https://ibb.co/dcQxMn

Moderator edit: updated subject for clarity

[MarreFitbit]

Welcome to the Fitbit Community @Jon001, it's nice to see you around! Thanks for sharing a screen shot, unfortunately I couldn't open it. Can you post the picture in your post instead of the link? I'd appreciate it! Check this post from @MarcoGFitbit to get a step-by-step guide on how to add a picture in your post. 

Fitbit has been designed to provide motivation and help you to reach your daily goals to success. Please know that we provide feedback to our team based on community posts and we are always working on improving our devices and experience based on that feedback. 

We're constantly striving to improve Fitbit products and services, and we very much appreciate all of the input we receive from our customers. I'd recommend checking out our Feature Suggestion Board if you haven't already. This is a space where Community users can post features, ideas, and suggestions that they'd like to see in future Fitbit products, accessories, and software and top-voted suggestions get relayed to our product team for review.

I'd also recommend up-voting and commenting on Ionic: Exercise, add display of split times in app feature suggestion since it is very similar of what you're looking and asking for.

Our product team looks forward to reading and incorporating your suggestions into future versions of Fitbit trackers and apps. 

In addition to completing only a handful of laps or stopping to rest often, inconsistencies in your swim data may be caused by any of the following:

• Stopping to rest midway across the pool
• Resting for longer than 60 seconds after completing a pool length
• Changing stroke type midway across the pool
• Swimming with a kickboard or not using your hands
• Swimming less than the minimum duration set to be auto-recognized
• The units for the pool length setting don't match the units you use for your Fitbit settings. For example if you measure length in feet and inches, and specify a pool length in meters. For more information, see How do I update my Fitbit settings?

Note that at this time, your swim data is only visible in the Fitbit dashboard.

Hope this helps, let me know if you need further assistance! 

[Jon001]

Hi @MarreFitbit, thanks for the response. I've added the screenshot below - I did try "Add Photo" in my initial post but it seemed to be expecting an image URL rather than offering a file upload. Not sure what happened there...

I will have a look at the feature requests you've linked to; you're right, one of them is similar to one of my requests. But the problem with 100m stat calculation is simply a bug, and I don't think I should need to add a feature request to fix a bug. I had hoped that the recent firmware upgrade would address this but it didn't.

The fact that the calculation is correct in the immediate "Good Job!" message at the end of the swim tells me that the device has all the information it needs, and the problem isn't over-long pauses or any of the other reasons you gave. The problem is that the code is wrong. Let me give a simplified example to illustrate the point.

I start swimming at 07:30. I swim 600m without stopping, then rest 1 minute, then swim 4 x 100m, resting for one minute between each. I finish swimming at 08:00.

My Ionic congratulates me on the 1000m swim, and correctly calculates the 100m time using the total active time of 30min - 4min rest = 26min. It displays the 100m time as 2m:36s/100m.

I tap "Done" and this correct information is gone for ever. If I now check the activity on my watch or in the phone app I see the 100m time calculated using the total elapsed time for the exercise, i.e. 30min. So the 100m time is now displayed as 3m:00s/100m. This is not motivating me to reach my daily goals to success.

To reiterate, this is a programming bug that needs fixing and has nothing to do with my performance. I hope you're able to ask the programmers to fix this but given the fairly slow pace of updates (have there been more than 2 in the last 10 months?) I don't expect things to change very soon. In contrast, if you open-sourced the code you'd have enthusiasts working to fix bugs pretty much round the clock.

[Jon001]

Hi @MarreFitbit. It's all gone a bit quiet - any news?

I thought I'd add this morning's results to the thread.

Straight after my swim I saw on my Ionic that I'd covered 1050m at a pace of 2'10"/100m. 

I was mistaken in my last post about the wrong pace being displayed in "today" on my Ionic - in fact, *no* pace information is displayed there at all. What my watch tells me is that I started a swim at 07:44, and it was 1,149 yards (despite me choosing metres as my length unit), and I burnt 186 calories. 

The phone app is where the incorrect information is displayed. Looking at my swim on the phone I'm told that the duration was 28min, the distance was 1,050m (good, it's respecting my length unit this time) and my pace was 2'43"/100m. Wrong!

You get about 2'43" if you divide 28 minutes by 10.5 (number of 100m segments I swam), which is what leads me to believe that the bug in the phone app is that it uses total elapsed time to calculate the pace. 

If I multiply out my true pace over the 1,050m distance I swam, I get time = 2.167 x 10.5 = 22.75min, so I must have been resting for about 5.25min. Lazy, eh?

The buggy calculation is even worse when I'm slow to tap "finish this exercise", because the elapsed time keeps ticking up and my apparent pace keeps dropping.

Do you have any idea when or if this bug will be fixed? At present I think I'd be better off selling my Ionic on ebay and getting a Garmin, and that can't be what you want to hear can it?

[Jon001]

@MarreFitbitI just noticed a different permutation of wrong results, on the dashboard at fitbit.com this time.

As you can see, this time the duration is given as 22'50" (not 28 min as in the phone app), but the pace is still given as 2'43"/100m. 

If you work out the pace from the results shown here you get 22'50" / 10.5 = 22.83 / 10.5 = 2.17min = 2'10. 

So the dashboard is displaying the correct active time, then discarding that and using the total elapsed time (which it doesn't display) to calculate pace. At least I know you're storing the elapsed time so there is some hope that this can be fixed retrospectively.

I hope you can appreciate the ludicrousness of a £240 exercise tracking phone that doesn't track my exercise correctly - what's the point of me building up a record of my progress over time when it's all added up wrong?

[Jon001]

I notice that a moderator has changed the title of this item from "Swim tracking software" to "Add swim split times in app". I think if you're going to change the title, a more appropriate one would be "Fix glaring bug in 100m pace calculation in app".

Here are some pictures to illustrate my point.

My watch, showing 2'22" / 100m pace and 30:54.5 min duration (I was tired that day; cut me some slack).

 The watch. This is correct.

The app, showing 3'51" / 100m pace and 50 min duration. This is wrong. I was slow to tap "finish" that day (because I was taking screenshots on my phone), so as time kept passing the app kept counting. The watch is clever enough to know that I've hit "pause", but the app is not. Why is my watch cleverer than my phone?

The app. This is wrong.

The exercise detail in the app, showing the hopeless overlapping stats that render this view even more useless than the last.

The app.This is hopeless.

This is a BUG and some untested UI design. You should fix these as a priority so that the users of your very expensive exercise tracking watch don't feel that they've been cheated and ignored. Then, when you've fixed the bug and bad UI you should add the features that your users want so that they don't feel like they've bought an overpriced toy.

I'm a programmer, would you believe? I fix bugs, add features and listen to our users' requirements on a daily basis. What are your programmers doing? They clearly aren't working on the software that I paid so much money for.

Like many others on this forum I will be looking into Garmin's offerings and hoping that ebay gives me a good price for a used Ionic. Maybe someone who isn't a swimmer can get some use out of it.

P.S. why is there no edit facility on this forum? I apologise in advance for any mistakes in the above because I won't be able to correct them after I've hit "Post".

P.P.S. Hooray, I can now edit a post, so at least one thing is looking up.

[Jon001]

@MarreFitbitMy watch is lying to me, but I think to be fair it's struggling to understand how the app can be so bad. There's nowhere in the app where I can view these lap times, so once I tap "Done" they're gone for ever. On a scale of 'Hopeless Amateur' to 'Successful Global Corporation', how acceptable would you say this is?

[RazzleTom]

Hmm. no response from Fitbit! Wow!

[Birdie308]

I too have noticed that no meaningful data are saved when one swims. I don't care about calories either. I too am truly disappointed and frustrated that all the meaningful information shown on the watch after the swimming workout is lost forever. I searched the app on my cell as well as this dashboard. I finally went to the forum only to find out that Fitbit doesn't seem to care what the users are identifying as issues. Sad state. I too will have to look at Garmin.

[Linzbfc]

I used the Iconic swim function for the first time last night and was very disappointed. I'm not at all interested in calories burnt. I want to know how fast I swam each length, what stroke I was doing and my pace etc. I also lost 4 lengths. I was hoping to be free from having to count so I could relax a bit.

Good thing my pool has free swimtags that provide all that info. 

[BradMcCormick]

Why do we keep getting generic replies from the likes of Maree. You people make this so complicated. I've asked for the same thing. We don't care about calories we want lap splits - you will keep loosing customers and yeah it may be only a few but you don't see to want to listen to the ones you have

@Jon001 and others voicing their concerns in this thread. I suggest we just pound them with votes and emails and replies. I don't give a rats about calories but lap times are so important to me. the stupid thing is that they show up on your watch but not in the app - how f.....ed is that. The information is there why not send it to the app. My watch doesn't tell me how many calories i burned /100 metres yet it shows up in the app. WTF.

Surely it cant be that hard to fix. I love my Fitbit Ionic but this is so frustrating and the lack of sensible responses only makes it worse. Time to look elsewhere perhaps

Moderator Edition: Format

[Linzbfc]

I've just stopped bothering with my fitbit for swimming as it stressed me out having something that could not even count lengths. I use a free swimtag at my pool and it's far more reliable and provides the data I need.

[AlvaroFitbit]

@BradMcCormick @Linzbfc I hope you're doing well! Thank you for sharing the feedback about wanting Lap Split data on your swim tracking exercise. Still the best way to get your voice heard is through our Feature Suggestions board as @MarreFitbit said so please add your comments and votes to any existing idea regarding this subject.

I'll be around!

[Jon001]

That's not what I meant by acting. You've just said nothing dressed up as something, and it's the same nothing that we've been hearing for months and months and months. 

[RazzleTom]

It's been a year and half of people posting here and the suggestions page. It is an easy fix and no one wants to address it. WOW!

[AlvaroFitbit]

@RazzleTom @Jon001 thanks for your replies. There isn't much we can do from our side. Not sure how easily this can be implemented but taking into consideration that the developers are working on different projects (improving existing features, creating new ones on either trackers, watches or apps/website) I guess their time is limited. The only thing we can suggest is that you vote to make the idea popular so they know there is a high amount of users interested in this specific feature. I do get that it is bothersome that something that would be helpful to you isn't developed/implemented but I ask for your understanding that this doesn't depend on us Moderators nor that we don't want the ideas come to life for the benefit of all users.

I'll be around!

[Linzbfc]

It should not need implementing. I just assumed that because I was buying an expensive tracker I'd be getting something better than the free SWIMTAG I get at my local pool. I only got the Iconic because my surges kept having bubbling straps and I saw the Iconic was for swimming too. I think I'd have been better off switching brands altogether. Fitbit pay does not work in the UK either. I suppose you haven't go the developers to work on that either unless we all vote for it. 

[BradMcCormick]

The thing I still find amazing is that at the end of a swim, lap times come up on your watch not caloroes burned but in the app its the opposite.
Why?

[SantiR]

@Linzbfc I hope you're doing well! Thanks for sharing your feedback on this thread. I have passed it to our team in order to better our products and services. 

@BradMcCormick I hope you're doing well too! Thanks for sharing this. Have you checked the settings when you select the Swim exercise? You can select what stats you want it to show! Tap the gear icon at the corner of the screen when selecting swim to check that out.

Keep me posted! 

[BradMcCormick]

@SantiR thanks for that. I know you can do that in the setting for swim but unfortunately thats not what appears on the app  dashboard . That's the issue. It is on the watch at the end of the a swim but it doesn't appear on your dashbaord - it's really quit strange but the fact, keeps falling on deaf ears in the Fitbit world