Luxe is tracking too many steps when I'm on a weelchair

[glittertown]

Hi there, I just got a Fitbit Luxe and I use a power wheelchair, I have been reaching 1,000 to 2,000 steps just sitting in my chair. How can I stop it from doing this without completely enabling the step function? Really annoying getting congratulations notifications on my fitbit when I obviously didn't earn them.

Moderator Edit: Clarified subject

[MarreFitbit]

Hi there, @glittertown. Welcome to the Fitbit Community Forums. I'm sorry to hear that your Luxe is tracking too many steps when you're in the wheelchair. I understand how annoying this can be. I will do my best to help you with this situation.

As a first approach, please note there is no way to turn the step counter off for certain times (or speeds). But steps are detected, or more accurately inferred, from movement of the wrist and arms, as in arm swings when walking. When walking, every arm swing corresponds to a step, swinging the arm front and back corresponds to 2 steps. 

I expect a non-motorized wheelchair would count each arm push as a step, or maybe as 2 steps. But if not using arms when motorized, it should not count any steps at all, unless there happen to be a lot of vibrations that can trick your Fitbit device into thinking the arm is swinging, such as can happen riding a bicycle. It does depend on the motions your wrist goes through.

Second, and you might already know this, many measurements, such as calorie burn and active zone minutes, are based on heart rate, and step count does not affect this, though higher step count does usually raise the heart rate, it does not directly factor into the calculations, so even if the step count goes crazy, that does not necessarily mean calorie burn and AZM will be affected.

For more information, see How accurate are Fitbit devices?

Hope this information helps.