Fitbit One adding extra distance

[Knittenwalker]

The last few days I noticed my distances seemed higher than I expected. For instance I didn't do much walking other than my regular lunch time walk, went 2.3 miles. Yet my fitbit one says I walked 3.8 miles so far today. I looked at the mileage graph (just in case I forgot some steps) added up the distance there and got 2.8 miles. So I have no idea when this extra mile might have happened. I haven't made any changes to stride length to explain how I suddenly started going farther with less steps.

Anyone else notice this? I tried restarting my fitbit bit no joy.

Moderator Edit: Updated Subject for Clarity

[SteveH]

I had a similar problem the other day using my versa. It seems to have been a temporary glitch though and things seem to be back to normal.

Like you, I had made no changes to my stride. One thing I did consider was that on that day I did some very brisk walking and I wondered whether some of my steps were considered to be running rather than walking. If so, a longer running stride would have been used to calculate distance from those steps.

From what you say in your post this doesn't seem to be the case with you but, just in case, I thought I ask in case it was.

[Knittenwalker]

I reset my stride length, and over the weekend my Fitbit behaved normally, no unexplained miles. It was really cold out so I did all my walking in the house without GPS tracking.  I did my first GPS tracked walk Monday, since than I have started getting unexplained miles. When I total up the miles shown on the graph I get less miles than my daily total.

After breaking apart my day,  during my GPS activities (only walking) my average stride length (distance GPS measured over steps Fitbit said were the impact) was 28.3.     A little higher than what my Fitbit is set for (26.5) but close.   I subtracted the distance GPS tracked from my daily total, and subtracted the impact steps from my tracked activity, and calculated my average stride length for the none GPS activities, I got an average stride length of 37.96 in.   That's a really big difference from what the GPS says and more importantly what the fitbit is set at.    

Half a mile or more discrenpency. 

What gives?   What's the point of being able to set your stride length of the fitbit is going to grab a random number to use for calculations.   

I was using my Fitbit to track distance for several virtual runs but now I am seriously questioning its accuracy.  I expect the possibility that some random movements may get counted as steps, but this isn't a small inaccuracy.

I have had my Fitbit one for years and never had this problem until the last week or so.  

[SantiR]

@Knittenwalker Welcome to the Fitbit forums! Thanks for reporting the situation you are currently experiencing with the distance tracked by your One lately. Thanks for sharing all of those details to better understand this.

By any chance, have you tried performing a restart on your One? This should refresh its inner components and could help out.

Also, is this also happening when you don't track GPS activities? When you track GPS runs you are using MobileRun which uses the GPS from your phone to generate maps. Working with the GPS sensors in your phone, MobileRun calculates distance, elevation, and pace for your walk, run, or hike. Steps, active minutes, and calories burned that you see on your Fitbit dashboard come from the tracker. This may be why the distance is different. Check this article for more details on this. 

@SteveH Thanks for sharing you help on this thread! 

Hope this helps. Keep me posted!