Charge 3 counting steps while cycling

[kmaus]

Hi all,

I am new to Fitbit as I bought my Charge 3 this week and still figuring things out. However, I noticed that my Charge 3 continues to count steps while cycling. Is there a way to stop this?

I want my Fitbit to only count my real steps, as I commuting 5 times a week 20km to my work. For the past 3 days, I am over 15,000 steps on a daily basis, which I don't think is accurate.

Many thanks for your help!

Moderator edit: subject for clarity

[Adrienm]

Hi, same issue here. It adds approximately 1000 steps every 30min ride. Fitbit says it’s « normal » to get « some » steps while biking on bumpy roads. I’m talking about asphalt and perfectly flat roads, on a very stable bike. 

Since the band knows when you are biking, it should automatically stop counting steps, this is absolutely ridiculous...

[kmaus]

Hi Adrienm, you are right.. It's not just a few steps due to a bumpy road, but while cycling, I can see the steps increasing heavily. I think I am on +2,500 steps per bike ride to work, ridiculous indeed..! And trust me, my road isn't bumpy at all either. I don't understand that I can see post going back a few years, all reporting this issue, and nothing has been done so far. When I look at my Exercise, it says 0 steps.. But my daily steps are still increased..

It is so annoying, I really want to be active besides my bike rides, but I also want to know my heart rate while cycling, so I can't take the fitbit off.. Now my fitbit is not 'pushing' me at all to walk more, besides my cycling. I hope something can be done, it shouldn't be that hard?!

[BlueSunshineDK]

I have the same problem. I replaced my Charge 2 with the brand new Charge 3 a week ago and since I have had an excess of steps while biking, this was never a problem with the Charge 2.  I would also like it to only count actual steps.

[Anders101]

Hi!

I have the same problem, Charger 3 counts steps, floors and distance even though it has identified the activity as biking. I hope they will correct the bug soon since it makes my goals for floors and steps pointless.

Regards

   Anders

[R3N3]

Why is there not a way to stop the fitbit from counting steps? I’m a truck driver and want the Fitbit to keep track of my heart rate though out the day but as im driving it starts counting steps. I get over 30,000 steps per day when In reality 100 steps would be more accurate. So frustrating. 

[hgeest]

Same problem here. In the web dashboard it even shows the number of steps! Using my previous charge 2 it said 0 steps added. with my charge 3 its between 2500 and 3000 for a 45min. bike ride, and 15 or more stairs!

I suggest to change the topic to " Please stop counting steps (and stairs) while cycling"

To the obvious suggestion to "manually add driving for the exercise time" i say:

I have better things to do then daily correcting something that CAN and should work automatically.

[s9876]

Same applies while swimming. The excercise section says 0 steps but they are there in the daily chart. Not sure why when it knows you are biking/swimming as you’ve told it or it’s been auto recognised. It should  ignore the steps properly. 

And don’t get me started on driving. I put mine on charge in the car to avoid getting steps and stairs added. Expecting you to mess about adding a driving activity is crazy. For one you need to do in the app not in the device do you need to remember the exact stop and start times, then it credits you with an excercise for that day which you haven’t done, messing up that goal. 

[UltraNerd]

Came to the board to find threads like this and I was not disappointed...

I have no new information to add to this thread, except that I see the same behavior on my Charge 3.
And like all others, I would love for this to be fixed as it clearly is wrong.

Many floors climbed and thousands of steps get added while cycling, swimming and even driving a car. No bumps in the road and a very flat area.

For cycling/swimming the dashboard claims the impact of the exercise is "+0 steps added", but looking at the steps throughout the day it is clear to see that many steps got added anyway.

[neiby]

I just got the Charge 3 and noticed the same thing. I can get a couple of hundred "steps" just by driving to the place where I walk my dog. I really want to wear it to track heart rate, but I wish there were a better way to get it to stop registering all these fake steps.

[Brydee]

Bought one on the weekend and it’s ridiculous that steps aren’t separated from other exercise. Disappointing 

[why_knot]

Totally agree, I just got my charge 3, did a century ride yesterday and fitbit shows 46,000 steps for the day... reading a few posts makes me think fitbit is aware of this, but has chosen not to fix. Ridiculous, the whole point of an activity tracker is accuracy. I also synced with Strava which makes the whole day very confusing...

[FizzyFiona]

I have also recently upgraded to Charge 3 as my Charge 2 stopped working within the warranty period. I rode to and from work today and now have reached 13,000 steps while pretty much sitting at my desk all day. Yesterday I apparently climbed 20 floors after driving to work and then taking the lift to my floor a couple of times. I’m incredibly disappointed with the new Fitbit. 

[JennyNess]

I started using the FitBit Charge 3 just one week ago on Jan 7th 2009 and I was very exited. I decided to go cycling this morning for about 30 to 40 minutes for the first time since I got the Charge 3. When I finished I noticed I had over 9000 steps registered on MyFitnessPal when I fact, by that time of day I had taken about 3000 to 3500 steps at the most.

I decided to delete the exercise activity that was synced by MapMyFitness from MapMyFitness or the Fitbit App as I could not delete the steps and, clearly leaving both activities on the MFP record was definitely going to overestimate my burned calories for the day and allow me to eat more in order to net the same amount of calories that I set on my goal. This problem bothers a lot as I believe more calories can be burned by cycling than by walking, but at the same time, leaving the logged exercise in addition to the extra fake steps was going to significantly overestimate the overall amount of burned calories during the day and affect the calorie intake allowance based on my goals.

After spending the entire day trying to understand all the Apps and the Charge 3, the only solution I can think of right now is to go ride the bike without wearing the Charge 3 as I can just take the iPhone with the MapMyRide App on it and have it calculate de details of my exercise and calorie burn and after that, go ahead and log the exercise manually but that would mean that I can’t monitor other stuff like heart rate, etc while working out.

Another thing that happened was that the street I rode on looks flat to the eye in general but it has some slight changes in elevation so my Charge 3 increased the number I had “gone up the stairs” by about 50 times. 

Basically I am wondering if the “Fitness Tracker” is just a “Step Tracker” with a Heart Rate monitor that can only be used for walking and nothing else which is going to be REALLY disappointing, specially since it is advertised as a Fitness Tracker and the price was high to just be a step tracker.

Does anybody know if the people from FitBit read and answer to this messages and offer solutions or explain if we are doing something wrong?

[UltraNerd]

Very well put, I could not have (and have not) said it better!

The forums are moderated, so someone with ties to Fitbit is certainly reading along. My opinion: it is not the task of a moderator to report on user complaints as ours.

That is why I reported this behavior to Fitbit Support as a bug. I hope and believe that more people reporting the same bug will give more priority to fixing it. So call / email / tweet and let's hope that this will get fixed eventually.

[chrismcclain077]

i'm glad i read this.  I had a fitbit charge 2 and stopped using it because it did this.  I thought it would be solved because the charge 3 recognizes cycling.  I literally decided on the charge 3 and was looking for info on how it maps cycling.  Moving on, and looking for other options.  Too bad because I"m familiar with the fitbit interface.  Sorry to all the cyclists who bought the charge 3.

[ashwin67]

Same issue here. Got the fitbit as a gift and was very very excited until I cycled to work. 5.4 kms in actual showed as 2 kms on the fitbit and some 2000 steps of walking! My pixel phone on the other hand tracked it as cycling and some 3.5 kms (which is off the mark but still better than fitbit). Disappointed. Hope they provide a software update.

[FizzyFiona]

Sounds like good advice. I have recently bought a Garmin bike computer, so the Garmin watch is the next step.

[RiseAndShine]

Steps are counted for cycling by design… many fitness apps are doing the same - converting cycling into steps because majority of users are using steps as a primary daily goal. If cycling is not converted to steps, then many of us would miss this activity impact altogether. BTW, a lot of corporations are using various health incentives where steps are set as a primary goal - those of us who cycle as one of the main activities would never meet the step goal!

Used various apps at work - and they all would take cycling time/distance (some of them would even use type of cycling - road vs mountain) and convert it to steps. Once I got Charge 3, I rather had a gripe that it converts cycling to too few steps - for the 20 mile ride I'd get over 16K steps using our fitness app at work vs. about 8K steps given by Fitbit. I honestly don't understand why cycling should not be counting towards steps... What would help though, is the ability to separate steps by activity - this way users could see their walking/running/ etc steps. Right now Fitbit app doesn't do it, and I'm pretty sure this would be quite possible to do since they have all the data. But I'd never ever recommend removing cycling from an activity to count steps towards daily goal.

[Anders101]

The Garmin sounds interesting; I will look it up if Fitbit don’t fix this bike bug.

I have been in contact with the support for some time now, arguing back and forth about why my Charge adds about 50 stairs and 5000 steps each hour I am on the bike. They just reply that it is normal.
I could understand if they answered that some of their users wants to have bike workout converted to steps and stairs, if so it would have been an easy fix to add a configuration were you could choose to have the “conversion” enabled or not.
Anyway, they have given up on me and tried to end the arguing by notifying the technical department about my findings. Don’t hold your breath on that one.

Mean while I have added a feature proposition at Fitbit, do not count steps and stairs while biking. It is starting to get some votes; I hope it will get a lot more votes when the snow melts and many users bring out their bikes; and gets a surprise.

  https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Feature-Suggestions/Stopp-counting-stairs-and-steps-when-biking/idi-...