Charge 4 is tracking too many floors

[Dround]

I live in a single story home and the charge 4 has me climbing 84 floors?  I have not gone up any stairs.

Moderator Edit: Clarified subject

[Julia_G · Accepted solution]

Hi, @Dround , the Fitbits that calculate floors do so by use of a very small altimeter built in to the device.  The altimeter detects very subtle changes in atmospheric pressure.  It is so sensitive that it can detect such small changes that it can detect a rise of only 10 feet - either from going up a flight of stairs, or a gentle stroll up a slight hill outdoors.  

Unfortunately the “side effect” of this sensitivity is that the floor counting on the Fitbit can also be affected by changes in the weather (a storm blowing in), a gust of wind, or even a slamming door, and then it will credit you with “floors” you didn’t actually climb.  Fitbit is aware of this limitation, and this is the reason your calories burned do not take into account the floor detection, and I think this is also the reason that Fitbit has eliminated the floor counting aspect of its more recent Fitbit devices.  They have simply removed this metric as it caused a lot of confusion and people thinking their Fitbit was malfunctioning, when in fact it was working as expected - the altimeter was detecting changes in pressure (just not from going up stairs…)

I would take your floor count with a grain of salt.  It should work pretty well on quiet days, but is too inconsistent to be really relied on.  You should have seen the forums when hurricane Sandy was blowing into New York - people were getting thousands of extra floors!  (And whenever I go on the London Underground the wind from a train rushing into the station gave me hundreds of floors!)

[Dround]

Thank you for your explanation.