Climb with a chainsaw. Get a floor a minute.

[gateswood]

Sounds dangerous, huh? Not when you do it the fitbit way.

I spent a half hour Saturday walking around trimming up 10 year old oak trees with a rather large chainsaw. My feet never left the ground and there is less than 2' of elevation change across this piece of land.  My Charge HR gave me credit for climbing 40 floors. and logged it as "Sport"

My best guess is this chainsaw engine draws enough intake air past my fully gloved hand to allow the fitbit sense a negative pressure and count floors.  The air intake is inches away from from my covered and protected fitbit. Sound reasonable?

The next fitbit flaw I want to figure out is why I consistently get credit for ~27 floors and ~6000 steps per hour when I mow with my very large zero turn diesel mower.

The step counting error is no mystery since fitbit counts hand movements as steps. What confuses me is how and why it counts up all the floors.  The radiator screen, fan and engine air intakes are more than 2' behind my fitbit hand with me and the seat in between. The more humorous part of this error is my fitbit logs my mowing activities under "Recent Exercise" as "Outdoor Bike".

PS to moderators... I don't want to know how to delete sessions in an attempt to remove errors. I don't care about that. The major asset my fitbit provides is active minutes and the pure entertainment value. I just want to continue learning how the fitbit conjures up all wild calculations.

[SunsetRunner]

Stay safe

[gateswood]

Here's another good example of floors for free. I mowed some grass on the above mentioned "Outdoor Bike" twice today. 56 minutes total. I earned 30 floors for my efforts. I'm beginning to wonder if engine noise isn't another contributory factor to temporary insanity in the fitbit.

[JuanJoFitbit]

@gateswood It's great to see you in the Community! Thanks for providing screenshots and examples regarding the extra floors you got when using a chainsaw. Your Charge HR detects floors using an altimeter, which is a sensor that calculates altitude based on atmospheric pressure. Though your tracker is designed to look for pressure changes based on elevation gains, pressure changes due to other causes (such as a gust of wind, a weather change, or opening a door) can occasionally cause your tracker to register an extra floor or two.

Let me know if more questions arise my friend! 

[gateswood]

@JuanJoFitbit Thanks for your explanation but being a retired commercial pilot I am very well aware of the relationship between air pressure and altitude. I understand perfectly well how this system is supposed to function and I understand how a fitbit can erroneously "register an extra floor or two".

What I don't understand is the pure insanity these things display in conjuring up utterly impossible data points. Here's another pair of screenshots for your analytical enjoyment. Please explain how a fitbit can log 75 floors while riding an "Outdoor Bike" (a lawn mower) for 117 minutes while mowing a perfectly level 4 acre horse pasture?

Seriously, please explain how this can possibly happen.

[Spackler]

I am getting erroneous floors while mowing. 56 floors when mowing today. Looking back at other people having this issue, chainsaw, mowing, etc. it seems like the issue could be caused by vibration.

FITBIT - Have you looked at the possibility that the floors are recorded in error if the device is on a vibrating hand?

Would REALLY like to see this fixed. Seeing posts from years ago about it.

Thank you.

[ratman_42]

Yes.. .        . running a chainsaw logs phantom floors.  I noticed this a few years ago.  Slower vibrations - such as running an air chisel do not log floors.

The true irony is that while running a chainsaw will log elevation change - Running bleachers will NOT.

[gateswood]

The best solution to this problem is dump the Charge HR. My first 3 or 4 fitbits were all junk Charge HR's and they're really goofy in all ways. While wearing these, I accumulated 111 ridiculous daily badges for floors (over 50 a day) and another badge for 4000 lifetime floors. The only floors I ever earned were from climbing a ladder. I never go up stairs.

That all ended when I switched to a Charge 2. No more silly badges for floors with this model. It's so much better in every way.