Elliptical instead of Walking

[DuMilandre]

I do a long hard walk every morning for more than 30 minutes. Sometimes the Charge 4 picks it up the walk as an Elliptical workout, which it's not. It also seems as if the Fitbit starts picking up an elliptical workout some time after I started walking - so it shows that the workout was shorter and more intense. I think the algorithm to detect elliptical is not accurate.

So I set the app to ignore elliptical workouts. Behold, this morning's 30+ minute brisk walk was totally ignored, not even a walk exercise was recorded!

Please have a look at the algorithm, it's absolutely frustrating.

[charleskn]

As an FYI, you can change the amount of time needed to auto-recognize an activity, and you can edit auto-recognized activities, and change them from elliptical to walk, or whatever. This only works around, and doesn't fix the issue.

[JuanFitbit]

@charleskn , Nice to see you back. Thank you for your advice. 

@DuMilandre , A warm welcome to the Community! Thank you for your message and information. 

As our friend charleskn mentioned, there can be various reasons why your activities were not recorded or recognized correctly .

For example, the activity is not fully recognized by your movement patterns.

I recommend restarting your tracker and setting the start times for the activities differently. For example, set it to 10 minutes for a walk, 15 for a run, 20 for an outdoor bike ride, etc., and/or ignoring the activities you don't use.

You can find the instructions for this here.Can I change how my activities are tracked?

See you around.

[EdmundC]

Restarting the tracker does seem to solve the issues - what I've noticed is that my Charge 4 occasionally stops recording steps when I am walking and pass the 250 steps/hour and the 10,000 steps marks at the same time close to the end of an hour - it just stops recording steps until I reboot the Charge 4.

[KTG4242]

I didn't like using the auto-recognition feature for exercise and just manually start an exercise session on my Charge 4.  I use the GPS feature for outdoor walks and runs so it has to recognize the route to get the mileage.  If you forget and get another elliptical when it should be a walk, you can edit the log and make sure it's recorded as a walk.

[JuanFitbit]

@KTG4242 , Nice to see you back. Thank you fo r sharing your expertise, and tips. 

@EdmundC , Nice to see you around. I'm glad that the restart helped. Thank you for your feedback and sharing your observations. 

Please keep us updated. 

See you around. 

[DuMilandre]

Hi @JuanFitbit 

I've done two walking exercises since this last post. In both cases I reboot the device before the exercise. But the device still picked up elliptical exercise instead of walking. I also don't start and stop an exercise on the app because I don't carry my phone with me during the walk, I rely on it to automatically detect it, like I've done since my first Charge 2.

You recommend "setting the start times for the activities differently". I can't find that settings page on the app, only a page to auto recognise exercises - and it only starts "counting" after a minimum of 10 minutes? Is there another page in the app that you're referring to?

Still frustrated!

Thanks

[JuanFitbit]

@DuMilandre , Nice to see you here. Thank you for describing what you already performed and how the situation develops. 

Yes, you are exactly on the menu in the app to change the starting times. The minimum time needed for an activity to be recognized is 10 minutes. 

You can set your elliptical to be ignored. 

Don't forget to sync your Charge 4 after any changes in the app

See you around. 

[DuMilandre]

It does not work. I've done all of the advised items, but it keeps on showing Elliptical workout for less than half the time that I actually exercised. Could it be a hardware problem? It doesn't make sense.

[JuanFitbit]

@DuMilandre , Thank you for your reply and keeping me updated. 

In that case, please give us a call or chat with us. Our Team will be more than glad to have a closer look. 

Click here to get connected. 

See you around.

[DuMilandre]

Thank you, will do.

[EdmundC]

The current updates seem to have fixed the problem.  I often walk on a treadmill for 5 or 10 minutes (just a little easy exercise) and watch my step count on the phone, propped on the treadmill while I count the actual step count, typically the phone updates every 10-11 steps but occasionally when I hit the zone-minutes margin or the 250-steps or 10,000 steps limits then the phone takes a while to even update the displayed count.  This all makes sense when you consider how all this data is being processed and flows from the Fitbit to the phone, then to the Fitbit internal cloud processing, and finally back to the phone display.

Essentially it's all working these days.