Erractic and erroneous Charge 3 altimeter elevation tracking

[sko_tang]

I am flattered and then shocked that I earned a Skydiver badge:

I have known Charge 3 floor counts are way off the chart sometimes when I do lawn mowing or just walking outdoor.  I live in the prairies so elevation gradient changes are not significant, at least not around the 5 to 6 km radius that I do my walks.

Then I pay more attention to my recent connected-GPS walks and started reviewing the Charge 3 exercise summary which I usually dismiss by tapping the check mark at the end knowing I can just review the stats from the iOS app.  Not so the elevation!  The app does not show that for no good reason.  I have to log on to the web Dashboard to find the elevation again.

My usual elevations should be around:

But sometimes this is recorded:

And wow look at this:

As confirmed by the Charge 3 exercise summary:

A 70 m change is taller than the pinnacle of the Empire State Building!

There are many other reports by different users that Charge 3 reported extra floors.  Most users are savvy enough to ensure they have the latest app and firmware versions, restarted the tracker and ensure the results are not due to normal altitude or atmospheric changes.  So this boils down to faulty altimeter or algorithm?  Or maybe unreasonable elevation changes just need to be filtered out before calculating floor counts?

Users understand activity trackers are not medical grade devices but the results should be reasonable.  Charge 3 users bought it instead of cheaper competing products (easily at 1/4 the price) with an expectation that it provides reasonably useful guidelines so that they work towards healthier lifestyle.  Fitbit users expect the company to stand behind its products and work towards delivering reasonable metrics.  Being awarded a Skydiver badge when I know that I have not climbed 1000 floors did not give me any guidance to live a healthier lifestyle and it did not give me much confidence in Fitbit.

It is time moderators stop giving us canned responses from a template and escalate the issue.  It is time Fitbit address the issue and deliver a solution.

[Den_in_USA]

There is a tiny hole in the watch for the pressure sensor that cannot be blocked. I assume that greasy hand lotions could cause a problem.

[sko_tang]

Thanks for the suggestion @Den_in_USA .  But I don’t use lotion so this doesn’t apply.  Also if the hole was blocked the elevation would be wrong for a much longer duration and we would not see a sharp 70m spike during the walk.

[sko_tang]

So yesterday after recording 31 floors for the 47 minutes of push lawn mowing plus my usual real floor climbing, I was awarded the Lighthouse badge (50 floors in a day):

That seems to be an insult to Charge 3 users who really work hard to earn their badges!

I really hope Fitbit allow users to edit away the ghost floors.  We love the automatic floors tracking and we know what floors shouldn't be there.  To make the floor counts meaningful towards a healthier lifestyle, the metric has to be realistic.

My usual walk along the same 5.5 km route this morning shows 25 m elevation when there was no strong wind or atmospheric changes.

The usual elevation should be around 3-4 m.  As a result I was awarded an extra 8 floors.

I did a non-scientific search of the Charge 3 forum using the following terms and I rank them according to the number of search results:

1. Battery (1000 results)

1. Sleep (1000)

2. Blank screen (742)

3. Dead (425)

4. Accuracy (410)

4. Water (410)

5. Floor (203)

6. Frozen (144)

7. Badge (32)

While obviously there are overlaps (e.g. some topics about accuracy could be about floor or step counts, and some topics could be positive raving instead of negative rants), floor ranks only a distant 5th and badge really doesn't seem to be on the map.

So the sad conclusion is that I will have to accept the Lighthouse badge in shame knowing I did not deserve it and knowing Fitbit is not going to do anything to fix it soon.

[Domcham]

This is really annoying. I do a lot of hiking and know the exact elevation gain from the map and it is always wrong for more than 300 metres! It doesn't understand as well that I do a lot of steps but not as much km walked because l go up a mountain. But it piles up the km anyway. I press the hike exercise from fitbit. Will switch to Garmin very soon.

[sko_tang]

My Charge 3 gives me very different floor counts / elevation every single time I do my same 5.5km (approx) walk, ranging from 8m to 19m to 70m!

Today it is the first time after a long, long time it gave me a 3m elevation change, which is close to what www.mappedometer.com has been telling me all along. Although the max and min elevations still differ but the Charge 3 connected GPS reports a reasonable elevation and floor counts after my walk today.  I am almost in tears as I am typing this.

BTW I am using firmware 1.60.39 iOS app 2.95 (839). I am not updating after reading all the horror stories of updates bricking the Charge 3 (sync, battery drain, blank screen issues).  I can live without these.

[sko_tang]

My Charge 3 altimeter is blowing lots of hot air.  I’m awarded a Hot Air Balloon badge for a lifetime 2000 floors in 5 months mainly walking in level neighbourhood in the prairies and mowing the lawn:

[Jaclack]

I get a lot better distance and step measurement when I use the walk or hike function with the phone syncing than if I let it auto detect - but the altimeter is always way off with greatly exaggerated number of floors climbed.

[Stratman-]

Elevation tracking is still a problem, although they seem to have fixed a gps problem I had when starting exercise from the tracker. Don’t know why it is so inconsistent... annoying.