Inaccurate GPS

[Al82]

Hi, I am struggling with my charge 3 fitbit and the accuracy of the GPS. I plan my routes before running and I have taken to tracking them with different apps because the fitbit app gives inaccurate distances by 1km on a 7km run (so fairly fundamental). I start to track the run activity from my charge 3 (waiting for it to be connected and ensuring that the app is open on my phone). I run at a fairly consistent pace so if the signal is lost technically my step count x stride length should be pretty accurate (but even working the entire run on step count x automatically calculated stride length the run is still 0.5km short using fitbit data). Please help because I have loved my fit bit prior to running but it is so inaccurate it is redundant at the moment.

[Rich_Laue]

Hi @Al82 

You first mention that a 7km is off by 1km, with no mention of short or long. I'm assuming that based on the rest of your mention it is short.

Therefore you want to increase your stride by 1.4 times.

Saying that your unknown distance is off by 0.5km doesnt give enough to work with. 

Is this a 1km, 3.5 km, 7 km or maybe longer run?

The formula is

RealStride = FitbitStride(RealDistance/FitbitReportedDistance)

[Al82]

Hi, thank you for your reply. My run was 7km. The fitbit app records it as just less than 6km (this is one example of many recently, once the app has overestimated the distance too). If I take my step count for the same 7km run and multiply it by the automatically calculated stride length the distance would be around 6.5km so still short of the 7km. I have my stride length set to be automatically calculated. I can increase my fitbit stride length but I would like to understand why I need to do this when there is GPS and it should be calculated automatically? Other apps track the distance correctly. I understand the fit bit stride formula but I can't help feeling that fiddling with it is fudging it and fundamentally something is broken with the app.

[vPena]

Hi, this is happening to me too. I noticed that if you start the exercise (either run or walk) the distance isnt going to be accurate, but whenever I start running and let the device identify I'm running the distance is much more accurate. Right now the device has become a running clock for me. I also run the same circuit every day and I keep track of check points because I can't rely on the pace/distance I'm getting from Fitbit. Hope that the new firmware corrects this, or at least let me use my phone's GPS.

[vPena]

Oh, another suggestion is to let me edit my run. I can't do that. If I correct the distance, I would think that I would provide better data for the stride calculation.

[Rich_Laue]

Or @vPena as suggested, manually set the stride. 

[Rich_Laue]

I dont understand how it works, but supposedly during a run, the stride is automatically calculated.

At the same time, fitbit says that it uses both stride and gps to calculate distance

Have you added your vote to the request,  with less than 200 we need many more votes 

Editing Exercises Distance