Can I correct the distance of a tracked exercise?

[SunsetRunner]

Hi,

Today I took a walk and used my Inspire HR to track the exercise with Connected GPS. Normally this works very accurately, but today the total distance was off. It only tracked 6,5 kilometers while the walk in reality was 13,75 km long! The route is correct though, when I look at the map it shows exactly where I've been. My Fitbit account is connected to my Runkeeper account and when I looked at the exercise on the Runkeeper website it initially showed 6,5 km but when I opened it, it automatically adjusted to 13,75 km!

All the other stats (steps, time, heartrate, etc) are correct, it's only the total distance that's incorrect. Is there any way to correct this without having to delete and re-enter the exercise (thus losing for instance heart rate stats)?

Thank you in advance!

Eline

[LizzyFitbit]

Hi @SunsetRunner. It's nice to see you around.

I'm glad to hear that you've had a good experience with your Inspire HR. Thanks for letting me know that, aside of your other stats, the distance wasn't recorded accurately on your last exercise. As you may know, your device will track GPS data once the GPS is found. For example, if I start running before the GPS is found, some data will start to be tracked from the moment the GPS is found.

About your inquiry, currently the option to edit activities isn't available for the ones that used GPS connection. Let me suggest to restart your Inspire HR to refresh its performance and try testing it to see if the issue persists. If so, let me know so I can help you out.

I'll be around if you need anything else.

[SunsetRunner]

Hello Lizzy,

Thank you for your reply.

Like you said, I do know that I should wait for the device to connect before starting an exercise. I always do that, as I did last Wednesday, so that's not an issue. Moreover, it seemed to be tracking the distance just fine for 1 or 2 kilometers and only then did it start to deviate.

Your second suggestion is to restart the device but that's not possible once I'm outside and have started walking, so that's not very helpful either.

I propose that Fitbit either adds the option to edit activities, or makes it so that maps correct themselves when uploaded to the website, in the same way that Runkeeper does. 

Eline

[LizzyFitbit]

Hi @SunsetRunner, I'm glad to see you here again.

Thanks for sharing more details about your Inspire HR, as well for taking the information posted above into consideration. I see your point of view, and let me clarify that it's not necessary to do so every time, you can just restart it once before doing your activity to refresh its settings. Also, I'd suggest to make sure of the following:

1. GPS can continue tracking while your phone is locked. If you don't see it, that means that it was disabled when using the battery settings mode or airplane mode on your phone.

2. The location services are enabled within your privacy settings. Make sure to have the "High accuracy" option selected.

3. Your phone can track your activity when you're out of WiFi range. This is usually achieved by making sure Cellular Data is turned on.

Let me share that we have the Feature Suggestion board, which is the right place to submit ideas that you wish to see in the future. I found that someone has already posted a similar idea of editing distance in your GPS logged activity. Take a look and add your vote.

If you have other ideas, search first, in case someone else has already suggested your idea, or submit it so our team can take a look, and other members can vote for it.

I'll be around, so keep me posted.

[SunsetRunner]

Hello Lizzy,

Thanks for all the tips. I've done everything you suggested but unfortunately today it happened again. I tracked an exercise that was almost 12 km long but my device only counted 5,33 km.

I made sure my Inspire was connected to my phone before I started, the connection was flawless during the whole exercise, I had reset my Inspire the last time I charged it, I have set the GPS on my phone to the highest accuracy, etc etc. The map of the exercise looks perfect, en when opening the exercise in Runkeeper, it automatically adjusted the distance to 11,74 km but still in the Fitbit app it only shows 5,33 km. 

I consider this a serious flaw and I wish Fitbit would do something to fix it. Or, maybe if it's just my device, I would like to know how to send it back so I can get a replacement.

Can you help me with this?

Thank you in advance,

Eline

[djst2 · Accepted solution]

Same issue here, Inspire HR only recording about half of the distance, yet the plotted map tracking is highly accurate from start to to finish.

Honestly I don't think the solution is to allow editing of distance manually. Fitbit should simply be smart enough to auto correct an incorrect distance recording when finishing the walk/run by just looking at the plotted path. It's not rocket science and clearly Runkeeper is able to extract a believable distance from the same data source.

[SunsetRunner]

My thoughts exactly!

When the exercise was first synched to Runkeeper, it it also showed 5,33km. But then I clicked the "edit" button, it opened the map and the website looked like it was loading again. Apparently it was calculating because after it was done loading, the distance changed from 5,33 to 11,74km. 

I'm not an IT expert but I can't imagine this being a very hard peace of code to implement...

[SunsetRunner]

Today I reset my device immediately before going out, but again it recorded a distance of 2,81 km where Runkeeper automatically corrected it to the 6,19 km it actually was (based on the GPS data it received from Fitbit!).

What it going on here? Is something wrong with my device?

[LizzyFitbit]

Hi @SunsetRunner and @djst2. It's nice to see you around.

@SunsetRunner, thanks for providing more details, as well for your efforts in troubleshooting your device. I see where are you coming from, and thanks for your feedback. About your question, before I can request to our Support Team to review your options, I'd like to try a few more steps.

While the rest of your information is being recorded correctly, I'd recommend to check or adjust your stride length in your account, as the Fitbit app will also take into consideration the information recorded by your Inspire HR. Also, please check this help article which explains what factors affect the GPS signal, and includes some troubleshooting steps.

@djst2, thanks for letting me know about your Inspire HR. I mentioned about the idea posted in the Feature Suggestion board since it was asked how to edit the distance recorded via GPS, but I see your point of view and appreciate your comments. May I know if you've reviewed the information posted through this thread? Also, have you tried restarting your Inspire HR?

I'll be around, so let me know how it goes.

[SunsetRunner]

Hi Lizzy,

Thanks again for your help.

I had already checked my stride length a while ago so I'm sure that's correct. When I go roller skating though, I use the "hiking" option to track my exercise (because I don't want my roller skating to get mixed up with my walking, running or cycling exercises), but when roller skating my strides are completely different than walking of course.

I read the article you suggested and checked everything mentioned there.

When I went walking the other day it seemed to track the distance just fine for about 8 km, until I took out my phone to take a couple of photo's. About 2-2,5 km further on, I noticed that the device had only added about 1 km, so then I opened my phone and closed all other apps except for Fitbit. From then on it seemed to track the distance well again. So, just to be safe I have now disabled the location permission for my camera app, hoping this is now fixed.

But... when roller skating today I again took all the precautions previously mentioned. Closed all the other apps on my phone except Fitbit, made sure the device was synchronised, etc etc. Put the device on Hiking (as mentioned above), but unfortunately it tracked even less than half of the distance I covered. Could this really have to do with the device only counting my "steps" times stride length? That would really suck because that would mean I could never accurately track an inline skating exercise (until skating/skeelering is added to the trackable excercises, which I have already mentioned on the Feature Suggestions board). Unless... would it make a difference if I tracked the exercise directly from the app on my phone instead of with my Inspire? If that works better than I'm definitely willing to try that.

Thank you in advance for all your help!

Kind regards,

Eline

[LizzyFitbit]

Hi @SunsetRunner, I'm glad to see you here, and I'm sorry for the delay in my response.

I truly appreciate your efforts in getting your Inspire HR working correctly to track your distance, and I'm sorry about the experience that you've had with this situation. The distance is recorded based on your steps and GPS data. Since the suggestions posted through this thread didn't work, I've gone ahead and requested a case to our Support Team. They'll be in touch with you via email, so keep an eye on your inbox.

I'll be around if you need anything else. 

[SunsetRunner]

Hey Lizzy,

Just in case you were wondering... ultimately, no one from the Support Team was able to fix this, so the conclusion in the end was:

"We can't fix this and Fitbit is happy to leave it at that so you'll just have to learn lo live with this."

Is it too much to ask to be able to see how many kilometres I've skated in the Fitbit app when I go skating? 

Apparently, yes it is.

So yeah,  there's that.