Drivebit gone, Travelbit gone, Versa still useless to me

[house.woodville]

It's been nearly a year since the Versa came out and I bought one right away. As a professional driver in a work van on poorly maintained roads, it was important to have a device I could wear all day without much fuss. I had learned about the Drivebit app before my purchase and was excited there was finally a tracker I could use. I used it, but I struggled to remember to turn it on and off 25 times a day. Then I discovered Travelbit Premium which had a nice auto-detect feature. But now neither of those apps work anymore. It's sad that Fitbit refuses to see the real struggle of so many people. We drivers want to live healthier and these devices could be a nice aid to see how much walking we get in. Some days it's a lot more than others, but we'll never know because the tracker thinks we walked 7500 steps but we really just drove across town to our first pickup. I can't understand how a device can see how fast we're moving, yet not understand that people aren't walking 20 mph or 60 mph etc.

[AlvaroFitbit]

@house.woodville  It's great to see that you've visited the Fitbit Community! Sorry to hear that your Versa is recording steps while driving and that the apps you used aren't working any more. You can manually log a driving activity to negate these steps. Also you can try wearing your device on your non dominant hand but select that hand as dominant on the device’s settings to make it less sensitive to movement.

If you wish you can share your suggestion about a driving mode in our Feature suggestions board. Search for the idea first to see if one already exist so you can add your vote. The more votes an idea gets the more likely the developers will try to implement it.

Let me know how it goes.

[WavyDavey]

@AlvaroFitbit,

Since the 3rd party apps that negate steps seem to have gone away, is there any chance Fitbit might make a similar function in the Fibit app?

[AlvaroFitbit]

@WavyDavey this would be ideal. Even having it as an "exercise" option would help in many cases. For this reason I shared the Feature suggestions board link so members can share their input about this. I actually found an idea everybody could vote for here.

Keep me posted!

[MattWolf76]

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@AlvaroFitbit wrote:

@WavyDavey this would be ideal. Even having it as an "exercise" option would help in many cases. For this reason I shared the Feature suggestions board link so members can share their input about this. I actually found an idea everybody could vote for here.

Keep me posted!

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Lol you have to be kidding me.  I click on your link and see posts and ideas dated 2014.  How many years does it take to listen to your customers?  I'm sure it's not the case, but your companies lack of progress makes it seem that you only care about selling units, not about the overall customer experience.  I'm sure I'm wrong about this, or at least hope I am.  I just orderd a coding for dummies book, if you like I will write one for you. This being said, I do enjoy my fitbit ionic.  I just have to take some of the stats as skewed because of the driving inaccuracy .  Such an easy fix...please, for all of your users fix it!

[secrecyguy]

I was surprised when I see DriveBit and TravelBit disappeared. They actually had it in their Fitbit app.  My guess why it disappeared is it may have made them look bad because why didn't they come up with it instead 3rd party? So FitBit force them to shut down. They should have bought them instead of forcing them to shut down. As Fitbit making their own, unlikely because they have to buy Drivebit and Travelbit to use their technology. 

[Kevscout]

Unfortunately i cannot give the url to the best site to download from..just do a non Google search..try duck duck go..its on many other download sites. I just put it on my phone.

Still here just not in the playstore. Many other sites still have them.

[gthacker]

I don't make long drives frequently enough for them to be an issue for me (though when I do make the occasional trip from one corner of the South to the opposite one, my readings end up way off), but I do regularly ride a motorcycle, and doing so throws the accelerometer way off, even on short trips (it logs floors and calories as though I'm racing up a skyscraper stairwell...). DriveBit had been my go to solution for years, until I replaced my phone and found it was no longer listed in the Google app store. It was frustrating enough having to remember to activate and deactivate a third-party app whenever I'd get on or off my bike (especially considering many other Fitbit users have reported the same issue without Fitbit bothering to develop a solution), but now I have no practical workaround. What annoys me even further is how many other features have been added to the Fitbit app and devices over the years (most of which I don't care about -- I just need a HR monitor and pedometer that provides a reliable measure of calories burned) while this issue has been ignored. And it shouldn't even require a complex solution. If I could get a look at the source code for the DriveBit app I used to use I'd happily develop a replacement for current Android devices myself (I only have experience with Java/Kotlin, so iPhone apps lie outside my qualifications).

On that note, if by any chance anyone reading this has access to said source code (or that for a similar app) and is willing to share it, please reach out to me. 

Edit: Just realized the 1.1.0 version of DriveBit is still available to download and install manually. Seems to be running fine so far, and linked to Fitbit as a third-party app without issue, but I'm on vacation right now and away from my bike, so I can't verify whether it still functions correctly. 

[Kevscout]

Update,, still working great. Had since end of August...use multiple times daily..works great!!