Exercise tracking - should it really do this?

[SunsetRunner]

I'm sure this has been flagged before but nothing seems to have happened to fix it.

A user can start exercise tracking on their phone or on the Fitbit, in fact they can start both simultaneously and you get this.

There is a reason to start tracking on both because if exercise tracking is only initiated from the Fitbit you don’t get a GPS map or sometimes you get a map and the track locks and then suddenly leaps to a new updated position. The only way to get a good track is start the tracking on your phone.

So, what is dumb about this is the Fitbit doesn’t correlate the two requests and you get two tracks, with different data in each. You’d have thought that at the very least the data would be combined and used to determine the actual distance travelled and the number of steps and adjust the step length accordingly for later trips? I guess its just another example of the poor integration between the various parts of the Fitbit suite (Device, Mobile, App, Dashboard and backend database).

The upside is if you want to double your distance for your daily exercise just initiate tracking on the Fitbit and your phone.

[Rich_Laue]

You have asked Fitbit to track your exercise with two separate devices. Fitbit has done as requested. 

Starting from the Fitbit app, will not link the heart rate to the exercise.

Starting from the watch will connect the gps and record heart rate.

As for daily steps Fitbit will use the steps recorded with the tracker.

The Fitbit app does not count the users steps, but measures the distance, then uses the stride setting to take a guess at the steps walked.

Distance is based on the daily step count.

[SunsetRunner]

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@Rich_Laue wrote:

You have asked Fitbit to track your exercise with two separate devices. Fitbit has done as requested. 

Starting from the Fitbit app, will not link the heart rate to the exercise.

Starting from the watch will connect the gps and record heart rate.

As for daily steps Fitbit will use the steps recorded with the tracker.

The Fitbit app does not count the users steps, but measures the distance, then uses the stride setting to take a guess at the steps walked.

Distance is based on the daily step count.

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Thats my point its dumb.

Starting from the watch should connect with the GPS but it fails. A new, this year, Versa 2 and Samsung S10 with the watch on the left wrist and the mobile in my left pocket the connection drops out and the GPS stops and starts. Thats if it ever starts.

At the very minimum starting from the watch it should just intiatiate the GPS on the mobile as if the user had started it on the mobile. Not keep stopping and starting the GPS if the inter-connection is lost.  At the end of the exercise the steps data from the device should be merged with the GPS data and the oppotunity taken to calibrate stride length. A pretty simple use case.

This is yet another case of lazy integration by the Fitbit developers. With both running there is an opportunity to correlate the results and merge into one data set. The user doesn't need two entries for the same exercise event.  Then again we know the various development teams seem to have trouble agreeing with each other.

[Rich_Laue]

When your starting on the watch, the user usually wants the watch to show the data. If the user wants to see the data on the phone, why use the watch?

My watch never seems to have a problem with the connected gps.

[SunsetRunner]

@Rich_Laue 

One of the lucky ones then. Mine is unreliable and that is with a new phone and Versa 2.

What needs to happen is a a matter of common sense and that appears to be something in short supply at Fitbit HQ. They don't seem to be able to work together, it is like the 4 core components are developed by different teams that don't talk to each other.

[SunsetRunner]

@Rich_Laue @Fitbit 

Rich

So to show you how dumb this thing is I did exactly the same walk today that I did last week. This time I started the exercise from the watch and did't start it on the phone. The watch continually reported "Connecting" tha is with the watch on left wrist and phone in my left pocket, the Fitbit App open.

Today (ignore the pace, I forgot to stop the exercise when I got home)

Last week exactly the same walk but started on App and Watch

So you can see why I say it is dumb.

[SunsetRunner]

@Fitbit 

Again no response from the Fitbit team. I guess another 'never get fixed' feature?

[SunsetRunner]

Here we go again another dumb exercise track. Fitbit said it was connected to the phone and GPS was on. Still got a ridiculous result. The only way to get this to work is to set up exercise tracking on the fitbit and the mobile app. You'll get 2 different tracks but at least you'll get something.

 

[Rich_Laue]

If the watch is reporting Connecting it means that it does not have a GPS lock and there will not be a proper map displayed. You will see a straight line between GPS points