Treadmill Exercise App STILL Flawed

[MrMarv]

As I first reported on December 14, 2018, as it applied to the Charge 3 Treadmill exercise app, the heart rate reporting flaw associated with that device which GROSSLY understated heart rate is showing itself on the Versa 2.

No surprise - even if the app is not exactly the same, I am sure that the development team leveraged code for the app for devices that followed the Charge 3. As an Application Developer and "Many things IT" for nearly 40 years, I would expect that. I would not expect my development team to leave bugs in place when cloning applications.

I have noticed the underreporting a few times in the last week as I have started to use my treadmill again after a period when I was "under the weather". I purchased my Versa 2 less than a month ago.

To set the stage, I will be 68 years old in March and have a resting heart rate in the low sixties. I am confident that low sixties number is good as I can attest to manually measuring 60 - 62 BPM shortly after waking up in the morning and the Versa 2 reports the same number when I perform the check.

At 2.0 - 2.5 mph on the treadmill and with weakened heart muscles and damage to the electrical pathways to my heart in 2017 from a viral attack that resulted in a Left Ventricle Ejection Fraction (LVEF) of approximately 25% (1/3 of what my cardio-surgeon and the AHA would like to see), it does not take much to push my heart rate up. I have routinely manually taken my pulse in the range of 95 to 120 when on the treadmill. NEVER has it been under 85 after 1 minute.

Today, I started on the treadmill but waited for one minute with my Versa 2 reporting a heart rate of 98 BPM before invoking the Treadmill app on the device. Within 20 seconds the device was reporting a BPM of 70 and reaching 59 BPM at 1:25. It did not reach over 90 until 1:42. It again started taking a dive at 4:00 reaching a low of 73 BPM at 4:26. Between 4:45 and 5:45 it reported realistic numbers in the range of 94 - 99 BPM. It then went south, reporting low to mid 80s for the next 2.5 minutes when I just said "to heck with it" and stopped the app and manually measured my heart rate at 104.

Once again, I reported this issue - IN DETAIL - 15 months ago, and was told "Thanks for bring this to my attention, I'll pass this along to our team."

Uh-huh. Color me "unimpressed". I will go back to letting the device auto-recognize my treadmill sessions as a "walk".

[Rich_Laue]

Have you read the Fitbit Heart FAQ doc. 

[MrMarv]

@Rich_Laue - 

Thanks for the effort, but...

Oh yeah. I detail out in my Charge 3 post that I had taken all of the recommended steps regarding device placement, etc.

And other treadmill exercise heart rate charts show even more spots where the heart rate dives down. I just didn't want to clutter up the post.

Interesting that I did not have to take any steps like that when I allow the device to auto recognize the activity as a walk.

[Rich_Laue]

Recognizing walks is about The movement of the arm. Really doesn't matter where the tracker is located or even if the tracker can read your heart rate. 

For the tracker to read the heart rate, the tracker needs to be mounted where it can measure changes in the blood volume. 

[MrMarv]

@Rich_Laue 

While both of your statements are true, I am having difficulty seeing where they are germane to my post.

What I meant was that all things equal - the only difference between an auto-recognized walk while on the treadmill and the Treadmill Exercise app was the app was running.

I just performed a short - 3 minute - test of the Treadmill app at my desk with my left arm resting on the desk. Displayed BPM ranged from 74 - 78. The app pretty much had nothing else to worry about other than heart rate.

Off to the treadmill...

• Before I started the treadmill and initiated the Treadmill Exercise app, the device reported an HR of 86.
• The reported heart rate stayed above 80 until 1:10 into the session when it started down, reaching 62 at 1:23 to never exceed 79 for the next 1:30.
• When I stopped the treadmill app at the 2:52 mark, the heart rate displayed on the device at in my iOS app immediately went from 67 to 89 - i-m-m-e-d-i-a-t-e-l-y, While the Activity chart on the web shows 82 bpm at the end:

The same Activity record on the FitBit iOS app shows what I saw on the device and app:

While treadmill activity that is allowed to be auto-recognized as a "Walk" has some variations, nothing as radical as when the Treadmill Exercise app is part of the equation.

The heart rate dive at the end is my resting in place after the walk - as I am sure you know, you can't tell auto-recognize you are finished it has to figure that out itself - it normally takes a little more than 30 seconds.

Both tests on the treadmill were performed at 2.0 MPH so as to keep vibrations down so they would not skew the results.

Device was worn at the same position on the arm and at the same tension. Unlike some, my tests over the last nearly 2 years have shown that positioning the device doesn't help the Treadmill Exercise apps accuracy. Of course, due to my medical condition, I don't crank it up like some.

[Rich_Laue]

Fitbit does not have the ability to auto recognize a 

[MrMarv]

@Rich_Laue 

Your post was chopped, but if you were going to say "does not have the ability to auto recognize a treadmill exercise", I never said that, I said - - - 

'treadmill activity that is allowed to be auto-recognized as a "Walk"'

If you don't tell the device otherwise, it just treats the steps you take on a treadmill as a walk.

[Rich_Laue]

Because the body physically does not move in relation to space, most people find that while on a treadmill their virtual walk doesn't get recognized as any type of exercise. A few day that this time gets recorded as an elliptical. 

[MrMarv]

@Rich_Laue - 

Well, I'm apparently not "most people" and I don't swing my arms in such a radical manner that the device thinks I'm on an elliptical.

And I have found that the three-axis accelerometer deals with the back and forth motion just fine - and "in relation to space" is inaccurate, it is relative to the gravitational pull of the earth. And that relationship is maintained just fine, even on a treadmill

Why don't we just give this up. I still believe that the Treadmill Exercise app is sacrificing too much in the way of machine cycles to do "other things" that it is having difficulty monitoring heart rate. 

[Rich_Laue]

All I'm saying is that most people find that while on a treadmill there virtual walk is not auto detected. 

As for the XYZ accelerometers they measure changes in speed. 

But none of the above has much to do with heart rate.