Customizable vibrations pattern for Silent Alarms

[bigAPE]

Could we please have an option to select from a list of possible vibration patterns for our Silent Alarms.

Selectable Vibration Patterns

• Flex Default (3 long, pause, repeat 3 long pattern until stopped)
• Charge Default (3 long, pause, 3 long, snooze for 9 minutes, 3 long, pause, 3 long)
• [NEW] Rapid (3 quick, pause, repeat 3 quick pattern until stopped)
• [NEW] Rising Scale (1 quick, pause, 2 quick, pause, 3 quick, pause, 3 long, pause,repeat 3 long until stopped)

The patterns and repititions seem to differ between the Flex and Charge without any ability to change them back. I found the Flex vibrations to be a little too harsh and I felt they had the potential to wake up my wife.

I would personally be happy if the setting was per configured alarm or globally for the tracker. Either way, having a few selectable options for the vibration would mean that users could choose how they are woken up!

If you feel this is a useful suggestion please vote for it

Cheers

Al

Moderator Edit: Title, Format & Labels 

[COLNic]

I had to rely on my phone to wake me up this morning, the first morning of using my flex, because the alarm cycle was so short.

An alarm should at least have the option to buzz until you turn it off, as per normal alarms.

[Floco08]

Same as Grieg: Need stronger call notification vibrate, also text notifications would be great.

[nursemm]

I have a charge, and only having a soft vibration for caller notification is ridiculous, it should go for the duration of the phone ringing until picked up...not just one buzz.

[Jo2505]

I would also like to see an option for increasing the intensity of the vibration for notifications and alarms.

[MihaiT]

It would be great if you could choose the vibration intensity for alarms. Sometimes the vibration is so powerful that everyone hears it (which kind of makes the whole "silent alarm" feature useless). 

In the same category would be the possibility to get a pre-alarm (with some lower intensity vibration kicks) and if you don't react to that (say, after 15 seconds of low intensity vibrations) you would get a rising alarm. 

[Redmin]

I agree with you. I bought the charge yesterday assuming it would wake me. It is why I chose it over the garmin. It didn't wake me at all and there is a problem with the IOS app being unavoidable now too. I think I will return it unless something improves

[Jp75034]

Please add this feature! The alarm on the Charge is useless after the second notification. Would love to have a snooze feature or have to manually turn off when wanted.

[javl]

Having direct access to the Fitbit devices' vibration/pager motor would be amazing. Browsing the ideas pages in the forum, I've seen countless suggestions that could easily be fixed by giving developers access to the motor (and / or the LEDs where available).

If I had access, I could easily write some scripts to fix these suggestions for example:

Posture reminder:
It would be great if the Fitbit devices could give you a gentle reminder to stand tall and not slouch. Having it gently vibrate every, lets say, 15 minutes could be perfect for this.
Suggested before in:
https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Feature-Requests/Need-posture-correction-reminders-vibrate-to-stand-...

Water reminder:
When I'm working, I always forget to drink. On a bad day I can work non-stop without drinking a single glass of water.
A simple vibration pattern every hour from the moment you get up in the morning could remind you to go get a glass of water.
Suggested before in:
https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Feature-Requests/water-reminder/idi-p/585313

Notifications:
Your Fitbit device could let you know someone is calling you, or that you received an email. Suggested by other users multiple times.

All these things could easily be made possible with a simple API call. A syntax like vibrate=[1000, 200, 1000, 200, 1000] to have the device vibrate 3 times for 1 second, with 200 miliseconds of delay in between, would be perfect to create a whole range of different vibration effects.

Do you have any plans of adding such a feature? On the forums I mainly find responses like 'We appreciate the feedback. Thanks for posting! ', but there doesn't seem to be much follow-up activity.

[dbz918]

my "Silent" alarm does sometimes wake my husband if my arm wearing my Charge HR happens to be stretched out on my side table, I definitely think this would be a great update to this wonderful feature!

[roguesfive]

Different patterns are a good idea. I think more important is duration.  I would like to be able choose, short, medium, or long durations.  As it sounds with many people I have an issue waking up with the alarm.  It's a little too short.  Other alarms that happen throughout the day, probably don't need to be as long though and may actually more annoying if it's too long.  The ability to label alarms with names/descriptions (so it's like appointments) would be nice too.  I think that was mentioned somewhere too.

Surge/iOS

[Bob_T]

Please consider making the silent alarms longer or more frequent. I was really excited about this feature but am deeply disappointed so far. The alarm goes off once at the time I set it for but does not wake me up although the screen stays on the alarm screen with a snooze option. If I am still sleeping, I cannot possibly choose snooze. The other day the alarm finally repeated but it was an hour and fifteen minutes later. If the device and monitor my sleep is certainly should be able to know that it did not wake me up.

Modetor edit: added labels

[SunsetRunner]

Working as any other alarm would, however, the alarm itself to be different - more gentle. Instead of the vibration effect going off in an instant at 100% power, start gentle and easy...

Three light nudges followed by a pause (this may be enough to come up from a light sleep or to begin the acention from a deeper state). Three more nuges with a slight power increase. Pause. Repeat while escalating the power over several more cycles until 100%. Take a minute or two to reach full power.

--------------------------------------------------------

I thought about this in an instant while being woken up by fitbit for the first time. It felt like a judo master getting a hold of my wrist and tossing me around the bed back and forth. These vibrations feel much stronger while in a restful sleep compared to the awake state. I can't be woken up like this. It ruins the morning.

[bruce_]

I really need to set fitbit alarms and/or timezones from my tablet when I do not have an internet conneciton.  I travel a lot and a blutooth sync should be sufficient.  Changes would have to be stored and synced with the cloud storage at a later time.

[Rose54321]

I'm returning this and waiting for apple phone. The notifications and alarms are worthless. Major point for me is to see notifications like phone call or text when I'm out running or walking or doing errand without taking out my phone

[Rose54321]

Meant apple watch.

[GREGus]

I also agree it would be great idea to have selectable vibration patterns (my spouse is light sleeper and also wakes up when silent alarm on my Charge HR goes off, so short pattern would be more suitable for both of us). It would be even better if we could choose vibration patterns for call notifications.

[murielpt]

I have the charge HR and the alarm for me is too strong! it woke me up and my baby. I got something with a silent alarm specifically not to wake my baby up. Also i was trying to put him to sleep and BAM, snooze. I hate snooze. How do we not get snooze on ?

[Superexcellent]

My Charge HR's vibrate is too much, it makes me jump when it goes off in the morning...something more gentle would be great, or one that builds up over 30 secounds.

[TheJiffster]

I'm actually hard of hearing, so I rely on wrist devices to alert me when the phone is ringing.  Now that I have the charge HR, I can wear it all the time...even to bed to keep my phone a distance away without having to put it under my pillow all the time.

Unfortunately, having only one vibration as an alert is a pain, because when you're asleep, you'd need more than a single buzz to wake anyone up.

[arreis]

This is what I came here to request!

[Martins2759]

As a previous UP24 user, I'm missing this a lot. The short vibrations are not bad at all, but a more continuous one would be optimal though, and the band should vibrate for at least 20 seconds to really wake someone up... To me, this feature should be annoying! 🙂 The UP24 didn't wake me up when I was only having 5 hours of sleep for example... I was in deep sleep and therefore I'd just turn it off or completely ignore it. The charge HR is much tighter on my wrist and the vibration can be much more easily felt. My suggestion is: Have a setting in the silent alarms (in each one or for all of them) to chose how many times someone has to press the button to really stop the alarm. For example: I set this number to 5. The alarm starts vibrating and I tap it one time. The band waits maybe 3 seconds, then starts vibrating again. I tap it, thats two, and so on... If I didn't tap the band, then it would vibrate till the time limit of 1 vibration ends, and count that as 1 tap, not to harm the battery. If someone doesn't wake up even with this setup, then I'd think the band is not for them or they should sleep longer 🙂 This would really make sure people get up. Myself for example, I have to set multiple alarms to make sure the band vibrates multiple times, but even then, I don't fully trust the band for some important wake up time. I think this says a lot, and it shoudn't be like this...

[DerrickS]

That's a great suggestion, especially if you are not a morning person like me. I'll be sure to pass along the idea to the team.

[rcawston]

Agree. SURGE needs adjustable silent alarms. I'd suggest a low intensity with a range of increasing intensities. Personally, I find mine startles me most mornings; it's like being bitten by an Electric Eel.

[Cord]

+1 This should be a feature across the whole Fitbit range. In addition to setting the pattern, one should also be able to set the duration of the vibration.

[CAS1701]

For heavy sleepers, the current vibration settings are not high enough to wake the user up effectively. Please add the ability to control vibration intensity, duration, and recurrence.