Option to remove steps earned when cycling

[MikeyW]

Like most cyclists who have a fitbit, I track my activity using Strava (or some other RunKeeper, etc...) and as a result it syncs to the fitbit app and fitbit knows that I have completed a cycling acti ity.

However, it also counts steps during that period and allows those steps to contribute to my daily total - despite the fact that it knows that from x time to x time I was cycling.

Currently to remove these steps I would have to then manually enter my activity as driving and it would then remove those steps from the total.

Surely it would be a simple fix for all cycling activity modes to have the same affect on the step total as the driving modes, and for steps to no longer be counted?

The trouble is, for people like me who commute to work by bike it means the step counter is pointless on days I cycle (which is 5 days out of 7).

However, I understand that some are happy with the way it works at the moment and don't have HR monitors so just put their products in their pockets. So perhaps it would be best to have an option in the settings called "Count steps when cycling" or just "Cycling steps" and perhaps it's best that it's turned on by default so that essentially nothing changes for people who are happy using it the way it is, but for those who don't want to it'll solve the problem?

[icdevpeople]

This needs fixing regardless of votes. Its not an idea for a feature its a bug in the software thats been overlooked. Make's the device knowingly inaccurate. 

[TheFunkSoulBro]

When the automatic activity tracker kicks in it would be handy for it to recognise driving by pinging the GPS a few times. If I have travelled eleventy miles in a few minutes then assume I am driving or riding a motorbike.

When it recognises a driving/motorcycling style activity, it should log the steps as ZERO (as it currently does when it assumes that I am riding an "Outdoor Bike"). But when the activity stops (heart rate drops) it should make sure that both the activity AND the Fitbit Surge dash has not counted any steps during that period.

There is nothing more frustrating, with this Surge, than having to log in twice a day to remove my commute. If I forget it means that my step count is purely fictitious and it is impossible for me to hit any of my targets. I also have beean "earning" badges which I am in fact nowhere near - giving me a massively false view of the exercise I have been getting each day.

Riding a motorcycle with all of the layers means that it is also very challanging to manually start and stop the Surge all of the time - So the Automatic tracking should be enough.

[TheFunkSoulBro]

This should also apply to the auto detected "Outdoor bike" Activity as well as the manually selected "Motorcycle" and "Driving" Activities.

I wake up and leave my house straight away in the morning. Maximum of 100 steps.

I ride my motorbike and it is auto detected as "Outdoor Bike".

I walk from the garage at work to my desk, about 300 steps.

What it should say:
Fitbit Surge Display - 400 steps.
Fitbit Dashboard Stepcount - 400 steps
Fitbit Dashboard Activity Tracker - ONE entry of "Outdoor bike" with N/A (or zero) steps for 60 minutes.

IOS App Stepcount - 400 steps.

What it actually says.

Fitbit Surge Display - 5555 steps.
Fitbit Dashboard Stepcount - 5555 steps
Fitbit Dashboard Activity Tracker - ONE entry of "Outdoor bike" with N/A (or zero) steps for 60 minutes.

IOS App Stepcount - 5555 steps.

Why does it say this? Because despite the fact that the outdoor Bike activity has zero steps visually associated with it, it is still counting it as if each bobble has been a step. No amount of mucking about with the dash Activity Tracker changes that.

Look at the Outdoor Bike entry (last) for the 14th at 18:44. It says "steps N/A". but it still registers thousands of steps on the stepcount, dash and app at the same time - second picture.

I tried to change one of the entries from today to DRIVING and it injected the stepcount number - despite the fact that if I am driving I would obviously NOT want a stepcount recorded. Same for if I select Motorcycle. It is just getting messy now.

 
Once it decides that you have done an activity which should not be counted as steps (such as cycling) then it should hide the "steps" recorded from that period of activity and update the device, app and dash accordingly - without me having to manually delete or modify logs.

[KelvinWoodley]

I commute daily by motorbike and it was only about 3 or 4 weeks ago that Surge started counting my commute as an outdoor cycle ride. Maybe this was a cange generated by an update? It would be nice to be able to stop it from recording it automatically, after all it can hardly be called 'exercise'!!

Overall I love my Surge and it has helped me get on top of some training and health issues.

[SilviaFitbit]

This is a great idea! I've seen many people who do cycling and they would love this option. As you mentioned we have the driving activity that will delete the steps but it's better if you just put your tracker into cycling mode and it deletes the steps done during that time. 

Thank you for visiting the Feature Request board. 

[Niall_R]

I'm with you. The mod response is inadequate. 

How hard can it be to fix this simple bug?

I got 4000 steps from an hour cycle today, and despite it being logged as a cycle, I still have 4000 steps. FIX IT.

[fasterisbetter]

I definitely want this. Just returned the Charge HR and got a Surge assuming that because it has a dedicated cycling mode the false steps issue would no longer be an issue. I was wrong.

[Bikefit]

I find it most annoying that the step counter continues to count whilst in the biking mode. Could the step counting feature be automatically disabled whenever one enters the biking mode and re enabled on exiting?
Cheers Bikefit.

[MikeyW]

@SilviaFitbit does this mean you just think it's a good idea? or does this mean it's being considered as an improvement you guys will make?

[SilviaFitbit]

@MikeyW Hey! Sorry if I didn't myself clear. This means that I like the idea and the engineers and developers will take a look at this. However, I'm not sure if this will be a feature in the future. 

Whenever, Fitbit thinks this will be a feature soon the status will change to "under consideration" . 

[mattyj2001]

+1 for fixing the motorcycle problem. Seems like it shouldn't be a *huge* problem, as the profile for riding a motorcycle is obviously outside the realm of how a human is capable of moving without said motorcycle. Get your AI science-y people on that.

My motorcycle (a BMW, not even a Harley) vibrates at a rate of around 8,000 steps an hour, which equates to around 2.5 steps per second. I'm not sure a human (at least not this human) could keep that up for an hour or longer. Plus the profile of the vibration is going to be very different from a motorcycle vs a lumbering human swinging his ape arms back and forth as he walks.

Doing all these manual things, that may or may not work, is a pain in the rump. Please throw some science at this!

[Bikeguy96]

After cycling using the bike mode on my Fitbit
Surge to record the excercise, I realized that my step count increased by about 5000 to 10000 steps per hour of cycling even though I did not even dismounted from my bike. This issue overestimates my step count and can even result in other inaccurate results such as calorie burned.
I believe that this issue is due to the fact that the Fitbit surge uses an accelerometer to measure step count. Thus, the tracker is not able to difererentiate steps from actual walking to pedaling.
I propose that Fitbit does an update that prevents the Fitbit surge from taking step counts into account whenever the Fitbit Surge is in workout modes that does not involve walking such as cycling or spinning.
Thank you

Moderator edit: added labels

[Firstknight]

I don't see option for tracking cycling activity. Since hr data from fitbit sync with strava and strava doesn't I would like to have the option to use fitbit app to track cycling as well. I see manual add on has that activity so why not track the activity with cycling in fitbit app itself.

[ChrisCycles]

I really really need something like this Iam so on the fence about getting a fitbit and leaning towards not because of the lack of cycling support.

[Scaumy]

I'm sure I'm not alone on this but can you please disable the step counter during the 'Spinning' mode? I'm on a bike so obviously not taking any steps yet it adds over 1000 for just a 20min spin

Moderator edit: added labels

[Lordrobs]

Just voted as at the moment the inability for me to automatically negate cycling steps is stopping me using my Blaze on days when I use my bike as transportation.

[Rumpus]

I just bought a Charge HR and I'm a bike commuter.  To put it bluntly, the fact that the CHR detects a bunch of false steps while I'm cycling (I assume from bouncing on my wrist), but does not subtract those steps from my daily total is completely bogus.  If all my activity and calorie count data is based (at least partially) on # of steps, then I'm unable to accurately track my calories on a day I ride because of the THOUSANDS of extra steps that the FitBit logs during my rides.  So far I really like the CHR, please don't make me return it! 

[WarrenThody]

I guess I fall into a third category as I don't really care whether they log my steps or not. My concern, and hopefully someone here can speak to it, is the calorie count I end up getting. Example.  I just returned from some off road mountain biking.  I burned 662 calories, had an average heart rate of 102 (horribly wrong to begin with as my fitbit often won't report once my HR gets above 140) and also added about 6000 unearned steps to my daily total.

The exercise "auto classified" as outdoor biking and said it accounted for 0 of my 13000 steps...of course 6000 of these 13000 steps actually did come from the bike ride. So I guess my question is, does fitbit basically add 6000 unearned steps worth of calorie burn to my day? Specifically during that bike ride, is fitbit reporting that I burned 662 calories PLUS 6000 steps worth of calories?

[Baltoscott]

@WarrenThody - the calorie calculation is based on the activity Fitbit recorded (mountain biking) which overwrites the calories that Fitbit would have recorded based on the 6000 steps.  You can test it by deleting the activity. Your total calorie burn for the day will change because then the calories associated with the steps will count; but it will not go down by 662 (which would be the case if it were double counting).

[cvearl]

Yes please! Make this happen. We need Biking and skiing type activities logged remove the steps just like the Driving activity does. Currently I have Endomundo linked and all it's stats are false now as well as eroneous steps are making it into Endomundos log making my weekly totals meaningless.

Charles.

[szaman]

This enhancement (actually I would classify it as a bugfix...) seems to be quite cheap/easy to implemen and very usefull to all cyclist!

Please implement it.

That is a shame that I need to use the workaround every time that I am cycling just in order to get the right number of steps in my history!

Cheers,

Michal

[efposadac]

The huge amount of steps that the tracker is counting while you are riding a motorcycle makes the device useless due to inaccuracy. So, it would be nice to implement and algorithm to stop counting steps. I mean, I think that with the sensors it could be posible to predict whether you are doing so many steps in a short period time or not. 

[Neil-Hoggarth]

I have just purchased a Charge 2, and immediately noted the "false steps when cycling". As a daily cycle commuter who also wants to accurately log my amount of walking off the bike this is a big problem for me.

I'd like to strongly endorse the suggestion of an option to negate steps logged as part of an activity which has been categorised as cycling.

[szaman]

Fitbit,

Are you going to help us to resolve this issue ? I really like my Fitbit HR, but I do want to stop spending additional time hacking my fitbit activities (adding additional Driving acivity for time when I was cycling).

Please help! This seems like a cheap enhancement.

Thanks,

Michal

[RobertoME]

This is a great idea that has been gaining popularity. It would be cool to have the flexibility if you want to keep the steps or negate them while you are cycling.

Please keep on voting to get the developers attention. Thanks for posting and sharing this idea!