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Yes cycling would be great, but how about just accurate readings for a spinning class with the HR. The desktop should allow me to interface my distance on a stationary bike with my heart rate to give me an accurate reading and calorie burn zones. I have owned it less than 48 hours and and have spent 5 hours going through the forums trying to get answers. Not impressed.
The answer is simple: Fitbit is for walking and running only.
If you plan on training with the Fitbit-app: Forget it if you want to do anything other than running or walking. If you plan on training with any Fitbit-equipment in store today: Be aware that they are exclusively for running and walking if you use the Fitbit app - there are no support for anything else, it´s not even possible to pause the app so you dont get dougle workout data when doing anything other than walking or running.
Fitbit have not given anybody any indication about what they will develop their app to, only that they try to make the next generation Fitbit hardware aware that it´s possible to do anything else than walking or running.
Where do you get your information from? How do you know they're not going to do it?
Fitbit qualified this request as 'under consideration' and wrote as comment 'We love cyclists and are working on a Surge app just for you!'. They're also advertising the Fitbit Surge for cycling. Just look at the Amazon website. There's someone on a bike in the marketing data.
For me they have clearly given an indication that they will develop an app! The question is will they stick to their word and when.
Last but not least we wouldn't left to speculate if they were communicating officially. That would be so nice....
Please add bike mode to my Surge. I do more biking than hiking. I like to compete with others for step count and I take a big hit in steps when I ride my bike. It works great for GPS, Distance, heart rate and elevation. Just need to figure out equivalent amount of steps.
Thank you, Wayne. It is reassuring to know that the distance, elevation and HR are all there. I'm guessing that accurate step count would require a cadence sensor. I love the TomTom multisports watch but for some reason never explained it does not track elevation beyond 30 degees North, 50 miles South of where I live!
Now this may sound daft but have you thought of strapping the surge to your ankle? If its the accelerometer that records steps it should work. You might need a strap extender.
I started a thread about the app, that asked for some basic and simple functions (like allowing the app to be paused when doing non-running activities). Somebody at Fitbit did reply - telling that if the Apple Watch did open for it, Fitbit would / might start on making the Fitbit gear usable for other activities than walking and running.
Then Fitbit changed their marketing at their website, took away cycling pictures and marketing about features. If you look at it now, for instance at https://www.fitbit.com/uk/compare, you'll see a comparison chart a bit down on their website. The chart tell that the ONLY item they have planned to be able to register anything at all apart from walking or running, is Surge. Not all companies selling Fitbit-products have changed their sites, so Fitbit products are currently marketed and sold as products able to do things the Fitbit company dont support.
Surge have been mentioned in this thread, the "other activities" support seem to be experimental at best (at the moment).
Most of my daily activity is by bike, yet I keep getting challenged by my wife for steps. I ride for 130 miles, and get home with 500 steps showing for the day (from bike to brewery to bike). Frustrating. And when my friends point out that this is a "step counter" so what do I expect, I generally reply, "It is called fitbit, not stepbit."
Long way of saying... please figure out a way to track cycling.
I'm not sure where to mention that I use the iPhone app for all of my fitbit tracking.
After seeing the latest replies to this, I understand now that Fitbit will not support any GPS activity for biking. However, I have found a way to add a most possibly accurate data for my biking activities. For this I use another app called Sports Tracker.
When I start my ride I do as follow:
Push "Start a new workout" button
Chose activity "Cycling" and push the Continue button
Then I push the Start button and turn off my display and start my ride asap.
Once finished I push the Stop button, and then End button.
My workout summary will show, with duration, HH:MM:SS, time when I started and finished, and the distance with 2 decimals. In mine it shows kilometers, and you can measure unit under Settings.
Then I open my Fitbit app, and go on Activity.and chose Log previous.
Exercise type: Bike
Start time: Use same start time as in Sports tracker
Duration: Here I round down to the nearest exact minute under what was shown in Sports tracker, because it takes a few seconds to put it in the pocket and fish it up, plus jump on and off the bike.
Distance: only whole kilometers (eventually miles) here. So go for the closest, up or down.
Then push the LOG IT button at the bottom.
Your pace and calories will be shown right over the LOG IT button. If your pace has been at least 16.1 km / 10 mph, it will be added as Active minutes on the Dashboard.
If you for some reason can't add your biking activity to Fitbit right away, you can find your ride in the Sports Tracker app under the button Diary, just push the actual distance and you get all the data.
@ketilth Fitbit has always supported manually logging "biking" on their site (and in their app, since they introduced logging to the app). That's not the issue.
I can track my biking with Endomondo, Strava, MapMyRide and many others besides. Most of those other apps also support HR monitors, Cadence sensors, etc. The Surge has the sensors (GPS+HR) needed to make a good cycling tracker, but it's only a compelling device if we DON'T have to rely on third party apps, hardware and our phones. Otherwise (and as it stands today) the Surge is useless to cyclists.
Further, the whole point of fitbit, is automatic logging, and motivation through social aspects of challenging your friends and the self-competitive challenging your personal bests. So far, they deliver reasonably well on these items ONLY if you're all walking/running. For people like myself who cycle every day, but do little walking and running, the fitbit ecosystem is severly limited. I had hoped that the Surge would improve that, it hasn't yet.
You have one of the most advanced apps to combine activities...it is really a pitty if you as a pioneer would loose unnnessary users to apple watch and others just because of a missing code, other competitors have. I am sure if you partner with just one of the big players as strava, Runkeeper, Runtatstic or Map my ride we users will follow. But one of these is a must for not loosing market share in near future....
There needs to be a specific cycling exercise on the surge. One that ignors body movement and does most measurement by heart rate and GPS track log (which would be more acurate than using any of the current generic exercises and more usefull than manually logging the data). Off road cycling and bumps etc on roads will always lead to big errors if the surge uses motion to log distance etc. A lot of exercise I do is on bikes and the Surge has proved useless for me, what a waste of money it was!
A very good comment from RadekS: Wrist no wrist. Please add cycling as a supported activity. When I have my phone with your app while cycling, you know my position, elevation, speed, my age, height, weight, sex. With my FitBit even my hear rate. Even the weather conditions for that day. So I think it should be possible to calculate several things from that. Maybe we could have the option in the phone app to do this PLEASE.
Adding a cycling tracking functionality to Surge is simply a must! Most comments and suggestions I see understand that mapping cycling RPMs to steps is challenging, however is not necessary. We need the GPS to track our routes and the HR to count our calories, plus adding the ride time to day's activity. That's it. With the abundance of mobile fitness apps out there, MapMyRide, Endomondo and such, FitBit just needs to get in the game and give its huge customers base a unified platform by tracking something as popular and common as bike riding (both mountain and road)
Just purchased the Surge, however 'assumed' that i'd also be able to track road cycling when I saw 'spinning' advertised as an exercise option. (My mistake for not reviewing correctly) However after reading many comments and seeing that it's 'Under Consideration' I'll hold out. Please can you make this happen as an exercise option up-date.Thanks
Fitbit should stop "considering" it, and just make it happen. The number of Charge HR owners that want it to track cycling is immense and getting bigger!
Hi, You have announced that the surge will soon be able to track bike rides. Although this is great for the people who have surges this doesn't benefit the rest of your customers who have other trackers, like myself who has a charge hr who would still like to track a ride. Please can you add this function to the track exercise section on the iOS app and I'm sure android users would love this too! Thanks Mike
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