The Fitbit Community is a gathering place for real people who wish to exchange ideas, solutions, tips, techniques, and insight about the Fitbit products and services they love. By joining our Community, you agree to uphold these guidelines, so please take a moment to look them over.
At least this finally got "reviewed by a moderator." But who the heck knows if that actually means anything. It would be great if the Fitbit folks had more of a regular presence on these forums.
Wish I knew more folks. Am sure Fitbit adds bike tracking many of my friends who use diff devices for biking, running, hiking would definitely switch all to fitibit.
I've been using all the work arounds suggested plus syncing with Runkeeper and Mapmyride. Still, can't get any app to accurately track my steps when I ride. What I now do is manually calculate how many steps my ride would have been (e.g., 200 steps per minute for riding at 16mph x the number of min), subtract the amount of steps FitBit recorded for my ride, and then add a walk sometime during an idle hour showing the missing steps. When doing that, you also need to add 6 calories per every 5 min when you add your walking steps. In other words, if I bike for 38 min at 16mph, that's 7600 steps, I subtract the say 3000 that FitBit gave me, and then find an idle hour and add 4600 steps of walking and 72 calories. This leaves the accurate computing of my calories for my ride and adds the steps. It would be easier if FitBit just allowed us to edit the stpes for a bike ride instead of leaving it at zero.
I was looking for a rough order of magnitude way to count steps while biking. I found that putting the fitbit HR around my ankle and inside my sock works fine for me. A step is a step is a step, after all. Though one "bike step" probably burns 2X calories of one “foot step” just because of the increased range of motion. I do have to stop, and peel back my sock to read the HR, but since I don’t wear my glasses when working out, the delay is OK.
In any event, the only objective metric on any of these devices is the clock. All the other metrics are estimates, based on assumptions. I believe that any analysis of the readings is really valid only for comparison purposes and not interpreted as absolute values.
The addition of cycling would resolve many issues I'm having with my Charge HR. I would then be able to export my heart rate data to share with my medical team. @EmersonFitbit would this possibly be a solution to our other discussions?
@EmersonFitbit, firstly it would at least provide heart rate data for my cycling because I could then track my heart rate while riding, and although the Fitbit app doesn't do elevation and cadence in GPS. It would be better than not getting any information. As it is, I'm using the GPS on the treadmill to get that heart rate to exertion ratio. And of course, for walking and hiking where it works great! Second, I'm trying to make the best out of a really bad situation. I would have spent my money on a different device had I known that there was no data access support.
I want to use the fitbit app's GPS to track my bike route, but the app doesn't allow me track an excercise other than walk/run/hike. I don't really understand why this feature doesn't already exist because it seems like most of the underlying elements are already built:
The app can already use GPS to log a route, and when I've used it on my bicycle, it's been pretty accurate (except for miscategorizing the whole thing as a hike, and of course racking up some crazy step numbers).
The platform can already integrate GPS routes with historical heart rate data. Why should melding a cycling route with heart rate be any different than combining a run and its stats?
The platform has a category for biking.
So why can't I combine a GPS bike route with the stats from my fitness tracker?
I have Charge HR and a Windows Phone. After I bike, I would like to have in one place the whole package: the GPS data, the heart rate date, the calories, everything it was recorded and nothing in excess, such as "virtual" steps taken while riding the bike. Right now, in order to achieve this I have to record the activity as hike/walk in the mobile app, then export the .tcx to Strava, where I can set the activity correctly, as a bike ride.
This is something I do manually after each ride, and I would like to be done automatically, in the mobile app.
It would seem to me that since Fitbit app (iOS) already has GPS capability that this would be fairly easy to add (an apparently already has been for the Surge). I would be much easier to log rides within the app than to have to uses a third party solution such as Strava or to manually log them.
I too would like to see being able to track a ride in addition to run, walk, or hike in the mobile app since GPS tracking is already available for them. Adding it manually dosen't seem to provide as accurate a profile of the activity as an automated solution would.
I have an HR. When my activity synchs with my iPad I have a "CYCLE" option to categorize it. When I track activity for distance and a map with my phone "Cycle" is not an option. Coordinate your options so they are the same!!!
Cadence would be a great accesory. (possibly power as well). Everything else is there, speed, distance, heart rate, time.
However, the real need is to have this all visible on a handlebar display (either through an accessory display or a phone that can be mounted).
It is to difficult to check a watch while riding, particular if riding intervals or trying to stay in a HR zone. It does not help that I would have to put my reading glasses on to see the display at 30 kph. Thx.
I use my Fitbit HR with Strava to track cycling. There is a bi directional sync but I think it works best if you track using the Fitbit App which then shows the Heart Rate and GPS tracking data very nicely in Strava. However to make this work perfectly then needs: 1. The ability to record cycling in the Fitbit app rather than just waking/Running/Hiking - leaves the Fitbit dashboard with wrong info which you can't change, though after sync with Strava I can change a walk to a cycle for example 2. Needs an auto stop in the Fitbit App, like Strava does anyway At the moment I'm torn between using the Fitbit app or Strava direct, the Strava direct option won't show the heart rate which defeats the point. Doing the above two items would make the world a better place
Join us on the Community Forums!
Community Guidelines
Learn the Basics
Join the Community!
Not finding your answer on the Community Forums?
Go to the Help Site
Contact Support