Track Exercise - Heart Rate Monitor Automatically ON!

[munsabin]

Option to have the HR monitor turned to "ON" for the duration that one is tracking exercise. This way, you know your fitbit Charge HR / Surge is trying it's best to grab the best HR data that it can for the duration of the exercise.

Reasoning:

During the day I have my heart rate monitor off on the Fitbit Charge HR because I don't much care what my heart rate is while I'm sitting at my desk typing out this message, Fitbit doesn't quite do anything for me with my HR data during the day, and having it off saves battery.

When I want to log an activity, I obviously want the HR monitor to be on. For this I would need my phone, sync my fitbit, and then go for my activity. What if I forget to do this before I go to the gym? Forget my phone at home the day I want to go work out from the office? And the scenarios continue.

All those scenarios could be solved in what seems like simple software update with a couple of if statements in the programming when the button is pressed to log an activity.

Please consider for urgent update!

Moderator edit: Labels

[miguelacastano]

Well, I said it so many times that it feel useless by now. It is so obvious that tracking exercise should automatically start the heart rate monitor, that I have to conclude that FitBit programmers never left their desk to do any workout. And then, they do not listen...shame of them.

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@munsabin wrote:

Option to have the HR monitor turned to "ON" for the duration that one is tracking exercise. This way, you know your fitbit Charge HR / Surge is trying it's best to grab the best HR data that it can for the duration of the exercise.

Reasoning:

During the day I have my heart rate monitor off on the Fitbit Charge HR because I don't much care what my heart rate is while I'm sitting at my desk typing out this message, Fitbit doesn't quite do anything for me with my HR data during the day, and having it off saves battery.

When I want to log an activity, I obviously want the HR monitor to be on. For this I would need my phone, sync my fitbit, and then go for my activity. What if I forget to do this before I go to the gym? Forget my phone at home the day I want to go work out from the office? And the scenarios continue.

All those scenarios could be solved in what seems like simple software update with a couple of if statements in the programming when the button is pressed to log an activity.

Please consider for urgent update!

---

---

@munsabin wrote:

Option to have the HR monitor turned to "ON" for the duration that one is tracking exercise. This way, you know your fitbit Charge HR / Surge is trying it's best to grab the best HR data that it can for the duration of the exercise.

Reasoning:

During the day I have my heart rate monitor off on the Fitbit Charge HR because I don't much care what my heart rate is while I'm sitting at my desk typing out this message, Fitbit doesn't quite do anything for me with my HR data during the day, and having it off saves battery.

When I want to log an activity, I obviously want the HR monitor to be on. For this I would need my phone, sync my fitbit, and then go for my activity. What if I forget to do this before I go to the gym? Forget my phone at home the day I want to go work out from the office? And the scenarios continue.

All those scenarios could be solved in what seems like simple software update with a couple of if statements in the programming when the button is pressed to log an activity.

Please consider for urgent update!

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Agree, just do it..!

[HeydyF]

Hi there! Thank you for you suggestion! I believe that this is a great idea to be implemented on the Charge HR and Surge because track exercise will become easier by automatically turn ON the heart rate.

[miguelacastano]

Hello '*HeydyFitbit'*

​What is the next step?
Are you doing anything about it? I am not sure I understand your message.
Please comment
Thanks

​
Miguel

[1oledog2]

I'm 90 years old and exercise on a treadmill and am sorely disappointed that it will not give a continious readout of my heart rate.  This was my primary reason for the purchase.  Please Please up date the software to provice this feature

1oledog2

[miguelacastano]

Ate you FitBit doing anything about this? Of course not..! Very disappointing.

Miguel
From my Phone

[miguelacastano]

FitBit will not modify the firmware. They never had the right approach with the FitBit Charge HT. They designed it for the 'office environment' of their own developers. Shame on them, really.

Miguel
From my Phone

[nathricks]

I have a Fitbit surge, and the battery life isn't great. The "auto" option for heart rate improves it slightly compared to "on", but there should also be an option for "Recorded activity only"

At the moment the heart rate monitor turns on (with "auto" option) just from lifting my arm when I'm sitting at my desk - not exactly necessary! Really,  I'm only interested in the heart rate during real activity that I'm recording, so there should be an option for this - if I have it "off", I often forget to turn it "on" before starting the activity, then have to cancel and restart.... not very efficient.

[AdamP-OH]

An option to have the heart rate monitoring active only when I begin an activity in the app would be great as:

1) I wear my Fitbit all day and night and that green flashing light is distracting especially at night.

2) Would Dave on battery life as it would only be in use when I truly want to know what my heart rate is, i.e. during exercise. 

[AdamP-OH]

Ugh, “save” not Dave. 

[ss66]

I am happy with the way it is.

[AdamP-OH]

Okay, but I’m not. Im not asking to replace the feature, an additional feature would be nice for those of us who are not fine the way it is. 

[LizFitbit]

Hi @AdamP-OH thanks for this suggestion.

I imagine the majority of users are interested in HR through out the day so I'm not sure this idea would have a wide enough application. Currently, you can manually turn on/off HR: 'Find the Heart Rate setting on your tracker and turn it off to stop the blinking lights. You must change the setting to Auto or On to resume heart-rate tracking' - see this help article. This should resolve your first issue.

[CassieBanks]

Has anything come of this?  I recently tried to see my heart rate during a workout and realized I'd have to stop to do so on my Charge 2.  I'm ok with the display being off during a workout, but couldn't you at the very least send a display of your BPM on the minute so it showed up by itself?  Perhaps if you could have settings to turn it on if people need to see their BPM during exercise and so people could adjust how often they wanted their BPM to display by itself during a workout - every minute, every 5 minutes, every 10 minutes, every mile, every 2 miles, etc.

[SantiR]

Hi everyone, thanks for sharing this suggestion. We're always striving to enhance Fitbit products and services, and we appreciate all of the input we receive from our customers. We do not currently have plans to release this feature. You can learn more about how Fitbit decides what suggestions get released in our FAQs located at the top right box of the Feature Suggestions Board screen. For now, we will leave this suggestion open for votes (and closed to comments) so that we can continue to track community demand over time. Thanks for taking the time to share your feedback with us and we will let you know if anything changes.