Alpine Snow Exercise Type and Skiing Activity

[ubrinks]

For some time, Jon Barlows Alpine Snow exercise type now maps to a Fitbit skiing activity and GPS based tracking is also enabled, many thanks for that.

However, there is a big issue. The distance and speed measurement in this activity seems to be based on step counts and not on GPS data. I have noticed the following: when you start an Alpine Snow exercise type and you start walking around, speed and distance values are ok. But when you start skiing (no more steps) speed and distance are almost zero. Also, when you take a look into the fitbit activity database, the speed attribute of almost all skiing activities is set to false. So I have the impression distance and speed logging of all skiing activities is based on step counts. But for alpine skiing this does not make any sense.

Is there a possibility for me as app developper to fix this (e.g. by creating a custom activity) or do we have to wait for an update from fitbit (related to the problem with custom exercises)?

Best

Uwe

[JonFitbit]

Thanks for spotting this. Ideally the API gets update to allow developers to define whether the excercise type is ambulatory, or not.

In the short term we could probably use the geolocation API to get speed, then display that instead of the value from the exercise api. It would at least work on the device anyway.

https://dev.fitbit.com/build/reference/device-api/geolocation/

You're welcome to submit a pull request! 🙂

https://github.com/orviwan/alpine-snow

[ubrinks]

Thanks for the reply. I currently see two workarounds: the one you proposed by tracking speed and distance directly via the geolocation API. Then you would have correct values at least on your display. However, the exercise log in the Fitbit app would still be wrong. I am also not sure what about the burned calories. If this value is also step-based it might be far off the real value. the second workaround is the one I have currently chosen. I am using the cycling exercise type to get speed and distance right. You also see correct speed and distance values in the Fitbit app. However, the exercise type shown there of course is wrong. Also, the burned calories might not be correct.

Indeed the best solution would be if I could have more flexibility in defining a custom exercise type.