Sense counts steps when stationary

[HughK]

Hi all, my new sense is counting far too many steps for sitting around doing nothing. Whether it’s at home or at work sitting at a desk, it doesn’t matter. Quite annoying when these things are sold as high quality. I’ve adjusted the wrist to domanint, unsure what else can be done besides not wearing it when sitting around, kind of defeats the purpose… if it keeps up with this I wonder if it’s best returning it and getting an Apple Watch, something I didn’t want to do! 

[GraceGFitbit]

Let me give you a warm Welcome to the Fitbit Community @HughK. 

Fitbit devices have an algorithm for step counting. The algorithm is designed to look for intensity and motion patterns that are most indicative of people walking and running.  When working at a desk, cooking, or doing other arm movements, a device on your wrist can pick up some extra steps if it thinks you're walking. Many of these situations—such as working or cooking— include a few steps in-between stationary periods so the device tries to give you credit for those steps. For the vast majority of customers, the amount of stray steps accumulated is negligible when compared to the entire day. For more details, I recommend you this helpful article How does my Fitbit device count steps? and this post.

If you're having discrepancy with your step count, you can double check the information that you entered, your height most be correct, since we use height to estimate your walking and running stride lengths, you may want to measure and manually adjust these values if your legs are longer or shorter than average.

Hope this helps.

[Rich_Laue]

What are you doing with your arm while sitting @HughK. How many steps are we talking about? 

Your fitbit is unable to directly watch what your feet are doing, but as mentioned, looks at arm motions. I'm still surprised at how well it works. 

There will, at times, be extra steps recorded, and movement where steps are not recorded. 

I have compared arm based trackers with a waist mounted Fitbit One, and find over a week and month, the totals are very close. Sometimes within a thousand over a month.