Sense is counting too many floors

[Deepvalley]

My new sence dosnt counting the right floors there are too much what can i do. sg Kurt

Moderator Edit: Clarified subject

[Donno]

Yeah, I don’t know. I’ve got 24 floors today so far and the only climbing I’ve done is in and out of the car a couple of times.  To be fair, it is an SUV!

[Micsb]

I am at 28 floors already after a very short walk, that might justify 2 stairs.

Two days ago a 5km run worth 35 height meters resultet in 220 meters and several mountain tops according to Fitbit 😂

Got a new record at 315 stairs yesterday, which should have been closer to 20-30 stairs tops.

Still strange whats causing this, it was very accurate at launch back in October and in my case it wents nuts only a month ago.

[MikaelHagen]

So what firmware version do you have?

Can one see when it got updated. See I got 44.128.4.17 but not when I got
it. Anyway my floor count today is 64 maybe 6 would be correct

[ZanesVegas]

So yesterday I made a comment on a Fitbit post on Facebook about fixing the issue. Their team quickly asked me to DM them my account email after a couple others chimed in.

Anyway, they looked at my account and noted I had 33 floors for the day, like it was fine. Nope. Not even close to 33 floors by that time. Also got the basic canned message I had received a few weeks ago, about how sometimes it could misread movements and register a floor, and yadda yadda yadda. Also got a link for instructions on removing the floors portion from my account.

I then rather called them out - I knew all that already, and I'd been a loyal Fitbit customer since purchasing the original Flex several years ago. Also mentioned how I have been battling a knee issue and have limited the use of stairs, and that this thing is even registering floors that I descend. I also mentioned this thread, and the talk about a firmware issue. Then I sent them screenshots of the last four weeks of stairs stats.

The response was they were aware of it, but "may not be able to provide a fix in the immediate future." They said they will continue to monitor the situation.

I remember that after I took the plunge and bought the Flex, I was really impressed with their customer service. Had a couple band issues, and they rectified that in no time. Certainly a band and firmware are two different things, but it sure seems like their customer service methods have changed. All I'm asking is for them to be honest, that if it's a perplexing firmware issue that will take some time to sort out, to just say so.

My free premium stats offer will be complete fairly soon. I hate to walk away from Fitbit, but I might. I think I'm oh-for-40-years now.

Moderator edit: format/word choice

[Rich_Laue]

The floor problem should not have been fixed without a firmware update. 

Has anyone received the new update yet? 

[LadieLilac]

It seems since Fitbit was bought by Google that their customers service has
gone south. I have been a loyal Fibit customer since the very beginning
with the Zip. I have a perfectly good Samsung smart watch sitting at home I
left for the Fitbit, but if it is not going to work, I night as well go
back to the smart watch.

[Arecad]

I am also curious to see if the latest software which was released on June 1 fixed the problem. I have not received the update yet so cannot say anything. Anyone who does and was experiencing the issue, is it fixed? I saw *nothing* in the blog about fixes which is alarming.

[Vinton]

I've had my FitBit Sense since December. Beginning in mid- to late April, it started counting a very high number of erroneous floors, as high as 187 in one day. It's even counted 3 floors while I was sleeping and added another 10 walking around on one floor of my house. I contacted FitBit and they told me they have a update for the device and that I should see the option to update it in my app within 2-3 days. That was 2 weeks ago and it still isn't there. I called FitBit again today and they told me I just need to wait even longer and that that team will release it to me sometime, but couldn't even give me a rough estimate. 

I am VERY FRUSTRATED. Any other SOLUTIONS?

Thanks, 

Vinton

[SunsetRunner]

I certainly hope it fixes something, but I don't have the new firmware yet. I've been having this floors issue for months now, I thought it might be the hardware but seeing so many people report it here does give me hope that it's fixable in the firmware. I got the ferris wheel badge today for logging 79 floors. It's just past 2PM and all I did was take an elevator that was really not that high. This is absolutely ridiculous.

[DocHammer]

I got the update yesterday. Woke up today having climbed 8 flights of
stairs while asleep.

[MikaelHagen]

Seems I got the update as well this morning now says 44.128.5.38 even though just got failed to update 5-6 times. Anyway assume was installed and if anything it seems to count more floors 165 so far.

[Ruhann]

This was working fine for a long time. After an app update I started getting crazy numbers like 100 floors a day while I'm mostly sedentary. So something changed in the firmware or software that is causing this issue

[FatBasdard]

Nice to see fitbit mods active watching us moan about our fitbit and only get actively engaged to suppress talk of switching to competitor devices while doing nothing to fix the problem. You can gauge the feelings here, pass them on to your tinkering department for a fix please. 

[Micsb]

I found something funny today.
 I made a new record of 460 floors here in the flat country of DK with little effort.

One walk with gps activated on Sense resultet in 240 height meters and 130 floors. A fitbit floor is less than 2 meters 🤨 are fitbit software engineers haflings 😂

On a flat strech of road walking 100 meters forward gave me 2 floors, turning around and walking back gave another 2 floors. It continued doing this 4 more times, how is this even possible, an endless stair 😂

[SunsetRunner]

Suppressing talk of switching to competitors is not going to stop us from actually leaving, so I'd say good luck with that to Fitbit. For the amount of money plus Fitbit Premium I would at least expect (somewhat) accurate registration of activity. Yesterday it reached precisely 100 floors before I just took it off and left it on the table for the rest of the evening. 

[Micsb]

I have an hypothesis on why it is overestimating the number of floors compared to other devices, maybe even other Fitbit devices.

1. Fitbit Sense apply 1 floor per 2 meters gained altitude meters

Apples iphone apply 1 stair per 3 meters gained altitude meters.

2. Fitbit has no rule on the distances/number of steps required to justify an increase in altituide as a floor.

Apples iphone require the increase in altitude to happen over 16 steps, else it wont register as a stair. I.e. slow inclining hills equal 0 stairs

3. Fitbit accumulate all changes to height, and register ever 2 meter gained as a stair

Apples iphone will only accept it as a stair if it happens over 16 steps.

Other fitbit watches might use different algoritms and therefore return different results.

Point 2 and 3 is perhaps the culprint of the abundance of floors for anyone moving around outside. Any breeze will gradually accumulate lots of height meters, even though you are moving in a flat surface or even walking downhill. Point 1 with 2 meters vs 3 meter might be alright, though apple with its 3meters will filter even more false readings and unfortunately not register all stairs as stairs.

Back in October, where I found the floor counts to be fairly accurate, there were complaints on the forum of Sense not registering staircases inside houses. Those complaints are now gone and replaced with complaints on too many floors registered. I.e. the watch might work find for those who spend most of their time inside houses or fitness centers, while those of us moving around outside gets a huge amount of floors.

It might be difficult to make it suit both indoor and outdoor people. I just walked up 4 stairs and apple only gave me 3 as example. A walk outside with light breeze and low hills gave me 0 stairs from apple while Fitbit gave me tons of floors.

According to Fitbit documentation, they will count floors for any positive change in altitude as long as it registers you as moving.

[SunsetRunner]

I woke up this morning and I might have l(according to fitbit) climbed 100 floors as I stood up. Can I get a Superman badge? At least a stairway to Heaven? 

Ever since the last update, I've been waking up between 25 to 50 floors with around 10 steps but this morning was extremely off with 71 steps and 100 floors. If your theory on algo is correct,  each step is around 8 to 16m.

[Micsb]

You must be tired after sleepwalking 100 floors 😂

I think Fitbits implementation is terrible flawed, purely speculation as i dont know how and only based on the strange floor counting.

One step might be enough to be considered active and if the air pressure has changed, it will give you a number of floors. One step would be enough to give you 100 steps.

Sometimes in the morning, floor count is 0, then i take 3 steps out the door and boom, i am already 3 floors up. Dont have that long legs 😂

They should rename the floor counter to something else, perhaps wind indicator.

It might also be related to something simplier, power saving of the sensor, and they take readings too soon afters waken and yet havent stabilized at the current air pressure.

[down_and_out]

While there are issues with the algorithms but I doubt its an indoor-outdoor user issue. 

Prior to turning us into superior beings with amazing calves, I found the Sense was providing mostly accurate counts within acceptable (for me at least) margin of error - a margin of error similar to what occurs with the step count.  This applied to both indoor and outdoor activities. 

Walking the same set of stairs both ways might count 1, 2 or 0 flights of stairs.  I assumed that if I was doing 10, 20 or 30 sets the margin of error wouldn't be an enormous concern.  Same with outside when going up or down inclines.  I accepted that the machine was counting an incline much like stairs since the relative physical effort would be similar.  Again not a major concern given the factors analyzed and that the margin of error would be lowered commensurate with an increase in the number of repititions.  i.e. +/- 1 when walking one set of stairs can have enormous impact but when repeating it 30 times the impact is insignificant.

When the Sense developed a deep disconnect to reality the problem with counts occured to both outside and inside efforts, for me at least.  When clearing snow off the driveway I went from 3 to 5 "stairs', which is relatively accurate to double and triple the number.   Now riding my mower I can achieve amazing stair totals.

The change in the underlying math may have been intended to increase accuracy for both outdoor and indoor activities.  Obviously it failed.  I do agree that distance along a plane may be a key factor but whatever it was, Fitbit can't seem to revert back to the old algorith version .

[Micsb]

If you use gps on sense for running or walking and divide the resulting height meters with 2, you get the number of floors added in the fitbit app.

it does use an accumulation of the total height meters to calculate number of floors. They really should add this in a disclamer as it will give a different result compared to ie apple.

back in October a run outside on a well known route gave a very accurate, estimate on height meters, around 35 meters on this specific route. Today it results in 120 to 240 height meters.

Part og the problem must be related to wind, the only parameter that differ from each trip around the same lake.

a long hill with low incline will give more floors than the steep incline even if they are at the same height, as the wind will add extra height meters. Time walking might have a larger impact than the actual height of the hill.

I agree, it used to be acceptable accurate, however compalints about missing floor counts when walking up the stairs inside the house and threats of returning the watch, gave us what we have today. It is stable when i am in the house or in the office, take a walk outside and it start adding a ton of floors.

there might be other reasons, my abnormal readings started about a month ago, long after the last firmware. It might have happened at the same time as the weather improved and we had a high pressure system move over our location. Perhaps the false readings are worse when the air pressure is high compared to low pressure area. Else i must have an hadware fault, that happened a month ago.