GPS low power mode

[Tor-ErikL]

Is there any plan to add a low power mode in general to the GPS tracking ?

As it is now the GPS tracking records to many waypoints and generate to much data, it would make sence to be able to configure another mode where it takes waypoints less frequent, like each fifth minut or something like that. I know other GPS trackers have similiar features.

This comes in handy when doing daylong hikes and you just want a simple gps track and to save battery.

[MikeF]

Would that save and batery power though? My feeling is that it's the GPS receiver maintaining a lock on the satellites that will use the majority of the power rather than the writing of data to memory being a much lower proportion. How much extension over he quoted 10hrs of GPS use would you expect to gain from this?

Or have I misunderstood and you're proposing the dropping and re-acquision of the GPS signals at longer intervals (minutes apart for example)?

[Tor-ErikL]

Actually there are two problems...

Related to data:

I can only export my GPS tracks as TCX files and these files contains to much information that i dont need, since i only use the trackpoints I have to use a converter to strip data and create a clean GPX files for mapping usage. Due to the high number of trackpoints that fitbit uses i also need to run the gpx files through a trackpoint optimizer so that my 4-5 hours tracks actually becomes managable for map applications. Any plans to support GPX export ?

Battery life:

I'm not completely sure how Garmin's low power GPS algorithm works, but i guess taking a waypoint and then putting the GPS in restmode and then reacitviate GPS to get a new lock and take the next waypoint would be possible.

[Tor-ErikL]

Regarding trackpoints, seems like fitbit takes trackpoints for something like every meter almost - this makes the exported tracks very unmanagable. Would be nice to ba able to configure this, like every 10 meters, 20 meter, 50 meters, 100 meters and so on. when creating tracks for 5+ Hours you do not need to take waypoints for every meter you walk/hike!

[Tor-ErikL]

So any feedback on this ? 🙂