HR wrong on indoor bike, and steps added during that time not deleted

[lz7782]

Hello,

Not sure if I am doing something wrong but my heart rate is way off when doing indoor bike workouts. It was tracking at 70bpm when I was much nearer 148. I tried moving the watch further up my wrist and it stopped giving any reading at all.

When I come back to add the workout to my fitbit profile online, it does not delete the approx 1,000 steps it added during that workout.

Am I doing something wrong? 

[Chris1963]

Hi.

No you're not.

I've found the HR is only remotely accurate while at rest or during gentle walking. Again yesterday Surge recorded 98bpm for a 25 mile cycle ride while my Polar strap recorded 138bpm average.

It's nonsense as many have pointed out. It also fails spectacularly to keep up with your heart on climbs and generally just shows the " -- " to indicate no reading. When it does occasionally spike to say 170 it puts the fear of god into me for a second as I wonder if my actual HR is 250 or higher...

On the other point I dont mind this though many others do. Its actually a beefed up pedometer and again on auto bike it will record steps, today I did 30 miles or so which showed as 12000 ish steps. Like I say I dont mind a step equivalent showing, though annoyingly when I track a ride on GPS the step count logged for the same distance is much lower. So its as much use really as the HR !

Now I'm thinking...why do I have one? 

[lz7782]

I am sure I read that it was programmed to recognise a period of activity and then delete any steps monitored during that time.

I am wondering whether I have made the right choice with this product. I'm hopeful that support will be able to show me the error of my ways and I can continue to use it. For anything other than actual exercise I really like it but that's a pretty big gap if it can't do what it is supposed to when you are exercising.

Luckily for me I'm within my 14 days of having bought it, so it can still go back.

[Chris1963]

Hi,

No it doesnt delete those steps on an auto actvity nor on the manual ones. You can probably go into the dashboard and delete them manually. Like I said if it were an accurate step count based say on calorie burn I dont mind an equivalent total to what I would have done had I just been walking. That gives me a daily comparison if I do a few activities. But since auto and manual cycling show completely different step counts that too is useless.

On a positive, the GPS tracking I find very accurate but I have that on my phone which also has to be activated manually. It was HR I was really interested in as I don't always want to put a chest strap on. On that as you have found it is very disappointing.     

[lz7782]

Thanks Chris, disappointing about sums it up!

[lz7782]

In case anyone is interested in the fixes I have found for this:

1) You can 'delete' steps that you have been credited during an indoor bike ride by creating a driving activity in your log for the exact same time that you were on the bike. It will still give you the bike ride calories and statistics but it will delete all steps credited during that time.

2) The HR monior works perfectly for Eliptical workouts on the exercise mode. I am going to test this next time to see if I select an Eliptical workout when actually riding the bike, then delete this exercise for that time and add a bike session with the correct distance taken from the machine. Hopefully that will then track my correct HR alongside the exercise.

All seems a gigantic faff and looks like it could be solved by giving an indoor bike mode on exercise where the user can simply input the distance once completed.