Help needed - Bike mode on Surge

[kylie_marree]

Hi ive tried to find this answer else where but am having no luck. I got the surg for xmas and asked the rep 10,000 questions to make sure this one was right for my needs. Used it for the first time today in bike mode and while the GPS logged the 6kms in the exercise part its not reflective on the dashboard with kms and has not converted it to steps which i was told it would do. Can anyone help me with this? 

[YojanaFitbit]

Hope you're having a lovely day @kylie_marree, welcome to the Forums! And congratulations on your new Surge. You can as here as many questions as you want we all can help you with that.

Your Fitbit Surge will give you time, distance, duration, calories and route (map if GPS is enable) for your Bikes activities, while using Exercise Shortcuts on the Multi-Sport feature. Sorry about the misunderstanding about steps count while biking, but as this is not a step based activity your Surge won't show steps. 

In case that you haven't check the manual, you can see very useful information there. 

Let me know if you have any other question. 

[dogenzenji]

Hi Kylie

Are you using the GPS when cycling on the Surge?

If so in my experience even though on your activity list the number of steps is shown as N/A the Surge will still register a certain amount of steps, the further you cycle the more it will recognise. For me about 1K steps for every 10K cycling I do. Check out how your step count increases after you have finished cycling. Now for me that seems buggy as my Surge knows I am cycling and not really walking or running but for others they are fine with the extra steps. But no, it will not convert 6KM of cycling into 6K worth of steps...

[Chris1963]

If you are using steps as your goal it can be misleading as cycling definitely logs steps whether in auto or manual mode. For some this is ok as it gives an equivalent target/achievement as if the whole days exercise was walking or running.

For others it confuses things. Why count steps for a non step activity? I may have a 10k step target and a 20km cycle target. The two shouldn't mix.

I got round it by having a calorie target for the day, ignoring step count as it means nothing if I have just done a long cycle ride. 

[kylie_marree]

Thanks all for the feedback, however the kms ive done on the bike do not register on the dashboard as accomplished kms. Is this also how its supposed to be?

[Chris1963]

Hi, it will show if the Surge was used in GPS mode under recent exercise but won't show under the "Today" section as this is the step based activity detail...which confusingly (for me) shows steps calculated for a bike ride...  . 

If auto mode is used its just time and calories and HR.

[YojanaFitbit]

Thanks for getting back @kylie_marree! Your Dashboard should be including the distance from all your activities tracked by Multi-Sport. The only distance that is not transfer to your Dashboard is the one that is tracked by SmartTrack, you can deactivate SmartTrack by going to your Fitbit App > Account > Exercises > Turn off Automatic recognition of activities. You can turn off that option in your computer by going to Fitbit.com  > Settings (gear icon in the upper right corner) > Automatically Recognized Exercises.

If you're using the option Bike from your watch, it connects directly with your GPS and will give you that information after syncing. Can you see that activity in your records? You can see your workouts stats by going to your Dashboard on your phone, tapping on "Track exercise" tile, on the date you did it.

Hope this helps, let me know if you have more questions! 

PS. Thanks @Chris1963 and @dogenzenji for your participation.

[JanieN.]

I am also wondering about cycling activity with Fitbit Surge as I've cycled the same route today (15mins)  in different directions, so roughly the same distance and its only logged the return journey as active minutes that contributed to my total activity, which admittedly was more uphill than the outward journey, when it was more downhill. I used the BIKE setting in Exercise and so was hooked up to GPS. Also it has not added 25 minutes of Yoga either? I have reduced time settings to 10 mins in the 'Auto recognize  so I thought it would have logged these.  

[kylie_marree]

Yeah just to clarify i am using the exercise setting 'bike' with the gsp turned on. Its added this to the exercise log but did not add the kms to the daily km total on the dashboard. So even though in total i did 18.2kms my dashboard has only updated the walking kms which is a total of 9.2 so i havent hit my achieved personal daily limited.

So is that how its supppsed to be? That the exercise kms will only log in the exercise section but not the dashboard section?

[Chris1963]

Hi Janie - I'd start by checking the settings as shown and reduce the auto mode to recognise activity after 10 minutes. And make sure Yoga is ticked as one of the activities to be recognised. Pretty sure in GPS mode any activity is measured though I'm not sure as I tend to use that only if I know its going to be a longer duration.

[Chris1963]

Kylie - it wont log cycling in the total. That's fair enough I think as the Surge is essentially a step counter and if you think about it cycling 10km isnt the same effort as walking 10km. The equivalent step count is recorded though which can make it confusing. 

The best way to deal with this is not to have steps or distance as a target if you mix activities. Try using a calorie burn target - that way all activities contribute to it whether its walking/cycling/yoga etc.

[hebeder]

Thank you @Chris1963 for answering Kylie's question as I had the same one and it is so hard to get a straight answer from tech support. I wish I'd known this limitation before choosing a Fitibit. They need to evolve from a stepcounter to a proper fitness tracker or they will keep losing customers. I found myself limiting the activities I chose to do based on how they will track on Fitbit. How silly is that? Screw it, I want to bike and I'm not going to let this step counter watch stop me.