Not counting Flights of stairs

[Erinmarie1013]

So I just got my surge and here I am at the end of the day. And my surge only recognizes I climbs 1 flight of stairs when I know for a fact I did at least 4 today just from doing nap and bed time with my children. And I know I climbed more flights with laundry and such. Anyone else having this problem?

[SteveH]

I wonder if it's down to the height of your stairs. Your Surge should count a floor when it detects a rise in elevation of 10 feet whilst you were continuously moving. If your flight is around the 10 feet mark it may be missing some.

[Erinmarie1013]

I'm not sure how long my stairs are I want to say more than 10 ft though maybe just barely over. But like today my Fitbit has recognized 3 flights and I know I have done at least 5. So why is it recognizing some flights but not others?

[Erinmarie1013]

I don't know if maybe carrying my son up may effect it. I carried him up 2 flights today as opposed to letting him climb up himself..

[SteveH · Accepted solution]

It could be that. It has to think you are walking for the floor to count (otherwise travelling on an elevator would count) so if perhaps your arm movements are limited it may think you have stopped.

[Erinmarie1013]

I think you're right Steve! That totally makes sense because I do carry him on the arm my tracker is on! Thanks so much!!!

[Justdigits]

It's only counting up to 4 . 

[AlvaroFitbit]

@Justdigits Thanks for joining us! Could you provide more information about the issue? Are you climbing more than 4 floors? Where are you climbing these floors (maybe walking a hill or in a building? Have you tried restarting your tracker? If you haven't then please do the following:

1.- Press and hold the Home and Select buttons (left and bottom right) on your Fitbit Surge for 10 to 15 seconds, until you see the screen flash or start to dim.
2.- Let go of the buttons.
3.- After your screen turns completely off, wait 10 seconds and press the Home button to turn your Surge back on.

Also make sure the altimeter isn't blocked by sweat or water (its in the back of the tracker). You can use some compressed air at a distance to clear/dry it.

Let me know how it goes!

[BiggDawgATX]

I've restarted my tracker a number of times. I go  up and down stairs many times during the day. Some days, if I actually watch it, the stairs get counted accurately. Sometimes,not so much. I've restarted and gone up and down the stairs while watching it and nothing registers. On very rare occasions, it tracks the floors accurately, but it is never consistent from one day to the next. Very frustrating. I"ve only had this tracker for a few months and it has never tracked stairs accurately. From what I can see, this is a universal issue. Are there plans to send out an update to fix this?

[YojanaFitbit]

Hey there @BiggDawgATX! Thanks for joining the Forums! Thank you for bringing this to my attention too. Restarting your tracker was a good try for this issue! 

I wanted to start giving a little bit of background about floors count. Your Surge detects floors using an altimeter, which is a sensor that calculates altitude change based on atmospheric pressure. Atmospheric pressure decreases with increasing elevation, so the tracker calculates elevation gain based on the reduction in atmospheric pressure. Your tracker registers a floor when it detects continuous motion combined with an elevation gain of about 10 feet. Because the tracker looks for continuous motion, pausing too long when going up a flight of stairs can cause the tracker to not count the floor. Please note that floors are only counted when going up an incline and not down. 

When using your Surge 10 feet is an average between residential and commercial floor heights. If the floors you're climbing are shorter than 10 feet, you may find that the Fitbit tracker's floor count doesn't exactly match how many floors you've gone up. For example, if you climb 3 floors that are 8 feet tall (for a total gain of 24 feet), then the Fitbit tracker might only tell you 2 floors because it assumes that each floor is 10 feet tall. How many stairs are you usually getting? If this is a hardware issue an update won't think will help a lot. 

Another cause of inaccurate floors is moisture. For example, the pathway to the altimeter on the back of your tracker can become clogged temporarily with sweat or water as @AlvaroFitbit mentioned above . We recommend that your tracker be worn loosely during exercise. Please send as many details as you might have, I'm pretty interested in helping you out with this.

I'll be around waiting for more details!