Step Tracking while riding mototcicle

[Smeads]

I paid $200 for this blaze and it tracks steps when I am driving or riding my Harley. My $400 Samsung Gear S2 Classic tracked steps with amazing accuracy, but I wanted frequent heart rate readings - which is doesn't do as well. I lift weights, cycle, walk, run, and ride my Harley around town. My friends and I started competing in challenges; however, I cannot in good conscience participate because whenever I drive to work, the Fitbit tracks an additional 3000 steps. 

Per their instructions located @ https://help.fitbit.com/articles/en_US/Help_article/1306 I manually entered the time I ride to and from work - but it doesn't subtract the steps from ANYWHERE. I've supplied the Fitbit folks w/ a screenshot, and they verified I entered the activities correctly. They suggested that I use Drivebit as an alternative. For 3 days, I have tried this method. My watch, and the Fitbit app still show the steps created from riding the Harley.

My 1st thought is, why are they suggesting a 3rd party app and not fixing this in their own product line? The ability to negate steps, or turn off the counter, should already be built in. With the number of complaints I have seen online, I know I'm not alone in this thinking. Amazon gave me 2 more weeks to return the watch, I am hoping there is a fix before I do that. I'm very disappointed in this product and lack of features. If this was a $20 watch, sure I can see you get what you pay for...... but it's a $200 "smart" watch.  

I've been an engineer and software developer for more than 20 years.... this cannot be a massive task to correct. It's a matter of desire. If a community can develop a fix, so can the manufacturer. 

Does anyone have a solution before I give up?

Moderator Edit: Updated Subject For Clarity / Word Choice

[RobertoME]

Hello @Smeads, let me start by giving you a warm welcome to the Fitbit Community. I can understand your frustration specially when you know the business of software development.

As you know, the Fitbit tracker in the most basic form, is a motion sensor that will read each movement you so with your body. In order to make more accurate our devices is require this sensors are more sensitive at the moment to read your activity. With a  motorcycle as we both know, you have a powerful engine that will produce vibrations, that will be translate by your tracker as an activity giving you steps that actually you are not doing.

I'm not sure how it goes so far since has been pass a few days since you posted, but my personal recommendation would be to turn off your tracker. I saw on your Community profile you have paired a Blaze tracker and this as the Surge has the option to Turn it Off. While you tracker is off it won't count any step which I believed is pretty useful if you are riding your motorcycle.

The other option is to log a driving activity as it was recommended before. However I'm wondering how did you logged this activity? Are you using the App or the Online Dashboard? If is the online Dashboard is require to enter the Driving Activity, but it's important not to use the Activity record button as this wont work for this purpose.

See you around and hope this helps!

[Smeads]

Thanks for responding. I do not feel I should have to turn a "smart" device off and on, especially in 2017. I followed the instructions for negating steps, but it doesn't work. Again thought, this is another manual step, which is annoying.

I am hoping to be able to use this automation app, http://llamalab.com/automate/    Have you heard of it? 

My hope is to get it to talk to the Drivebit app, and tell it to turn on DriveBit whenever it connects to my Harley's Bluetooth radio. And then when I turn my Harley off, it will turn off Drivebit. If you or another technical person can help, that would be awesome. I just downloaded it.

[Smeads · Accepted solution]

I found another app with instructions located here: https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Third-Party-Integrations/Tasker-instructions-to-automate-Drivebit-Au...

I changed the state to "connected to bluetooth" instead of connected to power. I'll be trying this today.

[Smeads]

OK, this works perfectly. I also added a feature that turns on "do not disturb" so that my music doesn't become interrupted by notifications. 

[RobertoME]

Hello @Smeads, thank you for keep me posted. I'm sorry I haven't post anything lately.

I was reading your posts and I saw you managed to resolved the issue following the steps of the post shared by @AussieJogger.

About the app you've mentioned, I never heard of it before, however since we have an open API there are a few integrations that are not officially supported, but it add different functionalities to the Fitbit app.

Thank you for your feedback and I would like to invite you to participate in our Feature suggestion board. If this is something in which you're interested, please this idea which is quite popular: Add "Driving Mode" Feature to avoid erroneous steps/floors and contribute with your vote and comments. This is a great way to let our developers know what you'd like to see in the future!

I appreciate your understanding while we work to improve this experience.