Calorie mismatch between Fitbit site and result of API call

[dstanfield]

I'm investigating an issue a member of our QA team brought up.  She logged a running activity and synced.  We received a notification and pulled the activity for her acocunt from the activities endpoint.  The date, duration, and number of steps all match what is displayed on the Fitbit site, but the calories don't.  Where fitbit.com displays 247, the data retrieved from the our api call says 99 calories.  Any insights into why there's a difference?

[AndrewFitbit]

@dstanfield Can I see the exact call you're making and the response? UserId for the affected user would also be helpful. 🙂

[dstanfield]

Hi Andrew!  Sorry to get back to you so late:

UserId: 4LN49X

Call: https://api.fitbit.com/1/user/-/activities/date/2016-10-21.json

Response: 

{"activities":[{"activityId":17151,"activityParentId":90013,"activityParentName":"Walk","calories":198,"description":"Walking less than 2 mph, strolling very slowly","distance":2.485485,"duration":1800000,"hasStartTime":true,"isFavorite":false,"lastModified":"2016-10-21T07:06:42.000Z","logId":4518087870,"name":"Walk","startDate":"2016-10-21","startTime":"07:00","steps":6250},{"activityId":1010,"activityParentId":90001,"activityParentName":"Bike","calories":99,"description":"Very Leisurely - Less than 10 mph","distance":3.728227,"duration":1800000,"hasStartTime":true,"isFavorite":false,"lastModified":"2016-10-21T07:08:33.000Z","logId":4517242946,"name":"Bike","startDate":"2016-10-21","startTime":"07:30","steps":0},{"activityId":12030,"activityParentId":90009,"activityParentName":"Run","calories":99,"description":"Running - 5 mph (12 min/mile)","distance":3.106856,"duration":1800000,"hasStartTime":true,"isFavorite":false,"lastModified":"2016-10-21T07:07:06.000Z","logId":4519281706,"name":"Run","startDate":"2016-10-21","startTime":"07:30","steps":6053}],"goals":{"activeMinutes":30,"caloriesOut":1803,"distance":5,"floors":10,"steps":10000},"summary":{"activeScore":-1,"activityCalories":308,"caloriesBMR":1114,"caloriesOut":1369,"distances":[{"activity":"Walk","distance":2.485485},{"activity":"Bike","distance":3.728227},{"activity":"Run","distance":3.106856},{"activity":"total","distance":5.63},{"activity":"tracker","distance":0.03},{"activity":"loggedActivities","distance":9.320568},{"activity":"veryActive","distance":2.49},{"activity":"moderatelyActive","distance":3.11},{"activity":"lightlyActive","distance":0.03},{"activity":"sedentaryActive","distance":0}],"elevation":0,"fairlyActiveMinutes":30,"floors":0,"lightlyActiveMinutes":5,"marginalCalories":212,"sedentaryMinutes":931,"steps":12391,"veryActiveMinutes":30}}

[AndrewFitbit]

@dstanfield No worries. I'm not seeing 247 calories on either the user's dashboard or in the response. Everything seems to match up on both sides. Is this the particular date you saw the 247 calories?

On an unrelated note, the user has two activities on the 21st that are logged at the exact same time (7:30am).

[dstanfield]

Yes, this happened on 10/21/16

Here's the screenshot attached to our QA ticket: 

[AndrewFitbit]

@dstanfield Ah okay, so what I said before is actually related then. The two activities being logged at the same time (meaning both start times are at 7:30am) is what caused calories to be overridden. That's why it currently shows calories as 99 instead of 247 when it was originally logged.