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No love for the floor climbing activity

cooldood

I have more questions than answers, so please be patient.  And yes I know this is a bit long winded.

I live in an area with crappy weather and therefore I have taken up stairs as an activity.  I am using the floor climbing activity and it is quite horrible. 

In other activities you can create a route, so the data is accurate.  The same should apply to floors.

The app has one standard  which is not based on residential standards.

The 7/11 ( 7" rise 11" run) code has been around since the 1960's so it is safe to say it applies most buildings. 

I know how many stairs I have, and I ave even measured the total rise.  

Floors climbed is about 90-95% inaccurate

To be fair I go up and down my cellar stairs so using barometric pressure does not work.

Steps are about 80-85% inaccurate

I don't understand this one.  It seems to me this should be as accurate as walking.

Elevation gain is off as well but can only be accurate for very specific building designs.  

Possible solutions 

Make fields editable and save as "My stairs"

Number of stairs

Height of one stair

Use railing  Up, Down, ( check boxes)  blank would equal no railing.

And  my last pet peeve give us credit for elevation gain and badges.  On a good month I am gaining same elevation as Mt. Everest and I just earned a Virtual Climb - Angels Landing 1500'

Really?  

Before some one asks why not create custom activity.  

It is much easier to track progress by floors.  Not so easy to calculate how many feet I climbed. Or speed of climb per minute, etc. 

  • 0

    It can work reasonable well, even without any manual settings, if you follow a few simple rules. Have a look at the tips in the thread What's the secret to tracking stairs accurately?, perhaps it helps you too. 

  • 0 in reply to trux

    Some tips that helped me with the floors count accuracy considerably:

    1. The pressure sensor reading of the barometric altimeter is influenced by the temperature, so make sure to warm-up properly before you start, in order to keep the watch at higher temperature since the beginning of the activity. If you calibrate the altimeter, do it only after warming up.

    2. Never take stairs by two (or more), or do it consistently always Never do and still off by  90%

    3. Keep as regular pace as possible  I always do and still off by 90%
        
    4. Do not hold on the railing, and especially not with the hand wearing the watch! Never do and still off by  90%

    5. Do not look at the watch during the climb, rather make sure that the hand continues with its natural movement, do not raise the hand during the climb Rarely do and this should minimal effect

    6. Make sure the pressure sensor orifice is dry and clear of debris; when sweating a lot, dry the hand under the orifice (i.e. with a tshirt) so that the sweat does not clog it

    7. When you climb and descend just a few floors repeatedly (I do), then walk on the same floor before changing the direction, until the last floors are counted. Sometimes it takes up to ~30s. Sometimes I need to raise the hand on the upper floor, before the count increments (my floors may be perhaps a few cm below the limit of 3m, so the extra ~m when raising the hand, at the top, may trigger the change) Really?  this could double my workout time

    8. If you own a device with GPS, consider doing your Floor Climb activities outdoors, while adjusting the activity settings (directly on the watch) and activating the GPS option. Once the activity synced, you can then open the activity page in Garmin Connect Web, and enable the option Elevation Correction. Although it will not change the number of floors climbed, or the Ascent, it will correct the Elevation Gain value.  It still does not give credit towards badges.  Not sure where I am going to find stairs outdoors and this kind of defeats the pupose.

    9. If you are still having problems, verify that you altimeter really works - open the ABC menu, scroll to the Altimeter screen and climb or descend a floor. If the elevation does not change, the pressure sensor may be locked in the barometric mode. Verify the sensor settings (also available in the ABC menu, or in the System settings). Use either the Auto mode, or set it to the mode "Altimeter only".

    I am not trying to be contrary but using altimeter for less than 10' will never be accurate.

  • 0 in reply to cooldood

    I've gotten all those badges. All but the first one was done outside. I found a nice steep hill about a mile from where I live and walked up and down it over-and-over again....really boring, but it worked AND it was good excerise AND it really upped my step count for the day which counted fowards the other step challenge/badges that month.

    All pretty easy except the last one....

  • 0 in reply to 4411990

    I agree all super easy but they do not work.  Outdoors will work better but my point is getting floor climbing to work not hiking.  I use hiking often and love it. but at -20 or pouring rain I am doing the stairs. 

  • 0 in reply to cooldood

    You'll never get Garmin to fix this. I6's never worked right in the 5-6 years I've been doing this stuff.

    My advice is to do it outside. Don't use the Hiking/Walking activity, use the Floor climb or whatever it's called outside, or forget about it. I gave you my opioion - take it or leave it. Your choice.

  • 0 in reply to 4411990

    I appreciate your input, I really do but the whole premise is indoor floor climbing.  If Garmin and/or members do not care about indoor floor climbing please ignore my letting off steam.

  • 0 in reply to cooldood

    The barometric altimeter works reasonably well. When I run ~100 floors in my 3 floors house, and follow the hints from the post mentioned earlier, I typically get an error of 2-3 floors, which I believe is more than acceptable, considering that the floors are not exactly 3m high.