• Replies 21 replies
  • Subscribers 22 subscribers
  • Views 1299 views
  • Users 0 members are here
Options
Related

No distance measured for racket sports - Updating native datafield?

SzymonP
5 months ago

Hello,

I published bunch of apps tracing racket sports like Tennis, Padel, Squash etc.

1. The problem is that when GPS is OFF and  activvity is supposed to calculate the distance based on steps the distance is extremally low eg. after 1hr activity the distance is 50-200meters. At the same time it can be checked that 2k steps were made during activity. Was this issue ever addressed by garmin? This issue is being reported to me by a lot of users unfortunately.

2. I'm going to implement distance measurement on my side based on avg step length * step count. Is there a way to store it in fit file in such a way that it will replace the native/default distance of activity?

  • 5 months ago

    1) Understand that the watch only knows about what it can detect on your wrist.  It may or may not sense anything your feet are doing.  A classic example is using a hiking pole or pushing a shopping cart - your steps will probably be undercounted as the watch doesn't see all the steps.  You could try putting the watch in your pocket or wearing it on your ankle.

    The watch also has "false step" detection.  Say you are sitting at your desk and your arms are moving, but no steps are involved.  At one time, it was that it needed to detect 10 steps in a short time for any of them to be counted, but you then got credit for the first 10.  So if you take 5 steps, stop, and take 5 more, none may be counted.

    2) While you can use nativeNum with a field, that's not used in Garmin Connect.  There is no way to replace the data that's recorded by the firmware with your own data

  • 5 months ago in reply to jim_m_58

    1) The problem is I can clearly see that the step count changed by more than 2k steps during the activity but activity itself shows distance travelled was 50-200meters.

    2) too bad.

    Thanks for reply.

  • 4 months ago

    I just switched from Fitbit to Garmin and I am shocked that Garmin does such a poor job of distance for non-GPS activities. I play indoor tennis 9 months of the year and Fitbit actually did a pretty decent job of estimating distance based on steps, but even with the newest Garmin, it is wildly inaccurate and tells me my distance is 0.1 mile after 90 minutes of playing time. I emailed support and the response was 'that's the way it is', but I was given this link to 'make a suggestion'. https://www.garmin.com/en-US/forms/ideas/ So maybe if enough of us request an improvement, they'll update this? 

  • 4 months ago in reply to 1783229

    I doubt it will change soon so I'm about to add my own distance measurement based on steps to my app. I will not be able to replace native distance display but at least would give users more reasonable estimate.

  • 4 months ago in reply to SzymonP

    Is your app available to all users? If so, I'd be interested! Thanks.

  • 4 months ago in reply to 1783229

    https://apps.garmin.com/apps/0073ddf4-3ec7-436d-a598-d88cfd0d583a

    I'm about to release a major update with new interface (more data fields displayed) + with step and distance measurement which I was mentioning.

  • 4 months ago

    Why is distance so important? It's not related to tennis. You can count hits by the rocket (the user needs to wear it on the strong hand) that kind of makes sense. But why are you or other tennis players obsessed about the distance?

  • 4 months ago in reply to flocsy🤠

    Personally I dont care, but users are keep pointing this issue out. As always dev is blamed... ;)

    If I were to guess distance is the main measure displayed in GC for tennis activity - both on activity summary and toodays last activity "tile" (dont know how to name it). And since GC keeps exposing it to the users, showing that during 2hrs activity they travelled 200meters they get mad that they paid >1k usd for such crap measure. 

    If there was a way for devs to populate main measures displayed in GC I would just use total number of strokes hit/recorded during the training. I could even pay/bribe garmin devs to grant me that opportunity (not a joke).

  • 4 months ago in reply to SzymonP

    It might be possible. Look at jump rope or HIIT activities. You could also try how tennis looks when you don't enable GPS

  • 4 months ago in reply to flocsy🤠

    Thanks for the hint, I will check on those apps! ( regarding GPS, the whole issue arised when users are swithing off the gps and garmin device estimates distance based on steps...)