Acknowledged
10 days ago
CIQQA-3459

bug: no way to set elevation unit on vivoactive 5

This probably should also be reported in the vivoactive 5 forum, but since that's not monitored by Garmin employees, I'll try here.

A user of one of my apps reported that they can't change the elevation unit from feet to meters. I told them to do it in the system settings (my app uses DeviceSettings.elevationUnits). But it turns out that Garmin left that possibility out from vivoactive 5.

The only settings (both on-watch and via Garmin Connect) are:
distance, weight, height, temperature, pressure.

Note, it's not a mistake, it's height, with cm or inches, and not elevation or altitude that's supposed to be meters or feet.

This is vivoactive 5 with FW version 14.15

Yes, there's no barometer in va5, but it doesn't matter, because the watch displays the correct elevation based on GPS, just in feet.

See also: https://forums.garmin.com/sports-fitness/healthandwellness/f/vivoactive-5-series/418980/bug-no-way-to-set-elevation-unit-on-vivoactive-5

flocsy🤠
Parents
  • 3 days ago

    > Note it's enhanced altitude (which I would've guessed means the auto corrected one),

    The "enhancedX" fields in the FIT file (enhanced_altitude, enhanced_speed, etc.) are simply a way to store more significant figures than the corresponding "basic" fields.

    For example, "basic" speed is16 bits, but enhanced_speed is 32 bits.

    See: https://www.thisisant.com/forum/viewthread/4561 

    Not sure how you would expect auto-corrected altitude to be in the FIT file, since the FIT is generated by the watch (and is not modified by Connect), but altitude auto-correction is done in Connect.

    >  So the 24m we see in GC is the auto correction (which BTW can't be turned off on this activity because it was recorded on fr55. On fr965 there's a way to disable it)

    I think everyone was already trying to tell you that for devices without a baro:

    1) everything related to elevation is hidden on the watch itself, although GPS elevation is still available to CIQ apps and it's still recorded to the FIT file. Again, afaik, there are no native elevation fields or glances on 

    2) elevation in Connect is auto-corrected. (it's not equal to the GPS elevation values recorded by the device)

    Because of 1), it makes sense for Garmin to omit the elevation units setting for devices without a baro.

    (Recall that Garmin doesn't really care about Connect IQ. And even if they did, it would look very strange for a device to have zero built-in elevation-related features, but to still expose an elevation units setting that would only be used for CIQ apps that do expose GPS elevation, which is otherwise hidden from the user)

    Glad you were able to verify this stuff for yourself tho.

    > However this proves that both ActivityInfo.altitude and DeviceSettings.elevationUnits return actual values.

    Nobody said otherwise. What was said is that native UI for watches without a baro does not expose elevation, so as far as the end user is concerned, it doesn't exist.

    You really haven't discovered or proven anything that wasn't already known.

    > And I was wrong! The fit file does include the GPS "enhanced altitude":

    Nobody said otherwise

Comment
  • 3 days ago

    > Note it's enhanced altitude (which I would've guessed means the auto corrected one),

    The "enhancedX" fields in the FIT file (enhanced_altitude, enhanced_speed, etc.) are simply a way to store more significant figures than the corresponding "basic" fields.

    For example, "basic" speed is16 bits, but enhanced_speed is 32 bits.

    See: https://www.thisisant.com/forum/viewthread/4561 

    Not sure how you would expect auto-corrected altitude to be in the FIT file, since the FIT is generated by the watch (and is not modified by Connect), but altitude auto-correction is done in Connect.

    >  So the 24m we see in GC is the auto correction (which BTW can't be turned off on this activity because it was recorded on fr55. On fr965 there's a way to disable it)

    I think everyone was already trying to tell you that for devices without a baro:

    1) everything related to elevation is hidden on the watch itself, although GPS elevation is still available to CIQ apps and it's still recorded to the FIT file. Again, afaik, there are no native elevation fields or glances on 

    2) elevation in Connect is auto-corrected. (it's not equal to the GPS elevation values recorded by the device)

    Because of 1), it makes sense for Garmin to omit the elevation units setting for devices without a baro.

    (Recall that Garmin doesn't really care about Connect IQ. And even if they did, it would look very strange for a device to have zero built-in elevation-related features, but to still expose an elevation units setting that would only be used for CIQ apps that do expose GPS elevation, which is otherwise hidden from the user)

    Glad you were able to verify this stuff for yourself tho.

    > However this proves that both ActivityInfo.altitude and DeviceSettings.elevationUnits return actual values.

    Nobody said otherwise. What was said is that native UI for watches without a baro does not expose elevation, so as far as the end user is concerned, it doesn't exist.

    You really haven't discovered or proven anything that wasn't already known.

    > And I was wrong! The fit file does include the GPS "enhanced altitude":

    Nobody said otherwise

Children
No Data