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crazy elevation swings?

Former Member over 7 years ago

I got my 5 plus a couple of weeks ago. The first couple of runs were fine, but since then, I've seen crazy elevation charts. Runs that in actuality have ~300ft of gain are showing up in GC with 2k ft gain.

Here's an example run:

https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/2840836417

I've attached 2 elevation charts: one from GC, and the other from strava. Same activity, but I asked strava to correct the elevation based on GPS coordinates. GC says this was 2,047 ft of gain, whereas strava says 321 ft. I've done this run a bunch of times, and the corrected figure is accurate.

What appears to be happening is that the fenix 5 plus is going through weird oscillations where it's swinging +/- 50ft every couple of minutes.

I tried doing the calibration routine, but every time I attempt to calibrate (settings -> sensors -> altimeter -> calibrate), it just says "calibration failed."

I opened a support case with Garmin earlier this week, but crickets there.

Anyone else seeing this? ciq.forums.garmin.com/.../1375923.png ciq.forums.garmin.com/.../1375924.png

Top Replies

subra over 5 years ago +1 suggested

There are some discussions in the F6 forum about issues with altitude

forums.garmin.com/.../6x-sapphire---incorrect-altitude-recording-strange-altitude-profile-jagged

It seems to me that you got similarly…

All Replies

0 Former Member over 5 years ago

Just bought a Fenix 5 Plus and am having this exact issue.

Anyone been able to fix?

0 Former Member over 5 years ago

Just in case you have not performed a hard reset or checked the holes in front of the sensor for dirt yet.. it is worth a try. How do you calibrate? Manually enter the altitude, DEM or GPS? How is the altimeter indoors when you sit around, does that also show up and down drift every few minutes?

0 AllanOlesen67 over 5 years ago

To me, this looks like GPS elevation data, rather than barometric elevation data.

So my guess would be that the watch saw an error in the barometric elevation signal and used fallback to GPS elevation.

Whenever you suspect that there are problems with the barometric altimeter, the first thing to check is the Ambient Pressure signal. This is the sensor signal, from which both Elevation and Barometric Pressure are calculated. You can enable Ambient Pressure as a datafield within an activity.

I have a suspicion that you will discover that Ambient Pressure shows no value or some insane values. I can't see any other reason that the watch should report an error when you try to calibrate the altimeter (assuming of course that you were not trying to calibrate from GPS in a spot where you could not get a GPS fix).

0 subra over 5 years ago

There are some discussions in the F6 forum about issues with altitude

forums.garmin.com/.../6x-sapphire---incorrect-altitude-recording-strange-altitude-profile-jagged

It seems to me that you got similarly issues. Maybe it's software related.

0 Former Member over 4 years ago

hi, I’ve just bought a fenix 5 plus, having the exact same problem, I am pretty new to this running watch world, did you manage to find a solution?

0 Former Member over 4 years ago in reply to Former Member

I called tech support and they had me send it back and they sent me a new one. No issues with new unit.

0 Former Member over 4 years ago in reply to Former Member

So it’s a known fault? I will get in touch, thank you.