Open Water Swim -distance not accurate

mbiton over 5 years ago

My fenix 5x used to track my open water swim with accuracies,

recently, all my open water swim are showing weird & short distance (numbers like 15yard , 18 yard, 11 yards..)

does anyone else have the same issue?

did anyone find a solution ?

thank you

Moe.

0 Allen_F5+ over 5 years ago

yes, the same issue to me.

0 Former Member over 5 years ago

Add the GPS data field and watch it. For me, the moment the watch goes even just millimetres under water, the GPS signal is lost. And when getting the watch out of the water, it takes about 2-3 seconds for a new position lock to be acquired.

0 Dr Phil over 5 years ago

That's interesting. Would someone post a link to an activity where this has happened? Wondering it this is the same problem that is being seen with the Marq and 945 with the new Sony chipset. If it is then that might rule out an issue specific to the chipset.

0 mbiton over 5 years ago in reply to Dr Phil

https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/3664190554

not sure what can you learn from this, but I hope tot helps us figure out the issue.

0 ge0kas over 5 years ago

+1 UNACCEPTABLE by GARMIN

#BEATYESTERDAY

0 jest3r over 5 years ago in reply to Former Member

This sounds ridiculous. This f**** 800Euro watch has a accelerator and a gyroscope inside. They would easily be able to bridge the gap between GPS fixes, by coupling the GPS with the IMU, with a simple Kalman filter to lower the GPS noise. I wonder what the engineers at Garmin are doing all day. I would like to work there. Because it seems they are not working a lot....

0 Stewart.Fairbairn over 5 years ago

Just posted on another query on this forum about OWS. With 8.02 and GPS 2.50, the watch is working very nicely. I have the occasional problem after a stop and that is resolved by ensuring the watch has maintained the track and, if not, just holding wrist above water for a couple of seconds. I have used this watch in open water swimming in the ocean at least 3 times per week over the past couple of months and have had very few problems

0 Dr Phil over 5 years ago in reply to Stewart.Fairbairn

Stewart.Fairbairn said:
the occasional problem after a stop and that is resolved by ensuring the watch has maintained the track

I swam many times through the southern hemisphere summer with the 5+. The tracking while not good was at least always consistently not good but the satellites were always connected. Same with a 935 I used to have. What is concerning are reports coming to light recently of both the 935 and the 5+ now apparently losing the satellites partway through a swim and only regained by stopping and holding the watch clear of the water. I've seen this with the 945 and Marq, both on the newer Sony chipset. Clearly something is not right. Unfortunately it's too cold up here in the southern hemisphere to get in the sea and swim...well it is for me :-)

0 Dr Phil over 5 years ago in reply to jest3r

jest3r said:
This sounds ridiculous.

No that's physics and wave propagation through the water. What isn't good is this problem (losing the GPS shortly after starting a swim) that I thought was only on the newer Sony chipset seems to be occurring on earlier watches with the older chipset. That suggests to me at least, that Garmin tweaked the algorithm used to estimate GPS in the water perhaps for the 945/Marq and affected the 5+/935 negatively somehow.

Of course I'm stabbing in the dark but I'm sure Garmin are thinking about de-coupling the GPS from the ACL GPU, ECT, and TLA, crossing it with a palomino in order to make a donkey all the while simultaneously reducing the braying from the crowds who of course know exactly how too fix all the problems.