Auto Detection of Walking activity

Hi,

I have had a Fenix 5 Plus for several months now and all the Physiological Metrics are switched on for Auto Detection.

I walk the dog twice daily and in the Heart Rate it fairly accurately detects each walk and its duration.

However, i went hill walking for 2 days. Each day it only detected 39 mins and 18 mins walking respectively when on both days i had walked for most of the day (with a few breaks).

Returning home, the dog walks are being accurately identified again.

Any idea what triggers the auto detection to be accurate on one and not the other?

Thanks

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+1 Dr Phil over 3 years ago

The MoveIQ setting is really only for short bouts of activity (yes I know that's not very clear). You need to be moving for at least 10 minutes with movement that the algorithm can detect. This might explain why the watch has not recorded every minute of your walk.

If you are going to go hiking/walking for a couple of days you will be better off recording a walk or hiking activity. These Garmin Support pages might help:

https://support.garmin.com/en-US/?faq=zgFpy8MShkArqAxCug5wC6

support.garmin.com/.../

0 Finn over 3 years ago in reply to Dr Phil

Thank you for clarifying. Just seemed strange it recorded 25k steps and fluctuating high HR but no longer auto detected the activity for the correct duration.

0 ronand over 3 years ago in reply to Finn

I wouldn't be trusting anything that measures "steps" from movements in your arm. If you want to record a walk/hike then record it. A lot of these features are for selling watches but are not reliable. Perhaps the fluctuating HR is the problem rather than being elevated for a period. At the end of the day its a computer and there is only so much it can deduce from a few accelerometers.

0 Dr Phil over 3 years ago in reply to Finn

Recording steps is different from the watch recording (or not) an automatically detected activity using MoveIQ. That's just the way these watches work.

As for the heart rate. When not in an activity the watch uses a lower sampling rate. If you are effectively doing an activity without having the activity selected then you are very likely to see poor numbers for heart rate. Simply put, an assumption (reasonable too) is made that heart rate fluctuates little when not active and is at a lower level than when active, therefore no need to have the less working so hard. This also saves battery,. So, for best heart rate accuracy when active using the wrist heart rate, record the activity as an activity rather than rely on MoveIQ.

www.garmin.co.in/.../

And of course, you need to ensure the watch is worn as advised by Garmin.

And for even better accuracy use a chest strap.