Footpod set to 'Always' <=> Speed comes from GPS + Accurate cal. factors (2 footpods) 'went off' suddenly

Today when I went for a walk on a known-distance track in shoes equipped with an ANT+ footpod I observed that the distance per lap was off by around 10%. I did not understand it, because I bought this footpod recently and I calibrated it yesterday.

And I really did not understand it, because the footpod had been connected before the walk, the footpod is set to 'always' both for speed and distance.

When I came home I made lots of exhaustive tests to understand what went wrong from yesterday to today. I made one when I was on our open terrace, started the same Walk activity with proper GPS fix, I took off my left shoe (the footpod is on the left shoe) , placed it on the ground of our terrace and I just walked around it. Forth and back on our terrace.

I I was always in the near proximity of the footpod not to break the connection, which fact I manually checked in the settings several times.

Even if speed was set to 'always',and the footpod was in full rest, I immediately got >0 speed when walking. Distance was fine, after my one and a half minutes test it was still 0.00 km.

So definitely I found a bug. I tend to think that somehow it is related to the new software version 17.10.

Moreover I made more than one walks on this track today and I used not just this pair of shoes, but also my boots. My left boot also has a footpod on, another one, which has been well calibrated and used for years. Mysteriously this walk also gave me distorted distances.

So relatively accurate footpod calibration numbers just went wrong on the same day? I mean those regarding both my older footpod and the new one?

No way! It is why I suspect that the whole issue is related to 17.10

0 Tisztul_A_Visztula over 3 years ago

A couple of days ago I bought a F6X Pro, so I found an expensive way :-) to test the stability of the calibration numbers of my footpods.

Unfortunately I forgot to grab my F5+ when I made my first long walk equipped with F6X, so this comparison will happen later.

Sidenote: I had a trail run with these watches on my arms and their were just a very tiny differences as regards different data averages.

Anyway F5+ may have another advantage, because when I was sitting in a restaurant in mid-walk, after appr. 15-20 minutes my F6X and my footpod disconnected from each other. I mean due to the rest of my legs.

While in the past my F5+ kept the connection with the same footpood even when I had a “sitting” lunch of 50-60 minutes during my walk/hike.

0 savinoff over 2 years ago

From my experience it does ignore footpod=always speed/disatance once GPS is connected which is obviously wrong. I'm getting very steady speed and distance indoor, but once outdoor the speed gets screwed up completely, which reflects the poor GPS reception I get in this area. Despite my steady pace the speed may drop by 30% any time in the places around the buildings where GPS is always off for me so the resulting speed graph with footpod is just as bad as with GPS alone.. Which kind of defeats its purpose.

0 Tisztul_A_Visztula over 2 years ago in reply to savinoff

Did you mean you have a F5+ or F6(X)?

Because for me none of these watches ignore footpod. My story above is just a special case of having a connected footpod with artificial zero speed.

But as regards real (in movement ) conditions: sSometimes I even check when my watches got the speed data from footpod and when from GPS, and apart from some few seconds footpod is the speed (and thus distance) provider. I do this check with a 3rd party program, which is not sold any longer.

And when did you start to observe it?

If just a short while ago then there is only one thing to check, the battery. It may happen that the CR2032 is still good enough for indoor, but not for outdoor, see the temperature difference.

Anyway I will revert with my story updates regarding footpod cal number and other footpod related experience, if I have more new data from walking and hiking.

0 savinoff over 2 years ago in reply to Tisztul_A_Visztula

I have a F6. I actually don't think it ignores the footpod outdoor completely, but somehow GPS still affects it a lot, and in the areas where GPS tracks are very poor to start with it becomes very noticeable. I started to notice that more than a year ago, I thought my footpod just went bad and I needed to buy a new one. But the indoor data still had been very good and persistent. This whole thing upsets me a lot, Garmin just refuses to calculate any VO2Max from indoor runs with foodpod (there were times they did that) despite it giving for me a much more reliable data than the completely screwed up GPS tracks. They think that indoor runs are not precise enough to give VO2Max but are okay with calculating a completely bogus VO2Max from walk activities which always is so way off from the VO2Max I'm getting from runs it's completely useless.