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Completely wrong distance reported on 5X while in ultratrac mode

Former Member over 8 years ago

Hi Everyone,

I have my 5X for about a week and so far I am really enjoying it. For walking the dog I have created custom activity and set it to use gps in ultratrac mode. So far it worked fine and distance reported by the watch was very reasonable. Today, I had more than 2 hours walk with the dog and kids and watch stop reporting accurate distance. The entire walk was ~4.1 mile and the watch reported it only as 1.7miles. This is not like 15-20% inaccuracy - this sounds like completely wrong. Once my activity got uploaded into garmin connect (https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/1652981851 ) it was still reporting 1.7miles even though the track was pretty accurate. I downloaded .gpx file from garmin connect and opened it in Google Earth and google properly reported ~4.1mile instead of 1.7mile based on .gpx track. This raises multiple questions:
1. Looks like watch was not computing current distance properly even though it recorded proper GPS track. Is this because UltraTrac mode? Am I missing some settings?
2. How come garmin connect doesn't check what is the actual distance based on GPS track and instead always report distance from device (which might be completely wrong)?
3. Could it be that the battery level impacts this computation accuracy in such dramatic way (my battery level was 30% when I started the hike and 23% when finished)?

I don't understand how come that recorded track was pretty accurate, while distance computed off this track by watch was completely wrong? While walking I saw multiple times that my watch was not reporting pace and I thought that this is because we were moving pretty slowly, but it looks like it probably was having problems computing current distance and speed.

Please, if anyone knows what could it be let me know. Should I report this to garmin technical support?

Anton

0 chunkywizard over 8 years ago

Are you running 2.73 and the new GPS update? I believe this has fixes in for Ultratrac

CW

0 Former Member over 8 years ago

I believe I was running original 2.40 firmware. Once I posted this thread I saw information about v2.72 beta and I updated my watch. Will report back if problem is still there.

0 Crispin_Ellisdon over 8 years ago

One thing you don't mention is if you have auto pause set to on in the activity settings (whichever activity you were using; i.e. Hike or Walk). There was a bug in 2.40, across the 5X and 5, where the watch stopped recording a track after pausing an ultratrac activity, but still accrued distance. It sounds like you're experiencing something the other way around (recording track but not accruing distance). Either way the Garmin folk responsible for publishing the beta software on these forums confirmed that the ultra trac issues were fixed in 2.72 beta https://forums.garmin.com/showthread.php?372988-Fenix-5X-2-72-Beta-Release&p=965405#post965405

If after updating to 2.72 beta you see this happen again, then do email the address in the first post on the 2.72 beta thread with details and the .fit file. They're pretty good at fixing these things if they are reliably repeatable and they get clear data from us users.

0 tmk2 over 8 years ago

Looks like watch was not computing current distance properly even though it recorded proper GPS track. Is this because UltraTrac mode?

Yes.

3. Could it be that the battery level impacts this computation accuracy in such dramatic way (my battery level was 30% when I started the hike and 23% when finished)?

Unlikely.

I don't understand how come that recorded track was pretty accurate, while distance computed off this track by watch was completely wrong? While walking I saw multiple times that my watch was not reporting pace and I thought that this is because we were moving pretty slowly, but it looks like it probably was having problems computing current distance and speed.

I had exactly the same issue with my FR735XT. Have a look at this thread:
https://forums.garmin.com/showthread.php?371226-Ultratrac-distance-bug

0 Former Member over 8 years ago

One thing you don't mention is if you have auto pause set to on in the activity settings (whichever activity you were using; i.e. Hike or Walk). There was a bug in 2.40, across the 5X and 5, where the watch stopped recording a track after pausing an ultratrac activity, but still accrued distance. It sounds like you're experiencing something the other way around (recording track but not accruing distance). Either way the Garmin folk responsible for publishing the beta software on these forums confirmed that the ultra trac issues were fixed in 2.72 beta https://forums.garmin.com/showthread.php?372988-Fenix-5X-2-72-Beta-Release&p=965405#post965405

If after updating to 2.72 beta you see this happen again, then do email the address in the first post on the 2.72 beta thread with details and the .fit file. They're pretty good at fixing these things if they are reliably repeatable and they get clear data from us users.

No, auto pause is disabled in that activity, as I make lot of stops while walking my dog. Weird thing about this was the fact that the same activity worked flawlessly 5-8 times before this one, it is like something else was the factor that triggered this bug. Anyway, I am on beta version now and will be verifying this problem in few following days.

It is really nice to know that Garmin is responsive to such problems and they eventually got fixed.

0 tmk2 over 8 years ago

There was a similar bug in the 735XT firmware which has been fixed apparently in the latest 8.21 beta firmware. It's possible that the F5x firmware is affected by the same bug.