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Altimeter Fenix 5

This morning, as I always do, I drove 22 miles to work in the North west of England. According to several websites there is a difference in altitude between my start and finish points of circa 220 feet, the altimeter on my Fenix 5 shows no difference in altitude at any time in the last 4 hours. Is there a setting that I have wrong or is it a faulty unit?

I've had the watch less than a week so haven't noticed this before, so I don't know if this is the first occasion or whether or not the unit has been showing different altitudes previously.

Any assistance would be really appreciated.

0 chloe2 over 7 years ago

My theory is that the No Frills watchface asks for permission to access the altimeter (or maybe barometer ...). I saw the altimeter drop about 3-4 feet every second for a long period of time while using this watchface. Corresponds to the 1Hz update a watchface has access to on the Fenix 5. I am thinking there is a bug in ConnectIQ (not necessarily in any particular watchface) which is triggered when a watchface has access to the altimeter and can update once a second.... it somehow throws off the altimeter reading (for long periods of times). Maybe a value is overwriting something it shouldn’t and causing erratic altimeter, barometer and temperature readings since they are all interrelated?

0 tgregers over 7 years ago

My theory is that the No Frills watchface asks for permission to access the altimeter (or maybe barometer ...). I saw the altimeter drop about 3-4 feet every second for a long period of time while using this watchface. Corresponds to the 1Hz update a watchface has access to on the Fenix 5. I am thinking there is a bug in ConnectIQ (not necessarily in any particular watchface) which is triggered when a watchface has access to the altimeter and can update once a second.... it somehow throws off the altimeter reading (for long periods of times). Maybe a value is overwriting something it shouldn’t and causing erratic altimeter, barometer and temperature readings since they are all interrelated?

Very interesting to see that you also have this experience. As I mentioned in an earlier post I also got problems immediately after installing a watch face. So I suspected the watch faces, but I might have been wrong. It might have been the loading of the watch faces that was the problem. After removing them, my watch has actually been much more stable, but it has only had a few glitches where it seem to count the ambient pressure down to 500-somthing millibar and then up again to correct pressure. Since I now no longer have any “foreign” watch faces on my watch I wonder if there might be something with the connection to the Garmin app on the my phone (Samsung S8) that triggers this. Do you connect your watch to a phone, and what type(iPhone/android)?

0 jose.cboliveira over 7 years ago

As I mencioned earlier I 'm problem free for several weeks and only using stock analog and big time watch face Both faces display elevation.

Even Monday did a 2C temperature outside run with fiber gloves and jacket over the watch without any problem. During the run disconnected the tempe sensor and the internal watch temperature was a nice 23C

0 pasor1 over 7 years ago

I had similar altimeter issue with my 935. In my case the problem was correlated to the temperature. The readed "ambient pressure" did change when with the temperature variations!
After I got a new device from RMA, all is ok. If you want check your altimeter, you can do a simple test : create an activity without GPS and configure 4 field: Barometric Pressure, Ambient Pressure, Altitude, Temperature. Read the data, then put the device in a cold or hot place at the same altitude. After 30 minutes read the data: Ambient pressure (and altitude) doesn't must change, or, at least, have a minimal change. Here is the link to my test activity, take a look at the Altitude and Temperature charts, note the correlation. https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/2385354539

0 Peter_Ista over 7 years ago

I had similar altimeter issue with my 935. In my case the problem was correlated to the temperature. The readed "ambient pressure" did change when with the temperature variations!
After I got a new device from RMA, all is ok. If you want check your altimeter, you can do a simple test : create an activity without GPS and configure 4 field: Barometric Pressure, Ambient Pressure, Altitude, Temperature. Read the data, then put the device in a cold or hot place at the same altitude. After 30 minutes read the data: Ambient pressure (and altitude) doesn't must change, or, at least, have a minimal change. Here is the link to my test activity, take a look at the Altitude and Temperature charts, note the correlation. https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/2385354539

That is because the temperature is connected to pressure which changes when you go up or down.
Yours looks very fine to me.
Check my activity:

https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/2428633015

Here you see a sudden drop of the temp and all kind of strange stuff at the same time like power going sky high and also the altitude.

0 Former Member over 7 years ago

All was well for 48 hrs with auto calibration off and watchmode set to barometer. Then I went for a run last night.....First the altimeter adjusted based on GPS (Thought that wasn't supposed to happen). And then within a couple hours, the barometer had dropped to 6 mbar (hPa). So I recalibrated to the correct altitude. This caused the ambient pressure reading to not display anything "--". Then I went to bed. Woke up with the altimeter at -65000 ft, but the ambient pressure was back to normal. So I recalibrated the barometer based on altitude and sea level pressure. All is well again. Again this is all with stock watch faces.

Seems to me that something is wrong with how the watch auto calibrates pressure, altitude, and barometer whether during an activity or in watchmode. I suppose this could be a hardware issue with an intermittent connection or something, but I doubt it because I had the same issues with a new watch as I mentioned above.

0 Former Member over 7 years ago

As I mencioned earlier I 'm problem free for several weeks and only using stock analog and big time watch face Both faces display elevation.

Even Monday did a 2C temperature outside run with fiber gloves and jacket over the watch without any problem. During the run disconnected the tempe sensor and the internal watch temperature was a nice 23C

Maybe a dumb question, but have you synced your watch with your phone during this time? Iphone or Android? Or do you use garmin express?

0 jose.cboliveira over 7 years ago

Usually I sync everyday with connect mobile Android and once a week with garmin express when I charge.

Usually all my activities start in places where I have auto altimeter calibration points.
Usually I do a biweekly barometer calibration since I use watch mode.

My MTB rides are using internal sensor since the fenix is in the handlebars, my runs and hikes are with tempe sensor.

I'm using the official firmware 7.1

0 tgregers over 7 years ago

Spoke to a colleague who also has a Fenix 5, and he claims he has never had any problems with his watch (at least not that he has not noticed). He even uses a 3rd party watch face called GearMin. He is using an iPhone.

I was playing around with the app on my phone (a Samsung S8) when I noticed on the “connections” page, that it mixes up my data with my friends data. A very clear bug in the app. I compared it with the same page on his iphone, and the app on that phone did not have this error. If there are similar errors on different data in the app (which I cannot see) that might explain the problem with the watch. It might actually be caused by the phones data transfer to the watch. This made me wonder; are there anyone here with altimeter problems that uses an iPhone, or are everyone with this problem android phone users?

0 SebLeclercq over 7 years ago

I have an android phone...