FEATURE REQUEST: How many of YOU would like to see continuous Alti-Autocalibration?

FOR SHORT: WOULD YOU LIKE TO HAVE THE ABILITY TO TURN ON AND OFF CONTINUOUS ALTIMETER CALIBRATION?

Long Story:

There is one feature i am missing the most. or one point that is the most annoying for me.

I miss the continuous auto calibration feature on the fenix 5x.

Suunto does it and i works like a charm.

Polar does it and it works quite well.

Garmin not. :-(

When doing a hike or a run, i always have to compare gps with the barometric altitude. and check them again and again.

a friend of mine with the suunto, hits the start button and does not care about anymore. it corrects the altitude and on the peak he is always in +/- 5 meters of the elevation of the peak. i am mostly 10-20 meters off, even when i manually calibrate it on the starting point. because the weather is changing over time.

i would like to hit the start button and forget about it.

2nd point, Storm alert would work with continuous calibration. because barometer would not be locked.

now Storm alert is only working when sitting around not when doing sports.

i cannot imagine that it would be so complicated to add this feature.

Example:

if you start an activity it looks for the GPS altitude and most of the time it calibrates it.

The Device knows how accurate the value is. (older gps devices had always a plus/minus field for accuracy).

so for example the watch calibrates at start with a worse GPS signal to a wrong altitude: 600 m. after a 20 minutes, the watch has a better accurracy lets say within +/- 10 meters and the barometric altitude is more then this +/- 10 meters off. why not recalibrate the altitude? when the gps accuracy is bad don't recalibrate.

i don't want to have this as a default. but i would really like the ability to have the auto calibration options: On Start - Continuous - OFF.

Am i the only one, looking for that? Thanks for the Info.

0 peakrodent over 6 years ago

Hmm...not so sure about saved locations. If you do not calibrate at the start of an activity with Auto Calibration off it does reset itself to the last known calibration apparently. You can see this as a massive jump in elevation at the start of an activity. Pretty daft idea really!

I'll muck around with this a bit more. I'm pretty sure my ascent is short on most runs but I gave up worrying about stuff like that a while ago!

0 AllanOlesen67 over 6 years ago

there is correction in air pressure with 7 hPa which equals around 56 meters of elevation along the way. the peak was of around 3 meters. where my watch was around 70 meters off at the peak.

You don't have to explain the physics to me. I fully understands those and have done a lot in these forums to make other people understand them.

But you need to understand that a much smoother correction algorithm could be written, so it would be insane to implement the correction you describe. You could for example let the watch calculate a "shadow" barometric pressure from current ambient pressure measurement and GPS altitude, and based on this do a slow, continuous correction of the barometric pressure, which is the referefence for the altimeter.

I suppose that the Suunto does something to this, but I don't know for sure.

0 Former Member over 6 years ago

4. The Fenix implementation of altitude is strange when outside an activity and this could be easily improved. For example, I wore my watch to bed last night. It obviously knows I'm sleeping as it's in the sleep period but my altitude changed 3 metres during to a slight change in barometric pressure. They need to improve this locking. I think it does do some of this but it's not 100% perfect.

I agree 100% here. Garmin's auto-calibration is absolutely horrible. Auto-cal is suppose to switch back and forth between altimeter and barometer modes depending on what the watch detects. Of course this will not be perfect, but when there is no movement, the watch should lock in barometer mode. This is definitely not happening. Just as in your example of sleeping; I can sit on my back porch enjoying a cup of coffee and watch my altitude change. Without movement this shouldn't happen. I've removed my watch and set it on my patio table, started a run activity, returned awhile later and seen a great change in altitude. The watch didn't move an inch. Suunto's "Fusedalti" is far from perfect, but it works well in this situation. I agree that this would be something Garmin could easily improve.

0 AllanOlesen67 over 6 years ago

Regarding 5.
Actually there is auto cal to saved locations. If you change alti before start of an activity, this is stored somewhere. I don't think it's possible to see saved locations anywhere. I think that was the conclusion in earlier discussions.

Be careful with your wording here. Waypoints in your watch are called "Saved Locations", but those are something entirely different from the location/altitude pairs you describe.

0 peakrodent over 6 years ago

As per my post, those "Saved Locations" could easily be used to calibrate the altimeter but they've never implemented it unfortunately.

And, yes, the Barometer auto calibration just doesn't work most of the time. How can it be difficult to lock the altimeter whilst you're sleeping?!

0 Former Member over 6 years ago

How can it be difficult to lock the altimeter whilst you're sleeping?!

I wouldn't think it would be difficult at all. Just as the Fenix series, my 935 has an accelerometer and gyroscope. The watch has "Move IQ" to detect activity and it also doesn't count steps until the 10th step to prevent false counts. Clearly, it works well detecting movement. It baffles me why auto-cal "guesses" wrong and thinks a pressure change was due to elevation change when I haven't moved. If there's no, or very little movement, the "guess work" is taken out of the equation and should be recorded as a pressure change only. It's really that simple. If I'm moving, then I can understand any error in the data it provides me.

0 PS06 over 6 years ago

I would also like to have this feature.

0 Former Member over 6 years ago

I would appreciate if Garmin adds the option to calibrate the altimeter using the DEM data of the maps.
I think Fenix 5X Plus has this ability.

0 AllanOlesen67 over 6 years ago

I would appreciate if Garmin adds the option to calibrate the altimeter using the DEM data of the maps.
I think Fenix 5X Plus has this ability.

All three Plus models do. There is the regular auto calibration for activities, which in these models uses DEM, but in addition to this the watch will also at night retrieve its 2D location from the phone, find the corresponding DEM altitude and auto calibrate the altimeter.

0 Mistamb over 6 years ago

AllanOlesen67 sorry, i should not be meant bad with explaining. i thought you would know that. :-)

the smoother correction you have described, that would be a awesome. yep your right, that is something the newer suuntos does something like this. they have no jumps in barometric or altitudes. only the older watches has this jumps.
what i tryed to say, even with the jumps in calibration, i would be happy, if i would have the ability to turn it on or of.
(sorry my english is not the best, hope you understand what i would like to say)

You don't have to explain the physics to me. I fully understands those and have done a lot in these forums to make other people understand them.

But you need to understand that a much smoother correction algorithm could be written, so it would be insane to implement the correction you describe. You could for example let the watch calculate a "shadow" barometric pressure from current ambient pressure measurement and GPS altitude, and based on this do a slow, continuous correction of the barometric pressure, which is the referefence for the altimeter.

I suppose that the Suunto does something to this, but I don't know for sure.