Question about exporting and working with TCX or GPX file (Geeky-question)

I downloaded both the TCX and GPX files from Connect that were generated by Fenix 5 for a bike ride. I like to do some custom calculations of my own.

The Time column contains a series of time stamps. But, it does not reflect the auto-pause setting. So, the elapsed time between 2 time stamps might be 2 minutes say, but the time recorded on the total time of the activity might only be 10 seconds for that same period, since auto-pause may have excluded that time gap from being counted in the activity's total time.

I want to be able to calculate based on the recorded elapsed time of the activity, not the total time between two time stamps.

Does anybody know how i can get this data stamped by the elapsed "activity time" from point to point, instead of elapsed clock time?

0 phoglund_ over 6 years ago

Fit Filé Repair tool has a function to find gaps between timestamps in a file during import and then give you the option to choose where you want pauses inserted.

It then calculates total time and moving/activity time.

Maybe I misunderstood your question and gave you a totally wrong answer. What is it you would like to accomplish with your custom calculations?

0 razmichael over 6 years ago

what you see in the GPX and TCX export is what it is - no way to export additional information. I do not know how, in the FIT file, pauses etc are recorded but, as phoglund_ mentions, the Fit File Repair tool has a lot of capability to manage the files and view the data. You might also try the DCR Analyzer application (never used it myself). Not really knowing what you are trying to do, all I can suggest is you could write some code to manipulate the GPX file (assuming any gap larger than a few seconds is an auto or manual pause).

0 TomCon over 6 years ago in reply to razmichael

Thanks both for the replies. I was thinking that "somehow" they know the total time that you are not paused, as they give you that total value at the end of the ride! But, i guess they don't report it out in the file. Too bad. It seems like "a hack" to just exclude segments with distance=0. But, i just tried it, and it turns out it works rather well. I'll have to try it on some more rides to confirm. My file has 3,768 rows, and 35 rows where distance=0. If i exclude those and add up the time, it is only 0.13 minutes off (0.057%) from what the activity reported to me as the total time. So, that may work for me, though it "bugs me" somewhat. For the 35 rows where distance=0, for example, for 23 rows, the reported altitude is identical to the previous point, and for 12 rows, there is an altitude change. So, there are some "sloppy" aspects and loose ends to just excluding all rows where distance=0.

Thanks for pointers to Fit File repair tool and DCR Analyzer; i can check them out. Had never heard of them before.

What am i trying to do? -- Still experimenting, but I have a vision of breaking the total ride into segments of some length (I've tried lengths from 100m to 300m), and for each segment getting the elevation change, converting the elevation change to % grade, and then using Excel PivotTables to break up the calculated %grade into 1% segments (0-1%, 1-2%, etc), and get the total time within each 1% grade segment over the entire ride. (Thats why it will really screw me up if time paused is counted within a segment).

Thanks!

0 phoglund_ over 6 years ago in reply to TomCon

Garmin used a way to save pauses in tcx-files in their elder watches when they where using tcx as native file type. I cant remember exactly how, but think was kind of end a /trk and start trk again. Maybe not included in tcx export in Connect.

Fit files store start and stops as 'events'.

If your device store a data point every second, then you can also find your pauses easy in excel just to calculate time between data points. Every time higher than 1 sec, reduce with that time.

Fit File Repair tool also have an excel export/import that can be handy when you would like do experiments in excel and then create a fit file with new data after that.