Elevation problem

Former Member over 5 years ago

I did read a lot of discussion here:

elevation-consistently-inaccurate-reading-too-low

Looks that I am not alone who has problems with elevation. Problem which happen in my case is ONLY during activity. I also think that there are several different problems.

I did check pressure and elevation graph in watch during the day (holding ABC and scroll), values were OK. I did compare pressure with my weatherstation and very close national weatherstation. I did stay at home during all day so altitude was same but elevation in watch change a little (+-5m).

I did start mtb ride at 5:30pm and for 1h ride I did make cca 17km. I did make several small up and down hills. Before I did stop activity I did see that elevation is not correct because I did start and stop almost at same place.

Here are graphs just after I came home:

you can see that elevation at the end is higher. I did start at 228m and stop at 264m.

pressure graph, I was SHOCKED, how pressure can change so much, cca from 1016 to 1022. I did find out that it happen during descent.

I did check my local weather station:

I also check national weather station, and there is also nothing strange. I did put marks to be able compare with watch 6 hours graph. I think, there is something wrong with sensor or with firmware of Instinct.

I did export activity to GPX and then enable elevation correction in web and export that too. Here is comparison

Blue is original GPX with elevation based on barometer. Green is GPX which has elevation correction enabled.

The significant change start at cca 0.55h = 33min of ride during normal descent.

In other threads someone mentioned sweat can make some problem. And there is also thread where rain is mentioned. Do you think that this can be problem in my case? It is 4 hours after I finish my activity now. Watch still showing wrong values of pressure and elevation. If it is problem of sweat or water then how long it takes to dry? or is it going to correct itself?

What I also know is that instinct is slow in elevation reading.

I can see that in fast descent. Another day I went slower on downhill and also slow down before next uphill. Results was quite OK. Of course, barometric altimeter will not catch all small hills.

Settings:

- altimeter auto cal = off

- barometer watch mode = auto , Tell the true, I don't understand this settings clearly.

thanks for any comments

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0 DJGShef over 5 years ago in reply to Former Member

I think your graphs look pretty good and nothing major to complain about. The instinct is not an altimeter or a finely tuned and calibrated barometer. GPS may have an accuracy of a number of meters (up to 20) and that includes vertical as well as horizontal. So all in all I'm wondering if this thread is something about nothing.

0 thomass001 over 5 years ago in reply to DJGShef

I sent my tracks to garmin support.
They said they know the elevation bug.
I hope they will find a solution.
And it is not our job, it's garmins job to make instinct acceptable in elevation messurement.

0 Former Member over 5 years ago in reply to thomass001

thomass001 said:
I sent my tracks to garmin support.

please, can you provide email address? I will send them my tracks too. thanks

0 thomass001 over 5 years ago in reply to Former Member

I am in Germany, so I have sent it to

[email protected]

They have it sent to support.

0 GeoffR over 5 years ago in reply to Former Member

But from valley I am going uphill and watch is showing 250m and later 240m. CAN WE ACCEPT THAT?

J4nci - Yes, I was one of the early ones on this board to report and discuss this issue. Getting a new Instinct will not fix your concerns. From my experience, the biggest issue impacting the Instinct's altimeter accuracy has been sweat interference - both during an activity and accumulated build-up if not cleaned. When cleaned and sweat-protected (simple wrist band does it for me), I see very acceptable readings.

Your detailed tests seem to support the same conclusion - your gadget protects for sweat and delivers much better results than anything else you've tried. Even then, the Instinct may be slower than some other devices in detecting changes in "rolling" terrain. At best, Garmin might be able to update the Instinct's smoothing algorithm to better pick-up these changes.

For me, the Instinct is not an ideal cycling computer. It is great that it can do it when I forget to attach my Edge, but I much prefer a dedicated bike GPS for many reasons (mostly display related). In my view, the Instinct is ideally designed for hikers and that is why I bought it over other watch options. I wanted a rugged device that would keep track of my mileage and elevation gain (yes, over long distances) without having to pull out my phone to check Gaia for these stats (and deplete my phone battery). Above tree line, the Instinct is awesome for hiking. However, I ultimately use it several times per week for trail running, cycling, tennis, ... and it mostly delivers - as long as I remember to protect for sweat.

My old Edge 500 seems to be very precise at picking up "climbs" in rolling terrain, to the point where it will often report 10% or more climbing than other, newer Edge devices. My friends are always questioning my "elevated" results when they see less climbing on the same ride. When clean and protected, my Instinct reports more closely to these other Edge devices.

0 dav.dc over 5 years ago in reply to GeoffR

I can only agree with GeoffR conclusions. The graph below shows a run where I did twice the same loop, with 3 small and 1 bigger hills.

After the first loop, I saw that total ascent was obvisouly incorrect so I took the watch off and attached it on my bag. Quickly after that (just the time for the sweat to go off the sensor) the graph is obviously much better.

Now we are in fall I sometimes run with long sleeves. On these days (as I wear the watch on my right wrirst), the sensor is protected by the sleeves and I have much less elevation issues...

This is still disappointing for me but I really don't beleive it can be solved by firmware update.

0 Former Member over 5 years ago

problem solved: I did used instinct for cca 2months and then I did spend cca 1month writing about problem here and discuss with garmin support. So I did sell instinct. Sorry garmin I will not buy anything from you. In another forums I did find people who has problem with vivoactive. Friend did buy fenix 5 and altimeter did not work correctly, he did send it to RMA and he get new fenix.

0 bsmith201 over 5 years ago

I just spoke to garmin support who was very open and honest about the issue. They told me that with early firmware, there were many dropouts causing bad data and sometimes even way too much gain as elevation bounced up and down (because of the sensor). They applied smoothing to try and fix the issue, but the smoothing is now making it under-represent the elevation. They told me they are aware of the issue and working on a fix for us.

While this does not solve it, it was at least nice they were honest. Had the same experience with Garmin recently working on my vector 3 pedals where they were just 100% honest and it made it easy to want to be patient with them. Do wish they were a bit more proactive with this, but understand the risk to sales etc.

0 gfx401aa over 5 years ago in reply to bsmith201

Hi,

Has someone tried 6.4 Beta release effects (fix elevation issues or not)?

Thanks

0 GeoffR over 5 years ago in reply to dav.dc

Dav.dc - Nice test! This is a prefect example of the sweat impact on the sensor, and I don't think there is anything Garmin to do improve it on the current iteration of the Instinct. Whenever I wear a sweatband, I see pretty decent results - though still a bit under-measured when in rolling terrain (worse on a bike than running/hiking).

I would think the smoothing, non-sweat related, issues might be improved by Garmin.