Today I racked up 61 floors... on a route with approximately five floors.

Sometimes I've seen wacky floor counts out by as much as ten floors (as compared to previous measurement of the routes, and my phone's own readings), but today my Instinct decided I'd walked 61 floors on a route that usually reads around five floors. I thought between GPS+Galileo, 3D movement, and the altimeter, surely there should never be such a massive error in reading floors? I guess not... :-(

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marek over 5 years ago in reply to Wizardling +1

Yeah lets hope its just a piece of dirt that was the cause. By the way, do you wear your watch on left or right hand? I saw theories that wearing it on right hand makes the baro sensor more possible to…

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0 austria1982 over 5 years ago

6.10 firmware? -> https://forums.garmin.com/outdoor-recreation/outdoor-recreation/f/instinct/213240/instinct-6-10-floor-climbing-is-showing-the-wrong-data

0 austria1982 over 5 years ago

6.10 firmware? -> https://forums.garmin.com/outdoor-recreation/outdoor-recreation/f/instinct/213240/instinct-6-10-floor-climbing-is-showing-the-wrong-data

0 Wizardling over 5 years ago in reply to austria1982

Yes, 6.10.

Yesterday I managed to climb 60 floors, once again on a route that couldn't possible accumulate more than five. I noticed a wee bit of scum around the port to the barometer, after taking my watch off, so I washed it with hot water. Maybe that will sort it for today?

But why isn't GPS/3D distance 'doublechecking' the altitude and correcting any obviously erroneous barometer derived altimeter reading? I also find this watch very, very bad at knowing I'm still moving, when I _actually am_ climbing floors, like on a highway overpass bridge. It frequently pauses my workout as I rapidly climb those kinds of steps. It's like everything on the watch only takes input from one sensor, ignoring all other available evidence.

Don't get me wrong - I like the design, feature set, and UI of the Instinct a lot. But stuff like the above issues makes me shake my head, eh?

0 trux over 5 years ago in reply to Wizardling

Well, I use the beta v6.52, and Instinct counts the floors rather reliably, regardless if I run on flat terrain, or slopes with long stairs. But it worked rather well for me even before I installed the beta version. One thing that may be important at Instinct, is keping the pressure sensor orifice (on the right bottom side of the watch) clear of debirs, and clear of sweat, otherwise it may get clogged and start reporting wrong pressure. When my wrist is sweating a lot, I dry it under the watch with a sleeve, or just with fingers, up-and-then. Did not have any wrong floor numbers since. And now, in winter I do not need to do it at all.

0 marek over 5 years ago

I am also on 6.10 and barometer is set to auto. I am also observing problems with altimeter when going up or downstairs, sometimes it dont register and altitude is not changing at all. But the scale of the problem is not as big as yours, couple of floors missing instead of tens of bonus floors. I suspect in my case this is a problem with "auto" mode of barometer. Maybe I will try beta software

0 Wizardling over 5 years ago in reply to trux

I've had floor mildly inaccurate floor counts from week one with this watch. But never by this much. So hopefully it was the wee piece of scum I could see in the port that led to an overcount of 55-56 floors.

0 marek over 5 years ago in reply to Wizardling

Yeah lets hope its just a piece of dirt that was the cause. By the way, do you wear your watch on left or right hand? I saw theories that wearing it on right hand makes the baro sensor more possible to get dirt stuck into it because it is facing upwards when you wear it

0 Wizardling over 5 years ago in reply to marek

Left hand.

0 Wizardling over 5 years ago

115 floors today, same five-floor maximum route, no visible gunk in the barometer port :-(

0 Wizardling over 5 years ago

79 floors on the same five-floor route, today, after another cleaning yesterday, as well as a recalibration :-( This is such a badly designed barometer, I cannot comprehend how this passed product testing and Q&A.