• State Not Answered
  • Replies 14 replies
  • Subscribers 4 subscribers
  • Views 4038 views
  • Users 0 members are here
Options
Related

Strange behaviour of the Altimeter

6619804
over 4 years ago

My Instinct often interprets rising altitude like rapid atmospheric pressure lowering.
I am not sure, if it is software bug, hardware failure or just a feature.

My daily route looks like this:
From home (202 m above sea level) to my office (239m a.s.l) over the lowest part at about 158m a.s.l.


But often during ascending Instinct interprets lowering of the pressure wrong way:

Even with Watch mode=Altimeter!


In about 2 weeks without calibration the elevation falls to negative numbers.


(BTW, it's good to know that, because calibration does not offer negative numbers,
so I was not sure if Instinct is able to show negative elevation.

Does anybody have noticed such behaviour?

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to trux

    Yes I know this, I didn't read the OP carefully enough. I thought the mode was set to Auto

  • 0 over 4 years ago

    Slightly related; is there a way to change the watch mode automatically when starting an activity (just like you can do with Power Mode)? I usually keep Watch Mode in auto, but would like to have it switch to altitude when I'm starting the activity 'hike' for example. Also, it would be nice to have some sort of mandatory calibration moment at the start of (some) activities.

    Usually, I now start an activity, notice altitude is way off, calibrate, quit and discard current activity to start a new one and avoid having a weird bump in your elevation plot and incorrect ascent/descent values. Would like if it starts autocalibrating with DEM at the start of each hiking activity.

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to 3000610
    3000610 said:
    is there a way to change the watch mode automatically when starting an activit

    No, there is not. You have to set the Altimeter mode manually. However, as you see in the example from the OP, it apparently does not work correctly anyway.

    3000610 said:
    Also, it would be nice to have some sort of mandatory calibration moment at the start of (some) activities.

    That's what the auto-calibration is supposed to do. Again, it does not work, and Garmin did not manage to fix it after several years of complaints, so there is little hope it will get fixed quickly now. Additionally, the problem is not isolated to Instinct only, so it looks like the software engineers at Garmin do not really know how to fix it (or have no time to investigate the problem).

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to darnich
    darnich said:
    Both pressure and altitude seem to be affected simultaneously. That's what I usually observe when the sensor is blocked. 

    In my case it seems that the sensor does register pressure changes, but the Instinct interprets it wrong. But I must say that there is some delay. It looks like Instinct does not read pressure sensor, and only 10-20 minutes later it sees that the pressure dropped. It's a pity that Instinct does not offer the same timescale for altitude and pressure graph. Maybe I could record the route as activity for detailed time/altitude record.