Elevation on latest FWs

Reported the following via the beta firmware email feedback channel even though this issue predates the beta software:

• For a cycling ride on 27th of September Strava shows just over 1000 feet of elevation gain but Garman is showing nearly 1400 feet.
• A really silly cycle elevation measurement was on 25 September where my Garmin is showing almost 2400 feet in elevation gain whereas Strava is showing only 1164. 
• yesterday ran on the beach and the elevation that was reported on my Garmin connect activity was not too bad, only showing 47 feet gained even though it was a beach and total elevation game should've been maybe around 10 feet. However, the run in Strava shows over 1000 feet elevation gain.

Overall, Strava more accurate on cycling and Garmin on running. 

JaymOmeste7AdamTKincaidTransAtlantic1 Folks, given that Garmin are struggling to identify what is going on, maybe we can find some common things here which might help isolate where the issues are...

I have AutoCal turned on Continuous for during an activity and I have it On for not during activities.  I always wait for a good GPS lock before beginning a run and I have the tell-tale jagged elevation profile start to appear during almost every run.  I'm starting to consider if this is actual not to do with activity recording but is more to do with altitude calibration.

My elevation is ALWAYS wrong.  When I manually calibrate it usually shows something sensible, but within hours it is way off.  Right now it is showing -236 meters for instance.  Our weather pattern has for two days been a high pressure system sitting across the whole country so our air pressure has been stable for 48 hours.  In other words the normal things that would throw off the altitude shouldn't apply.

What are your settings?  How do you calibrate, is it automatic.  How do you find the elevation information when not recording an activity?

The alternative is it could be a hardware issue - Garmin don't seem keen to simply replace my watch.  If it is software let's see if we can figure this out?

JaymO meste7 AdamTKincaid TransAtlantic1 something for you guys to test if you want.  I've turned off Auto Calibration during activities.  This has made a big difference for me - I've now had two runs without weird jagged elevation profiles.

There appears to be (N=1) issues with calibration using GPS.  When I calibrate with the DEM I get consistent results at home; but as soon as I use the GPS I get quite varied results.  It makes sense that if the watch is trying to calibrate during a run and getting weird variations from the calibration process that the elevation plot would be jagged.

It is certainly worth testing to see if it 'fixes' your elevation plots as well?  It clearly will need a fix because I'm finding my initial elevation at the start of an activity is not accurate - today's run started at -63 even though I waited for the GPS fix and it is supposed to calibrate at the start of each activity.  My local elevation is 20m so at the start it was out by over 80m.

Let me know if this has the same outcome for you?

ok, I will try it to see what happens. In the meantime, I got a replacement and the new watch seem to work ok, but will see... and thanks.

forget everything I suggested, ran a half marathon today.  Watch recorded an extra 1500m of elevation gain - complete rubbish.

Yeah, turned off Auto Calibration during activities and Strava correctly recorded 1700 feet of elevation gain on a bike ride whereas Garman has it out over 6000 feet of elevation game 

For folks here who have actually opened a ticket with Garmin what has been their response? Are they refusing to exchange for a brand new device?

Seems like unless it is some conflict with say a ConnectIQ app of some kind, or some obscure configuration issue just a handful of us have managed our ways into, it must be a device issue if there’s only a few of us having this problem, yeah?

It's nothing I've seen but there are several posts reporting similar in the F6 forums. Looks fine for a short period before going awry. Whether you have beta or public release software send and email to [email protected] with your Marq version and software version.

I figured a hardware issue as well, but in the Fenix 6 forum there are people who have had replacements and have the same issues. Support on my case has been silent, weeks of nothing meaningful. 

One thing that is very weird on mine, and I’m wondering if anyone has any thoughts on this, is how the Garmin watch reports an accurate elevation figure on my beach runs, but the Strava elevation data is over 1000 feet of gain.

Any possibility that there is some kind of conflict with the Strava-Garmin activity link?

And isn’t Strava supposed to be using topo maps to calc elevation? How is Strava showing over 1,000 feet elevation gain for a beach run?