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Is altimeter broken?

zajcek2
19 days ago

In the past month, every 2 or 3 activities the altimeter goes crazy and shows abnormal elevations. My terrain is basically flat, maybe 5 meters total. I rinsed the sensor opening with warm water but that doesn’t help. Below are some examples of how it looks. The worst part is that because of this it doesn’t show the correct distance and prevents me from doing accurate training. Is the sensor broken? Is it possible to disable the altimeter and have the watch calculate elevation based on GPS? Issue occurs on 22.06 and 23.18 firmware version.

Is there any workaround to disable altimeter? I find it frustrating that on a 5 km route, these changes in elevation can add as much as 100-200 metres to the final distance, skewing the averages.

I cannot add image to the post, so here is the link: https://ibb.co/qYHWCmrq

  • 0 19 days ago

    You cannot disable the altimeter, but you can disable the option 3D distance in the settings of the respective activity profile. When 3D distance is not used, the elevation has no effect on the distance.

  • 0 19 days ago in reply to trux

    BTW, the images you posted are not really helpful, since we do not see the true elevation profile for the comparison. To achieve that, you can:

    • either open the activity in Garmin Connect Web and make a screenshot of the default elevation profile, and then another one after switching the Elevation Source (see the cogwheel menu top right) to the option "Digital Elevation Model (DEM) Data"
    • or export the activity, and import the unzipped FIT file to https://www.fitfileviewer.com/, click View Charts, and select enhanced_altitude and gps_altitude for the Y1 and Y2 axes.

    The first method using DEM is more accurate than the second one using GPS elevation, but the second method allows comparing the curves easier.

  • 0 19 days ago in reply to trux

    Thank you for your reply.

    How could I have missed that? 3D distance.

    Otherwise, believe me when I say that the terrain in those pictures is flat (it's a flat city; you only go down under the railway once). Until now, it has always shown me heights of between 5 and 10 metres, but now it shows heights of between 5 and 300 metres.

    My friend also suggested that I turn the watch off physically and leave it for a while to allow the sensors to reset, as he had previously experienced issues with the BT connection. Restarting the watch did not help him; only turning it off did. So far, I have completed two activities without any problems (7 and 10 metres). Hopefully this will help.