Calibrating footpod for walking

I am sure it will give you a highly distorted speed and distance value due to the highly different speed ranges. It is my long term experience.

When I walk my footpod no 1 or footpod no 2 (boots and shoes) are set to 88 or so. When I run outdoors my footpod no 3 (which is a Stryd) is set to 101.2 and when I used no 2 for outdoors run it was 97-98.

You can calibrate your footpod using any clever method, but as I observed auto cal based on GPS distance and/or calculated distance from GPS is restricted to running sports app. My experience is mainly with F5+, but some of them has been confirmed with F6X, too. So even if walk and hike app allow you to connect to a footpod, no auto cal is allowed. I dont remember whether any auto cal happens if you use a run app, but in reality you just walk at typical low walking speed.

So in your special case the solution is to mark the belt somehow and set your footpod to 100, walk 1000 m or couple of 1000s measured by your watch. And in the meantime  somehow count how many times you see your mark. Later somehow measure  the length of the belt using your mark. Finally do the maths, which is simply the division of the 2 distances.

It will be not deadly accurate, but much more accurate than any other calibrations.

Btw I am a real footpod lover, using them only outdootr, and you find some of my footpod-related pains here, too: forums.garmin.com/.../footpod-set-to-always-speed-comes-from-gps-accurate-cal-factors-2-footpods-went-off-suddenly

Some curiosity related to the "marriage" of a footpod and Fenix 6X:

"when I was sitting in a restaurant in mid-walk, after appr. 15-20 minutes my F6X and my footpod disconnected from each other. I mean due to the rest of my legs.

While in the past my F5+ kept the connection with the same footpood even when I had a “sitting” lunch of 50-60 minutes during my walk/hike."

I'm still waiting for my Fenix 6, but I can say about experience with Vivoactive 4 and MiCoach footpod, I have two and use on for running and another on my walking shoes(in fact that's a footpod for my wife which I used for testing and to avoid re-calibration of my running one). So no matter how long I walked it never got calibrated to anything new, in time when my running one keep changing calibration factor depending on what I'm doing,  threshold or easy runs.

So I guess that if you're interested in pace data from it, you  have to find out your calibration factor for walking and use it.

So you meant that you used a run app of Vivoactive 4 when “no matter how long I walked it never got calibrated to anything new,“, didnt you?

sensovision said:

So I guess that if you're interested in pace data from it, you  have to find out your calibration factor for walking and use it.

Let me rephrase it, you have to make manual calibration on track with known distance or walking between two road marks (either km or mile). The latter will be much less accurate, at least in my country.

What I meant that calibration only takes place if you're using Run app and follow a few criteria listed on the site i.e. constant run for a 10+ minutes. Otherwise calibration wouldn't change. Also if you use Walk app, or any other then calibration factor wouldn't change no matter how long and constantly you will walk(at least it was so for me).

Tisztul_A_Visztula said:

Let me rephrase it, you have to make manual calibration on track with known distance or walking between two road marks (either km or mile). The latter will be much less accurate, at least in my country.

I never tried that, so I would be a bad advisor as I have to learn and try it first myself. I only calibrated using GPS.

sensovision said:

What I meant that calibration only takes place if you're using Run app and follow a few criteria listed on the site i.e. constant run for a 10+ minutes.

Sure, but what I raised was that what happens if you use Run app,  but you walk. Afair no calibration happened. But I never tried to find out the threshold speed/pace when auto calibration hsppens.

As regards msnual cal let me recommend fellrnr.com/.../Garmin_Foot_Pod_Calibration