Ongoing issue with floor climbing

I live in a 13 floor condo and I went from the basement all the way to the roof the other day but used the climb app.  It reported that I had climbed 190 feet which was exactly correct.  But I suppose that was just pure altimeter and not counting steps up.  I'll try it counting steps and see what it does.  I know exactly how many steps it is from the basement to the roof.  

Just to clarify - the issue I'm discussing is not counting steps or altitude, it's counting floors. That's a specific metric the device supports under activity tracking. 

I use the Floor Climb activity frequently and I'm pretty sure that it uses the altimeter to detect ascent and descent. I have found that I have to give it some time at both the top and the bottom for it to register the change in altitude. Another thing that seems to throw it off is temperature differences between upstairs and downstairs. Our downstairs is a walkout basement that faces west so it is typically cooler in the morning  than the upstairs, which warms up quicker from the sun shining in the windows. I finally got a bit more consistency by connecting my Tempe and leaving it downstairs while I do the floor climb.

I'm fortunate in that I have space at the top and bottom where I can walk around a bit until the watch registers the altitude change.

The f7x is definitely better than any of my previous Garmin watches. I do a floor climb activity 3 times a week and since I got my 7x on 1/26, I've only had to edit the floor count a couple of times, and then only by 1 or 2 floors. With my old f5x I used to have all kinds of issues... It'd stop counting floors in the middle, over count floors, under count floors, sometimes by double digits. My old tactix Delta was better but it would still stop counting floors and under counted floors typically by 5 or 6.

Anyway, that's my experience with the Floor Climb activity, FWIW.

.ALIENST said:

it uses the altimeter to detect ascent and descent

It does indeed. One floor equates to 3m change in elevation. 

Yes of course.  I wasn't saying the altimeter isn't involved in floor counting.  I was saying that the issue is specifically with floor counting.  A 5% error in the altimeter reading could result in a 100% error in floor count, if the threshold for incrementing floor count is rigid and not adjustable.  

I'm up and down the stairs from my basement office multiple times/day.  It's exactly 10 ft.  My F7X is counting about half of those trips.  But like I said, it will count 4 in a row accurately ,then miss 3 then count 2 then miss 1..

Presumably, the algorithm is rigid, so if the altimeter detects a 9.5' change sometimes it doesn't get counted at all.  That would be my guess anyway.

Then why would anyone want to know the number of floors if it is just the altimeter and 3m per floor.  The climb app is fine just reporting the meters of ascent.  That works perfectly for me when I'm climbing the stairs of my high-rise condo. It is perfect to the foot every time I climb the stairs (even though the altimeter can be effected with barometric pressure weather changes and temp stuff - like is well explained on that other thread).    

Well - here's the easy explanation.  I just checked altitude at the bottom of the stairs.  96ft.  At the top of the stairs, with my wrist in the same position - 105ft.  So the watch sees a 10ft change as 9ft.   (It was bouncing around a bit so probably it sees 9.5 ft). Again - I measured the actual height change with a laser measure to be exactly 10 ft. 

And that's the problem - nothing subtle or mysterious.  Algorithm says it's gotta be 10'.  The true change is 10'.  But the watch is off by 0.5 ft, so zero floors. 

Solution:

1 - improve the accuracy - probably difficult.

2 - allow adjusting the threshold to increment the count - a few lines of code? 

There's no real downside to allowing the threshold adjustment since the watch apparently does not accumulate changes over the day.  That is - if I do a half flight now and later I do another half flight - I get zero flights.  It's clearly all or none.  So there won't be any cumulative error if I adjust the threshold down a bit. I'll just miss less floors.  

Really - given how long people have been complaining about this - no one has thought to do this?  

I understand that calibrating the actual altimeter is likely more complicated - I'm not suggesting messing with that.  But adjusting the cutoff for floor counts seems really simple.  

Garmin - wouldn't it be nice to actually resolve a bug people have been complaining about for 10+ years across multiple devices???

Really?  

Why would anyone want to know how many steps they walked in a day when they could just log a walk activity the entire day  - right? 

Because people want to do better at incorporating activity into their normal behavior - not just when they're recording a specific activity.  When I'm climbing a mountain I'm happy to know total ascent.  When I want to get some extra motivation by seeing how many stairs I climbed all day instead of using the elevator - it's great to see that count. Altimeter isn't going to tell me that -since not every elevation change in a day is due to climbing stairs.  

I see your point and agree.  It works fine for me to just have a feet or meters readout from the altimeter if you are on a specific stair climb and just want to know total ascent for that workout.  Funny - I'm taking the elevator back down 13 floors and then climb again and the watch tracks total ascent.  

Ha!  That is funny.  And sorry if my last response was a little pissy!