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Displayed altitude is not the recorded altitude?

2fast78
over 5 years ago

Hi everyone,

I have a strange issue with my new Edge 530, maybe someone can help me out.

My start (home) altitude is 330m and  the Edge perfectly calibrates on this altitude when I start my ride (I didn't set a manual altitude for my start point)

When I finish my ride after 3h the displayed altitude is still very accurate (+-330m)

But when uploading my training on GC or Strava the altitude tends to drift at the end of my ride: I ended my ride with an altitude of only 300m.

I analyzed the FIT file and it's really the Edge who records other values than the displayed ones.

Has anyone an idea what could be the reason for this? Bug or "feature"?

Thank you for your comments.

  • 0 over 5 years ago

    This is a feature the recorded values go through some filtering and extra processing from the real-time values before they are committed to the activity file.

  • 0 over 5 years ago in reply to aweatherall

    Thanks! I guess there is no way to deactivate this filtering? Anyway I'll set a fixed start height to see it will work better.

  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 5 years ago

    30 meters drift is really not a high value on a 3 hour trip, though it is more than usual for the 530. Devices using nothing but a barometric altimeter can easily drift three times as much. The 530 should eliminate these high drifts by DEM calibration (it calibrates itself throughout the ride). You don't want these corrections to be too aggressive, otherwise it would mess up the altimeter data. As an example, a 3 hour ride with over 4 hours elapsed time, 536 meters of altitude gain and we've had several weather changes with a short rain , we've spent a lot of time off road, rode through two forests, around two lakes and along a river, did a bunch of tarmac and dirt roads as well. The difference between start and end elevation was 16 meters, and the difference between recorded and actual summit elevations was never more than 5 meters (in fact in this case they were all spot on), which is really impressive given the conditions.

    If you're seeing different data on your device than what is written in the FIT file, then I'd be inclined to believe there is an issue there. Perhaps the device is recording altimeter data and disregarding DEM based corrections? I'd try a factory reset of the device and maybe change record interval to 1s in the settings.