Related
This discussion has been locked.
You can no longer post new replies to this discussion. If you have a question you can start a new discussion

Does walking log more gps data than cycling since it drains battery twice as fast?

7267816
over 1 year ago

Hello,

I used to cycle a lot with my VA3 as tracking device.

As far as I can remember it used about 10% battery per hour.

Recently I started to walk a lot.

Today I did 23Km in just 4 hours.

But after 3.5 hours I got this "battery is low" message already.

I noticed this before that walking seems to use twice as much battery than cycling.

Any idea what the reason could be?

Is it because the distances are smaller that it needs to request more gps positions?

Someone threw a table in this forum with battery meassurement and he could do 12-13 hours with GPS, heartrate and activity tracking but this was on a robotic kind of movement faker.

Could it be that the step counter of the activity tracker uses a lot of battery?

And that this doesn't kick in since your hands are steady during cycling?

Will I still get a step count in a walking activity when that tracker is off?

I use the 4 fields activity screen with time, duration, distance and speed.

should switching to the clock use less battery?

but then I need to operate it constantly to see my speed or distance.

my setting are already minimal tho

standard digital watch face with battery & steps but not shown during the activity

activity screen is 4 fields with time, duration, distance and speed

slide menu is off

bluetooth is off

heartrate is on but can be turned off

gps is standard gps

smart tracking

activity tracker is on (is this required for my step count during a walking activity or does that activity include that?)

backlight is always off 0%

Any hints would be nice but I'll do some testing with the activity tracker, step count etc myself aswell.

  • 0 over 1 year ago

    Did a test with the activity tracker off and the weather was not cloudy.

    10.2Km walk in 1:54 and battery went from 92% to 64%  which is 28% or ~14%/hour.

    Surprisingly it still counted 13568 steps

    Heart rate was still on. I might test it with that off later this week.

    What could improve battery life aswell is a gesture setting for the activity.

    Screen blank or don't update the screen unless you do the movement to look at the watch.

    Now it's constantly updating the screen even when you don't need any info.

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to 7267816

    Another test and +/- the same route as above.

    10.65Km in 1:58 in very cloudy and about to rain conditions.

    .

    Activity tracking off, heart rate off, activity screen on and not the time watchface.

    .

    Dissapoint result and going from 100% to 59% so average to 20%/hour.

    .

    I'll try again with the watchface in place. I'm using one without seconds so it update only once per minute (that's what it claims)

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to 7267816

    another test...

    10.74km in 1:57

     

    100% to 64% is +/- 18%/hour

     

    after a few minutes it already dropped to 96% I don't know why.

     

    the watchface trick didn't work at all. after 30 seconds or so it jumped back to the activity screen.

    this was originally the 4 items one with time, duration, distance and speed.

    after about 2.5km I changed it to a 2 items screen with only the time and distance.

    that only updated every 10 seconds when another 10 meter was walked.

    I don't know if the watch is programmed to only update when values change or that this is updated every second anyway.

     

    the results are similar to my second test and that was even with the heartrate on.

    strange that the heartrate meassurement with 3 blinking leds doesn't seem to have effect on these results.

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to 7267816

    another test...

    as mentioned in post 1 I knew I could do longer with a cycling activity so I went for that.

    in the cycling acitvity I changed thise:

    auto pause > speed > set to 1.66Km/h which is the lowest I could enter to prevent constant pause if the fixed speed was higher than 6Km/h.

    and after about walking for about 1.5km:

    I enabled the 3rd screen and set all 4 fields to the heartrate and as this is turned off it won't update anything.

    If I had to look at my distance I just had to quickly scroll up, peek and scroll down again.

    BINGO

    10.63Km in 1:52 and battery went from 100% to 75% which is about 12%/hour

    so it seems that the steps counter in the walking activity is the culprit by constantly monitoring arm swings

    after synced with my laptop I could just change the activity from cycling to walking in Strava

    I wonder if there is a walking activity from Garmin that can be added without the step count and that would solve everything.

    I also compared the git file for the gps read out and it seems that the smart mode pulls data depending on the speed.

    when walking fast the pull interval is bigger and sometime goes up to 10 second in both walking and cycling activities