Instead of e.g. 5 miles, it gives me e.g. 43 miles??!!
Instead of e.g. 5 miles, it gives me e.g. 43 miles??!!
The GPS of your phone was probably disabled, or the Garmin Connect app on your phone was not connected to your Vivosmart during the walk.
Some basic information about the usage of the "Connected GPS" of your Vivosmart 5 is available here: Using the Connected GPS Feature With a Garmin Watch | Garmin Customer Support
Yes this was probably a case where the walk activity either didn't have the GPS turned on in the settings, or the watch couldn't both connect to the phone app and get GPS location from the phone app. Then the automatic stride length estimate somehow ended up with some sort of absurdly long stride length or something.
Basically, for the GPS to work, the Garmin Connect app must be running and must have permission to use the GPS, so if you want the GPS to work then check the settings for the app and make sure it has Location permission, and make sure it's running in the background when the activity is started.
Selecting the activity on the watch should show you a "Connecting to GPS..." progress screen before you start the activity. You then have to wait for this to complete before starting the activity or it will start without the GPS. If you want to start without the GPS though you can.
It's also possible to set a "custom stride length" for both walking and running in the User Profile settings of the device in the Garmin Connect app. You enter this in terms of how many steps it takes you to walk a known distance. The longer the "known distance" you use, the more accurate it will be. So ideally you find something like a running track at a high school, etc, and walk around the track or part of it you know the distance for, then manually count the steps and enter the distance and number of steps.
Since the vivosmart 5 doesn't have a built-in GPS, I tended to not use the GPS for walking and running by turning that off in settings and I just entered a custom stride distance information. The distance estimates won't be perfectly accurate this way but they were extremely close to the same results as using the GPS. (It can be worth doing this on other watches as well since it will save battery to not use the GPS.)
It also seems like the vivosmart 5 has some sort of issue where it can end up completely scrambled if not synced with the phone app for more than a day. My family member who has a vivosmart 5 encountered this, but I don't know if it always happens, if it's random, or only happens in some unkown situation.
Yes this was probably a case where the walk activity either didn't have the GPS turned on
As I wrote in my previous post, Vivosmart 5 has no built-in GPS. It uses so-called Connected GPS. It means the GPS data shared from the smartphone. The GPS needs to be enabled on the phone, and the phone has to be connected with the band. The device cannot detect any location when used standalone.
rjstone knows this. They were discussing the "use of GPS" setting on the VS5, not the "GPS" setting.
If you read all of what they wrote, you will see they included the further elaboration:
"Since the vivosmart 5 doesn't have a built-in GPS, I tended to not use the GPS for walking and running by turning that off in settings and I just entered a custom stride distance information."
We all know the VS5 doesn't have internal GPS.
Still, disabling the Connected GPS in the activity settings is not the solution, since it is needed for calibrating the distance accuracy when GPS is not available. The Custom Stride length is used exclusively only on the all-day Steps stats. See what Garmin tells about it:
From The Step Distance Recorded on My Garmin Watch Is Wrong | Garmin Customer Support
NOTE: Setting a custom stride length will only impact your calculated step distance. Your custom stride length does not have any effect on the distance recorded for timed activities.
From Using the Connected GPS Feature With a Garmin Watch | Garmin Customer Support
Using Connected GPS with your smartphone will calibrate your watch and can improve the distance accuracy for activities recorded without GPS, such as a walk or run.
I wasn’t aware of that because this info doesn’t appear in the manual (or I don’t remember) and it doesn’t show up in the app either.
This seems like something that should have a “help text” on the settings screen since it’s rather important information.
it seems strange that these distance calculations are totally separate and don’t share any information.
Your selected paragraphs have been written by Garmin to explain device functions within a certain context, but you have presented them here outside of that context, as an answer to the GPS issues faced by VS5 users (though you did provide source links, so there's that). Your presentation in the context of the OP is mismatched to the context the quotes were written in.
"Setting a custom stride length will only impact your calculated** step distance. Your custom stride length does not have any effect on the distance recorded for timed activities." - relates to non-GPS activities. You can set a custom stride length but this is only used outside of an activity, for your **daily step total (asterisks are mine). The article also includes "The height you have listed under your user profile is used to estimate your stride length and thus will estimate the distance you have traveled.". So remaining non-GPS related. Devices with a built-in GPS do this calibration automatically during an activity.
"Using Connected GPS with your smartphone will calibrate your watch and can improve the distance accuracy for activities recorded without GPS, such as a walk or run." - in this instance it's explaining that if an activity is recorded without GPS then better calibration may arise from having performed an activity previously with Connected GPS as it may improve calibration of your step distance, which will in turn improve results when you next perform that activity without connected GPS (e.g. you left your phone at home). Your suggestion "Connected GPS ... is needed for calibrating the distance accuracy when GPS is not available." - once the oxymoron factor has been overcome - isn't a factor as the device may never ever see a Connected GPS in its life, but it will still estimate step distance reasonably well (certainly better than the distance issues we are seeing here).
Finally, Connected GPS can be used to provide location data during an activity and it is this that is causing issues with the VS5. Estimated step distance without GPS will not give 43 miles. There are many similar threads on the matter.
I now rarely use the GPS (connected to Samsung 10e) . I have calibrated my Stride and for a known 1 mile walking route (verified many times with my Venu 2 (onboard GPS) I am recording a Very-Very close 1 mile on my VS5. Needless to say I think the whole problem is the fact that it is a phone-connected GPS that is causing all the errors. Maybe it's switching towers, maybe partial blocking by buildings, trees, etc,, or it is just poorly designed. Whatever. I solved the problem on the VS5 and my wife's VS4, yeah, you don't get the cute map, but that's so minor we don't care.
BTW. Don't use Autostart and MoveIQ - that just compounds the problem IMHO....always manual start the activity. It's really not that hard to do.
The vivosmart records a correct map of the ride but wrong distance. It must be getting GPS from the phone to create the map. Why does it not measure the map correctly? Sometimes mine is correct (about one out of three rides). I've tried giving it more time to connect, refreshing the connection to iphone, turning off wifi to force it to use cellular data. Nothing seems to fix this.
i have exactly the same issue
map is correct, distance is wrong (too long)
sometimes it also shows crazy top speeds like 140km/h walking