Fr 255 wrong swimming Style and distance detection

joelnx 16 days ago

I have started to use fr 255 for pool swimming for the last month. I used suunto ambit 2 previously for the same purpose. Suunto asks user to teach for calibration at the first usage. And it sharply detects swimming style and distance. My huge upgrade fr 255 does not need such a calibration but it constantly registers my free style as breststroke. My breststroke, is also breststroke (sorry for grammar, garmin does not allow actual calling of that style as it is, so i tried to write brest instead of bre*st). So, simply, almost all of my laps brststroke. Number and durations of Laps are also detected wrong, so the distances. I used fr 245 for pool swimming around 3 years ago, it didn’t have any such problems. Apparently, garmin has made an update in software and spoiled pool swimming. Or accelerometer of 255 is worthless. Is there any solution for this problem that I don’t know? (I read user manual, i already know “don’t change style while in a lap, kick the wall hard to help the watch detect the laps. They don’t work)

Top Replies

6368892 12 days ago in reply to ovekvam +1

Thank you. Yes I see it.

It's not very accurate - out of 20 lengths of freestyle it has recorded 2 breaststroke and 1 backstroke length .. 17/20 on my last pool swim.
4684381 11 days ago in reply to 2129511 +1

2129511 said:
in case of a slow breaststroke with two legs strokes per a single hands stroke it doesn't register swimming at all.

You can use the drill log feature to manually record kick sets, one…

All Replies

0 6368892 12 days ago

I have a FR255 - where can you see the type of stroke? I can't see it in Garmin Connect - I can only see Total Strokes and 'Stroke Rate'

0 ovekvam 12 days ago in reply to 6368892

I can see the stroke type in the interval tab in Garmin Connect web version.

0 6368892 12 days ago in reply to ovekvam

Thank you. Yes I see it.

It's not very accurate - out of 20 lengths of freestyle it has recorded 2 breaststroke and 1 backstroke length .. 17/20 on my last pool swim.

0 2129511 11 days ago

I'm having similar issues - the watch always detects front crawl as breaststroke, and in case of a slow breaststroke with two legs strokes per a single hands stroke it doesn't register swimming at all.

It's good, however, at detecting backstroke.

0 4684381 11 days ago in reply to 2129511

2129511 said:
in case of a slow breaststroke with two legs strokes per a single hands stroke it doesn't register swimming at all.

You can use the drill log feature to manually record kick sets, one-arm swimming, or any type of swimming that is not one of the four major strokes.

0 2129511 8 days ago in reply to 4684381

Oh, it's great to know this, thank you!

So the only issue I'm facing now is the crawl detection :P

0 4684381 8 days ago in reply to 2129511

2129511 said:
So the only issue I'm facing now is the crawl detection

In my experience, a stroke with a clear vertical forearm is important for this.

0 joelnx 21 hours ago

update: Garmin swimming pool is just a garbage. I used swimmingwatchtools web side after a hard reset of my watch to correct mistakes, it worked for once. But it doesn't solve my problem at all. I swtiched "autodetection for rest" to "off". So I need to press lap button each time I do a rest and interval. Today, I have swum 500m freestyle (all recorded as br*ast stroke), then br*ast stroke and backstroke one by one for a total of 250 m. Then 250 m mixed.. When i checked my watch, I have seen it was recorded as 850 m insead of 1000m. And at home, I have seen that my free style is two times slower than other two. Why? Because garmin has added rest times for my br*ast stroke and back strokes, although I didn't had any interval rests. Apparently garmin splitted my bre*st strokes and back strokes to swim and rest periods itself, so swim laps is seen much faster than it actually is. I can't understand how inaccurate a watch can measure distance, add rest times although I had no rest, so on.. Isn't there anybody to solve this problem in Garmin? I guess it is a software problem. I can't believe what a garbage I bouıght. I am sure my open water swimmings will add false "rest times", so there will be no accurate measurements for open water swimming as well... Big big disappointment.