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Track run mode distance way off

Puff5
27 days ago

Our daughter race walks two laps on an 400m track, and the watch typically records her distance as over 1000m

I've been in contact with support who suggested making sure the GPS has enough time to 'soak in' prior to the event. We've been putting the watch in a ready mode at leat 10 minutes prior to her actually starting her race walk.

The track run mode 'forces' the track into an oval shape, so any extra distance gets 'squished' into an oval and it's not obvious whether the initial track was way off to begin with.

The watch is set for 200m laps and properly beeps at those distances. So the GPS seems to track properly, but the internal accelerometer seems to not be counting her arm swings properly, and the data obtained via the accelerometer is what seems to be messing up the data. You'd think that the GPS track would be programmed to have priority over the accelerometer if they disagree with each other.

Anyone else have this problem?  Getting really close to forcing a warranty refund on this watch after 5 tech support calls and Garmin not being able to figure it out. Thanks.

  • 0 27 days ago

    What lane is your daughter in and is the watch set to match? Outdoor GPS activities don’t use the accelerometer to count steps and then multiple by stride length to calculate distance. If GPS is dropping out you would see it in the track with either gaps our very straight lines.

    Track run doesn’t force your path into an oval. Just the fact that you are lapping the same oath makes it difficult to see each lap. If you zoom in you can see the actual variations. The more laps the easier it is to see.

    Have you tried going to a different track and giving it a few tests? You be easy to identify an issues. You have 200m lap alerts and the 400m lap to use as reference points.

  • 0 27 days ago in reply to expo8282
    expo8282 said:
    Outdoor GPS activities don’t use the accelerometer

    That is not correct. Garmin uses a mixture of GPS and accelerometer. The poorer the GPS reception, the greater the influence of the accelerometer.

  • 0 27 days ago in reply to bluefish

    Thank you for all your responses. 

    I was told by tech support that the watch does use the accelerometer in addition to the GPS signal. That's what doesn't make sense to me considering the GPS track seems correct. I have no idea why it would then take corrupt step data into the mix.

    The calibration for this watch is to do the initial 4 laps at any new track, and that's what we've done.

    Our daughter is running in lane 1 and has the watch setting correct for that lane choice.

    We've tried using just the "run" or "walk" activity, but the GPS track gets too messy. It's still shows her on the track surface itself but has more 'wiggles' than the track mode has. I did one lap using the 'walk' setting and it was off by about 50 meters!

    We just did a walk tonight and she used the 'walk' mode. The auto stop is on and the watch beeped probably around 8 times during our walk despite us never stopping. So the watch is at least occasionally not picking up her arm swing.

    We're going to test out a new track, but this whole experience with this watch is starting to waste a lot of time over the past 3 weeks and I've had to manually use a stopwatch to record her times. Disappointed

  • 0 27 days ago

    Wha GPS setting do you have for the activity?

  • 0 26 days ago in reply to S.M.R.

    Wow- the forum was down for quite awhile today. Is it just me, or does anyone else see the text in these responses overlapping the "Related" column at the right side of the screen? 

    I've chosen "All + Multi-Band" for the GPS setting, but I have tried the other options too.

    We did another test today by simply walking around the track and got some unusual results that might point towards a problem. The track in Garmin Connect shows the circular track indicator going forward, then backwards as we talked around the track. It is essentially showing the track of how my daughter's arm is travelling around the track! That would account for excess distance.

    It makes sense that the GPS receiver is picking up that sort of track because it represents reality. But I'm guessing that this watch probably uses the accelerometer to figure out when someone's arm is swinging backwards, and then tells the firmware to ignore that as part of the track. Perhaps the accelerometer in the watch is broken.

    I'll be calling support again tomorrow.

  • 0 26 days ago in reply to Puff5

    You are not perhaps using an external HRM?

  • 0 26 days ago in reply to Puff5
    Puff5 said:
    The auto stop is on

    There's a minimum speed. Maybe it's even configurable, not sure now. I also tried auto pause for walks but I find it useless, because it stops too many times when it shouldn't.

    However your original problem seems to be unrelated and have the opposite effect: ~1000m which is 25% more than what it should be (~800m)

  • 0 26 days ago

    So this intrigued me.

    I walk a lot during the day and I pass a track (that I sometimes run on also) 

    I walked two laps , I pressed lap at start of lap and after lap one and lap 2 , it is exact at 400m each. I watched and as I passed the 100m marks it moved over as I would expect.

    Note this was walk activity not doing anything special. The map is very good also.

    In 2006 I did a 10km Track race with a very early forerunner and it was within 50 m!