Yesterday, I logged a 13 mile walk as a "run" using my 235. I logged it as a run, as there is no hike or walk activity selection. I used my footpod and Garmin ANT+ Chest strap, as these are far more accurate than the watch (they need to fix this). I recorded just shy of 13 miles and 31,000 steps, and was dual gps'ing with GPS and GLONAS. All was well and good until this morning when I looked at my connect sync and noticed that it claims 30 miles and doubled the calories. It appears to me that it is taking the total steps and adding them into the formula after already logging them in the activity. This is incorrect. I noticed that my assumed active calories was also roughly doubled. This seems like it can be easily addressed, and MUST be. Has anybody else noticed this. Also, why no "hike" or "walk" activities?
HaniC I see the same thing on the Garmin Connect website. The weirdness started for me when I connected to MFP. I checked the other suggestions related to MFP settings and the settings were already as suggested.
I haven't seen the issue the past two days. The other day when I did see it was the first day I was using MFP with Garmin. Hopefully it stays working.
I'm back with another report. I just created a spreadsheet with steps, calories, and distance details from the GC desktop widget, the GC Activites tab of the Steps screen, and the GC iphone app. As others have suggested, there are discrepancies. I tracked data for 5 days from Jan. 1-5. In every day except the day I did not run, the calories and distances were inconsistent in certain places as explained below.
The "Calories" on the Steps widget screen in each case matched the "Calories" on the GC iphone app per the Steps Details page. This Calories number represents the total calories burned during Timed Activities and Daily Steps. They appear to be accurate.
The "Distance" from these two sources also matched except for the fact that the widget rounds to the nearest tenth instead of the nearest hundredth. This number also appears to be accurate. Unfortunately, this Distance number represents the Total Distance traveled and does not break out between Timed Activities and Daily Steps. The Calories are also totals and only include Active Calories and not Total Calories (include BMR).
The desktop page for Steps shows Total Calories and Total Distance, but these do not match the Calories and Distances described above. The Activities tab on the same page is the only place where I can obtain a breakout of steps, calories, and distance between Timed Activities and Daily Steps. Unfortunately, this is the place where the duplications in both Calories and Distance occur.
Meanwhile, I called Garmin again to follow up on my outstanding ticket. The other agent said that I would hear back within 3 business days. The agent today said she didn't know why they would have told me that. She said open cases typically take more than two weeks to resolve. I did tell them about this thread in the 235 sub-forum, and that several had documented the issue.
If you think you are not having this problem, check to see if, on days prior to today where you have done any kind of timed activity, your calories on the GC widget and those on the Activity tab of the full page match. Please report your findings here. The discrepancy is not always large (like a full duplication). Sometimes it is smaller. However, if you run 10+ miles in one day, you are likely to see it more easily.
Thanks for reading and please ask for clarification if my notes are unclear. :-)
Thanks for reading and please ask for clarification if my notes are unclear. :-)
yesterday you showed it was correct....has it done it incorrect since then? If it was a bug that was somehow fixed, I find the previous incorrect days will not be adjusted.
yesterday you showed it was correct....has it done it incorrect since then? If it was a bug that was somehow fixed, I find the previous incorrect days will not be adjusted.
You're right that I thought it was correct yesterday when I was looking at the live data. :-)
Although the data looked reasonable at the time, today I found another discrepancy between the widget page and the Activity tab on the full Steps page. The reason I missed it yesterday was two-fold. First, there is something of a timing lag in updating all the data. After the day is over though, it finally locks in for the next day. Second, this duplication wasn't as obvious because Daily Steps weren't actually doubled. They were just slightly inflated.
What I did was take the Total Distance from the GC mobile app via the Steps Detail page and subtract the Distance from my Timed Activity to come up with real Distance for my Daily Steps. When I do this same calculation for the Daily Steps Distances that are really far off, all the numbers become reasonable again. It's just that yesterday they only seemed a little off. The only way I knew they were still off was because of the mismatch of calories between the two platforms.
@GailNestor
I saw something similar. If you look back in this thread you'll see my example of the same issue. The reduced version of the steps widget appears to be accurate in terms of distance and calories. The full steps pages or breakout page (in GC and the app) is clearly wrong on some days and different from the dashboard widget.
I also copied (bad) past data from the breakout tab of GC into excel to see if I can work out what's happened. I found that by manipulating the data I could get the data to line up with what it actually should be.
On days that are clearly wrong if I subtract tracked activity distances from the daily step distances then the step distance and total distances become accurate. Also, if I subtract tracked activity calories from the daily step calories then again it all lines up. I was looking at steps per Km and calories per km to see if it makes sense before and after manipulation.
I've finally gotten through to Garmin to get them to have a look at my profile and data from past days. They have created tickets for this issue and some other issues so I guess I'll wait and see what they say.
Yes, I think you and one other person came up with this same concept at the same time. I am thankful that you looked at the data more closely than I did. Today, with only a 6-mile run, so far my calories are off only 59 between the two screens. It would be easy to have overlooked this error and not known that the numbers were slightly off if I hadn't known to look for the calorie discrepancy you found.
When I spoke with Garmin today, I told them about this thread and said that others were having the same issue and that it was well-documented. I am really hoping that they will fix this and that they also provide the same breakout of steps, calories, and distance for both timed and untimed activities on the phone app.
I hope others will check to see if the same calorie discrepancy applies to them and will inundate Garmin with calls. It seems like it is the only way we can get them to address it.
In my opinion, I cannot trust calorie count at all (without doing a bunch of math every day), and therefore, that defeats one of the most important things I liked about this watch: knowing how many calories I burn each day. Grrrr
The only way I knew they were still off was because of the mismatch of calories between the two platforms.
Ignore data for days that are not complete as there appears processing timing issues affect those. They happen more frequently than I think reported by the status page.
On nearly all of your data it consistently appears that the non-activity calories work out a factor of around 67 cal per 'shown' mile which I believe, apart from the wrong miles, is ok. That non-activity distance however is definitely incorrect by the shown distance and take, using a stride length factor 2300 steps/mile, for the actual non-activity steps shown. The issue then is where does this extra distance come from if the GPS is turned off when your run is ended. If the erroneous data shows on GC then it has to be a either general GC issue which I would think unlikely as it should appear to all, or it is something in your case with other apps exchanging data, or there is bug in your FR which is capturing/synchronizing some data that it shouldn't. If it is the last then it may require exchange if it cannot be sorted through any form of reset etc.
Normally, I am not able to see any affect of the crossover or duplication of the activity distance into the non-active steps or distance in my case. I have had the case where there was a delayed processing of steps by GC and it caused a duplication of active step calories into daily when GC did not come back on line the same day but that is not what you are seeing.
In terms of GC looking at todays data so far there seems to be no correlation between steps and distance. I had 12558 steps allocated to an Indoor ride (?). The calories look correct at 770. I then have an additional 197 calories added for 1.7 miles (Seems about right) but zero steps! BUT my watch is only displaying 3996 steps! Again about right. So where did the 12k steps come from my indoor bike ride?? TBH I am only interested in calories and not steps and they seem correct today. Just pointing out that I don't think you can correlate the daily steps value with calories.
In terms of GC looking at todays data so far there seems to be no correlation between steps and distance.
I suggest ignore data for days that are not complete as there appears processing timing issues affect those. They happen more frequently than I think reported by the status page. Mine were delayed for some of the day too but corrected at midnight (I am GMT+11).
For 1.7 miles of walking I would have expected the 3900 steps. 197 calories for those is a bit on the high side but obviously is affected by personal profile/BMR. you may get a better gauge of it when the day completes. The 'steps' sensed when cycling has occurred by some others too. My guess it is a bug in the activity but hard to say when there are delays in processing data. When things are reasonably stable my casual steps vs calories are reasonably consistent (perhaps due to my HR wouldn't go above 50% MHR during those so one would expect it to be more predictable)
OK mine is similarly doing weird stuff too at the moment but it is only part day. I believe the steps shown are correct but the distance is wrong (unless I have doubled my stride), nor does the total distance match that on the widget summary on the dashboard (out by 1.14Km) and this is causing the non-activity calories to be inflated by about 45kcal. Will see whether it aligns by day's end.
