Spikes, spikes and more spikes!

Spikes

I have the same problem and was wondering how no one else was noticing this behavior. I have spikes at 170+ now before I even finish breakfast while having done nothing more than drag myself to the kitchen while still half asleep. There is no way I hit 85% of my max heart rate chewing on Cheerios.

I don't have spikes to that extent.

Prior to 4.2 it appeared to me that general activity, chores etc did not register on the 24*7 tracking to a great extent possibly due to low sampling? Now it may be going the other way a bit like my Fitbit HR did. I.e. get up and start moving around and the HR readings would increase artificially to high for a while and register too many calories.
On the plus side if I am resting and do get a spike (usually at 2x my actual HR) it does seem to be very brief and doesn't seem to affect things much.

If you look at my trace this morning there is an indoor bike activity for an hour which clocked up 698 calories (with a strap) and seem about right. Following that I was rushing around getting ready for work and getting my daughter ready for school and I earned another 700 calories. (See attached image) I'm pretty sure I exerted a lot more effort in the bike ride so I think there is definitely now a tendency for the HR monitoring to overshoot a bit.

Not very scientific I know. Maybe next time I will continue to wear the strap and record an "other" activity to make some kind of comparison.

I had previously replied to another post of yours talking about this issue and now having used the new firmware for a few more days I agree with you.

It's ridiculous how many false reads there are that are being recorded as spikes. I dont know if its actually better than before. Daily calories are definitely up on what they used to be.

They have definitely done something major with the HR algorithm and Im not sure if it's any good. Even HR recording during activities is now a little weird - I can't describe it.

I feel like they are faking something to do with the reading. As in make it look like it's recording or do some estimation but in fact it's not a real read.

God why can't they get this right...?

I see the same thing. I'm starting to worry that software will be unable to fix the problems we are all seeing. It just may be poor hardware, which will never be fixed (aside from a recall, and we can guess the odds of that).

Fitbit HR was just the same for me, but you couldn't pair that with a HR strap which is where the 235 has the advantage so you can get accurate HR readings when you want.. Possibly something we will have to live with until we see a new improved generation of OHR. Will be interesting if someone out there can crack this!

Although I'm glad the update actually improved things for me (I suffered from weird spikes BEFORE the update) it sucks to hear it messes up things for others....

Weird though, and worrying... In the end it's "just" a matter of measuring differences in light absorbtion/reflection due to bloodflow right?

Taking into account skin tones, perhaps thickness of skin, tattoos, hair, etc. But these things influence the total picture (how much is absorbed/reflected by default) and in the end a change between 'with and without' blood (flow) is measured.

Why does it work at one time for some and not for others, and then after some sw update it's suddenly vice versa?

I noticed the difference in led-intensity between the TomTom Cardio Multisport and the Forerunner 235 is pretty big, that can matter a lot of course.

Would it be possible to increase intensity of the leds somewhat (only during activities maybe even) in order to get a stronger signal or something?

I can imagine the differences are sometimes too subtle with a weaker signal.

Ugh... Perhaps I'll just frot another led or something underneath the watch to assist and see how that works :P

ps. After comparing the leds and sensor in the garmin and tomtom cardio I also noticed that they lie way deeper in the garmin as well. On the tomtom they are right below the surface, right on top of your skin. With the garmin they lie deeper in the watch, some space between them and your skin. Can imagine that screws up things too...

Noticed today that it was displaying updates to the HR readings on the graph while the heart icon was blinking and it was nowhere near my real HR (showing 100+ while I was just standing there). It took 2 or so minutes for it to finally lock on to the real rate in the low 60s, which took long enough that I got to watch it plot a few of those 100+ readings into the graph updates.
I take this as some confirmation of my theory that the graph now looks more detailed not because the HR is being accurately read more frequently, but because it's going ahead and plotting all the data that it gets as soon as it even starts trying to determine your HR.