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Poor gps hiking switchbacks

4 mile hike with lots of switchbacks. 935 measures about 3. Apple Watch nails it, iPhone app nails it. Looking at the activity map it is clear that it just draws straight lines through many of the switchbacks. Any idea why it drops. Have every sec set, gps and glonass. Accurate on runs, cycling, etc. my 735 did the same thing on exactly the same hikes. I can find other complaints by googling, but no solutions. Must be something
with garmins algorithm since it happens with several models. I would expect garmin to perform better than this. Any ideas?

0 timgrose over 7 years ago

Would help if you showed us some links to these. Don't forget GC does not display all the points either.

0 Steve.E over 7 years ago

What is the recording rate for hiking? Is it the same as the general settings for the watch? Maybe it is only recording at a slower rate?

0 martinm1 over 7 years ago

recording rate is the same at 1 sec. It is clear looking at the map that it simply ignores about 1/3 of the switchbacks and draws a straight line thus cutting about 30% off the actual distance hiked. Looking at the map for an app on the iphone every switch back is followed and the distance is accurate. Again, the weird thing is that it happens exactly the same every time I do this hike and it did exactly the same thing on the 735. Also happens on another hike with switchbacks. In both cases the hikes are in exposed areas with no tree cover. I even tried using the run activity, but it does the same thing. I was hoping the 935 would fix it, but it appears to be an inherent issue with the garmin devices.

0 ekutter-dnu over 7 years ago

How about a link to one of the files?

0 martinm1 over 7 years ago

Interesting. I didn't cut the trail at all. It is an up and back. I can't really tell from the map, but it appears to "straight line" portions in one direction, but not in the opposite direction. It just seems strange to me that a device made by a company with gps roots can't do as well as an iphone or an apple watch gen2. I would think it was an issue with the device, but the exact same thing happened repeatedly with my 735 before it.

0 Bobgott over 7 years ago

I'm also having terrible accuracy on mileage with my 935. HIking switchbacks, scrambling .. or anything that is not a straight line. I'm seeing a 10% deviation from gps apps on my iPhone and my Garmin GPSMAP 64s.

0 nmyeti over 7 years ago

My experience with 5.40 and auto pause on the same trail is here. Check out my hiking activity on Garmin Connect. #beatyesterday
https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/1953942892?share_unique_id=2

GPS wandering added some distance for sure, although I'm not convinced that the map of this trail exactly follows where it really goes in the mountain.

0 Bobgott over 7 years ago

nmyeti .. do you see any difference with auto pause on or off?

0 tam0pdx over 7 years ago

Typically I have auto-pause off for slow moving activities and the track seems to be much better than with it on.

0 nmyeti over 7 years ago

nmyeti .. do you see any difference with auto pause on or off?

I actually turned auto pause off about half way or so into this track. My hike was pausing while I was still moving. That said it was much better when I was stopped waiting on a partner. I sometimes forget to stop recording the last time I hiked this trail and that led to some odd GPS drift.

One other thing; one of the guys I hiked with today had a Fenix 3. His track, looking at it on connect, shows pretty close to mine in places where I assumed gps drift was adding distance. I'm getting the gpx from him to compare, but this, at first glance, seems like a good track of this trail no matter where Google says it actually goes. Point being, I think there 5x, even given the challenging conditions of hiking up this canyon, seems to do a good job sticking to the switchbacks.