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Treadmill Calibration When Using MilestonePod

Hi,

Anyone else using the MilestonePod footpod? I have a few question when using this on a treadmill.

So first of all, the Milestone folks told me to set the footpod calibration factor to 100% in Garmin as the footpod has its own calibration within the footpod's own app, which I have used a couple of times to match the GPS distance when running outside. In any case, it is set to 100% inside Garmin.

Now when I run on my treadmill with the footpod connected, the displayed speed is very different from what the treadmill displays. I put this down to the treadmill being inaccurate. So at the end, before hitting Save, I did treadmill calibration to make the total distance match what the footpod claimed (from a separate syncing of the footpod with te footpod app, I did this before saving the Garmin activity). The footpod distance was much less than the treadmill one. The question is why, if the footpod was connected, shouldn't it be getting speed and distance from the footpod? With 100% footpod calibration, shouldn't speed and distance on the watch and the footpod app match by definition? So what did I achieve by doing "Treadmill Calibration"? The footpod calibration is still set to 100% . Does this mean the watch was using speed and distance from its internal accelermoeter instead of the footpod? Why? The cadence seems to match exactly that in the footpod app, so I don't think the footpod disconnected at any point in the activity.

Separate issue, doing the treadmill calibration fixed the distance in the activity in Garmin Connect, but the auto-sync to Strava still sent the original distance and speed.

Any help undertsanding this behavior would be appreciated.

Thanks.

0 JRMiler over 7 years ago

Treadmill calibration is a one-time edit to your file. It's mostly intended to be used when you don't have a footpod, so that you can make the total distance for the activity match what the treadmill display itself was showing. (Since even an inaccurate treadmill display is going to be better than the wrist accelerometer.) When you use that feature, it doesn't change anything going forward; it only edits the distance for that one file. If you're using a footpod, you should just ignore the treadmill calibration feature because the footpod is more accurate.

The activity distance in the app will rarely match what's showing on the watch because you can't manually start and stop the pod itself. Most activities will be a bit longer on the app, because it's auto-detecting your start and finish. Any manual pauses will be ignored. Walking around a bit, stopping to get a drink of water or go to the restroom, it all adds up, especially in a short run.

As for the syncing, there's no way currently to deal with the Strava/Garmin Connect issue. Strava gets your total by looking at the underlying data in the file and calculating the total distance itself. The treadmill calibration doesn't actually edit the file on a deep enough level to fool Strava.

0 Saad over 7 years ago

Thanks, what you described makes sense, but now I have questions about what I see. I did another run today on the treadmill, the treadmill distance in 33 minutes was 3.3 miles, the watch recorded activity, which was paired with my MilestonePod footpod the whole time as far as I know, was 3.16 miles, while my distance in supposedly more accurate MilestonePod app for the detected run was 3.58 miles. Now the detected run in the MilestonePod app is 3.58 miles. Admittedly the run it detected was only 32 minutes 50 seconds, a 10 second difference.

Is there a way to tell where a given activity in Garmin Connect is getting its speed and distance information from? I would think for this activity it should almost match what is in the MP app. The average cadence is exactly the same in both. Though that could also just be because the watch is using its built in cadence calculation and doing a good job. I want to make sure that when the footpod is connected the activity uses the cadence/speed/distance from the pod and not its built in accelerometer.

Any advice would be appreciated.

0 R_Tellis over 7 years ago

If you look at the activity on the Connect website off to the side it might tell you if the Milestone pod was connected under where it says which watch you were using. But other than that I don't know of any native way to tell where the cadence and distance data for an indoor run came from.

In general though, if there is a paired foot pod detected you'll get a banner when you select the activity from the menu and as long as it stays paired it will take precedence over the built-in accelerometers.

The difference in distance between the what the watch measures when using the pod and what the pod comes up with on it's own can vary because the watch will just be using the raw acceleration data from the pod and applying Garmin's algorithms to it.