One of the last few updates has changed the steps my Vivoactive 3 counts from being a few shy of actual to being way over the actual. When I walk up a hill it will count it like flight of stairs, so I end the day with 4 times my daily goal. Any one experienced this? Any solution?
My stairs are also crazy high. I somehow had 50 flights today, 47 yesterday, 63 one day last week. I did report it. I kind of have an ongoing conversation with Garmin from my issues. Kinda sad.
I think the excess floors problem would only be noticed if you had walked up hill through the day. Otherwise the floor count might look normal. I have been getting 4x Goal awards in the middle of a walk, This never happened before the last update. I have reported to Garmin, maybe a future update will address it.
As a question: Do you also have your phones with you when the elevation is far off, or only in range at short portions of the event like at the start/stop? The reason I am asking is perhaps the auto-cal works via the Connect app. Perhaps elevation starts at the "best guess" elevation based on just the barometer, but later acquires a "fix" based on WiFi co-location, local weather report, or the GPS or whatever, queries the Garmin site for elevation, and then applies a correction improperly? You wind up with a slope between the initial Barometer only fix and the more accurate fix later on rather than applying a offset to the data. To me the one chart that is clearly wrong above looks like a slope was applied.vs. the correct one.
Ok, so I have noticed a few things about behavior of the stair count:
1. It will count floors as long as the change in elevation occurs fast enough, which is actually pretty slow compared to normal stair climbing. Somewhere in the vicinity of 1 floor per minute. Any slower, and it does not count it. That is why my up and down don't match sometimes as the ascent and descent rates on some trails differ. 2. Elevation errors: Does seem related to connectivity to your paired Bluetooth device, and its ability to contact the internet. A quick experiment showed that when I did not allow my phone to pair with the VA3, my start elevation at my home was 880ft (normally 1220ft.) A full hike around a 1 mile loop, and it ended as 882ft. Pretty good match if you ask me. Then I started another hike at 884ft, then connected my phone at the halfway point of the hike. It didn't quite screw up, but my elevation went "correct" at 1150ft, so the entire chart was uplifted by 268ft. The overall chart looked OK and reasonable, not with some crazy slope applied, but I suspect this is a scenario that will screw up elevation charts.
Not only are the stair count/floor count out of order, also the altitude readings and charts are going in random directions and way out of what they should be. This has to do with one of the latest Software updates, because everything worked Ok two weeks ago. Now I suddenly average 20-35 floors per day, before that my average was 15-16 and that was correct. The altitude chart errors are most annoying. I have reported this to Garmin Support, please do that also, otherwise they won't fix this. Go to: http://support.garmin.com/
I have the same problem as you. I gonna to contact also contact garmin support team
Ok, so I have noticed a few things about behavior of the stair count...
Very interesting! This explains why the altitude jumps 100m up, when I go 10m away from the house :). I tried to calibrate the sensor manually - but it does not last long... I still have to try it with the autocalibration turned off - it looks like it resets the manual calibration.
Yeah. Ridiculous. On the same walk I’ve done scores of times, during which I would typically get 2x my goal, I’m now hitting 16x my goal. I’ve tried rebooting and cleaning my watch and it’s still messed up. Super frustrating.
