OT: Fitbit oddity

Feb 04, 2018 11 Replies
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I've been using a Fitbit for the last year or so and the step count has always been surprisingly accurate, and agreed with the phone in my pocket. I bought my wife one for Christmas but it recorded about 10,000 extra steps a day - the replacement did the same thing so I got her to wear both mine and the new one and then I wore them both. When she wore them they both hugely over-counted during day-to-day activities but were fairly accurate on a walk; both performed correctly when I wore them. Strange! She's "energetic" but doesn't fidget or do anything unusual except bite her fingers. We concluded that a Fitbit was not for her and returned it.


Does she 'jiffle' her legs while sitting down?

Unlikely to affect a wrist worn device.

Tim

Have you tried shadowing her every move? Maybe you?re discounting just how much she moves around the house? Granted, an extra 10,000 sounds like a lot.

Tim

'nuff said. Remove it when de-stressing.

I think that might cause a little friction ;-) Even being sat at the kitchen table for half an hour seemed to affect the step count.

Maybe something in her make up bounces generating false step counts?

If you have ever ridden horses you will know how different the ride is between similar looking ones, some are very bouncy others as smooth as a tarmac road. I guess we are the same. Brian

Try the other wrist, pulse close to the surface could be affecting it.

Nothing obviously bounces(!) It wouldn't be chivalrous to make a public comment about her ride ;-)

(I rode horses a long time ago, but always put the differences down to my poor and variable techniques. My thigh muscles probably still bear the signs of hours of rising trot)

We tried both wrists, and also tried using the non-dominant side and telling the Fitbit that it was on the dominant side - all to no avail.

We've been away in Africa recently and it was surprising how many thousands of steps our Garmin Vivosmarts recorded while we were sat in vehicles on rough tracks on game drives!

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