Vibrations et tonalités fantômes

Greennorth

@duffman19 Okay, thanks for that info. I guess there is not too much we can do about it? I understand they have stopped providing new updates for the S9PP. I have two watches and the one stopped doing it but the other one still does. Hopefully it just stops too!

Efejota

Phantoms vibrations reaturned, in my case. Not very often, but still… I will try to check if it is related to phone presence.

duffman19

said in Vibrations et tonalités fantômes:

My current guess is that it may have something to do with the compass auto-calibration.

I am almost certain this is this issue now. To check this, I performed the following:

Open the compass widget (make sure it is already calibrated).
Bring a magnet close to the watch (doesn’t have to be strong, a refrigerator magnet will work).
This will reset the compass and bring up the “Calibrate Compass” notification.
Without moving the watch, back out to the watch face.
While on the watch face, perform the calibration movement (figure 8).
The watch will eventually vibrate, signaling that the compass has been calibrated.
Go back to the compass widget to verify it has been calibrated.

I’ve performed this several times and every time I get the “phantom vibration.” My assumption is that some of us are perhaps in situations that cause the 9PP’s compass to reset often, and thus we get the phantom vibrations more often than others. I know for me, getting in and out of my car tends to mess with the compass calibration. Even a simple act like opening the refrigerator (with all those magnets on it) could reset the compass, triggering the background auto calibration and thus the phantom vibration.

@isazi @egika Is there a chance this could be verified by Suunto? Would this qualify as a bug? Although a minor inconvenience, it seems like something that could be an easy fix as it seems to only affect the 9PP.

Edit: You can perform an even easier verification. Simply bring a magnet close to the watch while on the watch face (locked or not). Then perform the figure 8 movement. You’ll get the phantom vibration once it calibrates, no need to check the compass widget. Checking the widget just verifies that the magnet reset the calibration.

duffman19

Some more observations confirming that it is indeed the compass auto-calibration causing the phantom vibrations:

I’ve been paying more attention to where I am when the phantom vibrations occur. Most often they occur when I am in the kitchen or the car, or shortly after I have been in the kitchen or car. This makes sense. Lots of magnets and electric fields in both places.

To test, I loaded the compass widget while going about my daily routine in both locations. As suspected, it frequently resets (“Calibrate compass” warning) while moving throughout these spaces.

For the kitchen, there are three main culprits: the refrigerator (grabbing the handle near a magnet), the stove (induction cooktop), and a wall-mounted, magnetic knife bar. The compass resets if the watch gets within a few inches of these items.

For the car, it was simply grabbing the door handle. My car has a touch sensor in the handle that unlocks the vehicle if the key fob is nearby. The compass resets every time I open the car with my watch hand. It will also reset if I place my arm on the inside door armrest. The culprit here seems to be the window controls or some other electronics within the door frame.

Obviously the phantom vibration doesn’t occur until the watch auto-calibrates by moving through a range of motion (figure-8). So, even though the compass resets throughout the day in these spaces, the calibration may not take place until some time later after the watch has moved about a bit. The motions involved with driving (turning the wheel, moving through corners) seem to be enough to trigger it, so I’ll often get several of them while in the car. But if I simply grab something out of the fridge, I may not get the calibration and phantom vibration until some time later.

This is very much a 9PP specific bug. My SV1 does not reset in any of the above locations. Even placing it next to a very strong magnet has very little effect on the compass. This is probably why the bug slipped through when the auto-calibration feature was added as most testers were probably not wearing 9PPs at the time.

Łukasz Szmigiel · S9PP 2.50.28

@duffman19 I’ll have to investigate based on your findings as it’s possible to download logs from the watch with vscode addon for s+ development.

duffman19

@Łukasz-Szmigiel Sounds good, thanks.

Also just discovered that getting too close to my laptop triggers the reset. I think it’s the magnets for the tiny built-in speakers. Man, this thing is sen-si-tive.

I think I recall some discussion when the watch was first released cautioning against using the original 9P charger with the 9PP because the magnets were too strong and it could brick the watch. I don’t think that was ever actually the case, but it sounds like Suunto was at least aware of how delicate the 9PP’s magnetometer is.

tmclr

@duffman19

I think you might be on it!

I’ve just pulled up the compass widget and placed my 9PP close to my iPad (with magnetic keyboard cover) - bingo - the compass losses calibration. Performing a cal is hard by waggling the watch on your wrist (people in the office are wondering what I’m doing ), but when it is complete I get the vibration confirming calibration complete.

I then held the watch close to my iPad again without the compass widget active, and confirmed that it has lost calibration. I’m now waiting to see how long it takes to ‘naturally’ calibrate and give me the phantom vibration.

Thanks for solving the mystery, just need a fix now!

tmclr

I’ve repeated several times this morning - bringing my watch close to the magnetic cover of my iPad. It is VERY sensitive and resets the compass very readily as duffman has worked out!
With me working at my desk, it seems to take between 30 and 60 mins to ‘naturally’ recalibrate the compass and give the phantom vibration alert.

Elipsus

Yes Its the compass for sure.
I worked for a few hours yesterday on my 3D printer, and that thing is full of magnets, and …oh boy… the watch did vibrate every 5 minutes !
Good job @duffman19
Now lets hope for a fix !

Łukasz Szmigiel · S9PP 2.50.28

@Elipsus yeah, can confirm that. I’ve observed that too while I was working on fixing my friend’s laptop.

MirkoP

So? Anyone close to Suunto that could tell us if we should downgrade the firmware to fix it or we could expected an update just to fix the bug?

Thanks to everyone

Łukasz Szmigiel · S9PP 2.50.28

@MirkoP get used to it

Liszto

@Łukasz-Szmigiel any news from Suunto here on that topic ?
The Suunto 9PP of my wife have the issue and it is worst and worst, now it’s battery is draining something like more than 20% per day probably due to that and the amount of vibration is very annoying 🫠

She hopes to have a fix for that and she hopes it’s battery won’t be “damaged” by that…

Łukasz Szmigiel · S9PP 2.50.28

@Liszto I doubt that it’ll get fixed.

Liszto

@Łukasz-Szmigiel ok

@isazi for the follow up just in case

Woodster

@Liszto For me it was the compass widget recalibrating itself automatically ( as mentioned here ), when I removed the widget the phantom alerts stopped completely.

Martin
Suunto 9 Peak Pro

duffman19

@Woodster I never thought to remove the widget. Such a simple solution. I just tried this and can confirm that it stops the phantom calibration alerts.

Only problem with this, though, is that it seems to disables the compass auto-calibration completely. So the next time you start an activity, there is a good chance that the compass will not be calibrated. I think the watch relies on proper compass calibration for certain features like FusedSpeed and proper GPS tracing.

Elipsus

@Woodster Good tips…to bad I use the compass regularly !
how had is it do update the software to remove the vibrations for the compass ???

duffman19

@Elipsus said:

how had is it do update the software to remove the vibrations for the compass ???

Not hard at all, I would imagine. All of the other watches auto-calibrate in the background without the bzzz-bzzz notification. It feels like a piece of code just got left out for the 9PP.

compass-auto-calibration {
if screen = compass_widget {
vibration_notification = yes
} else {
vibration_notification = no
}}

Unfortunately, the 9PP has been left behind, so there will be no simple update.

However, if you do remove the compass widget (by unchecking it in the widget settings in the Suunto App), you still have access to it by scrolling to the bottom of the widget list on the watch and selecting “All apps.” The only difference is that it will no longer auto-calibrate once removed from that main widget list, so you’ll need to double-check the calibration status before starting an activity.

Łukasz Szmigiel · S9PP 2.50.28

Be advised that “tokens have been burned” to arrive at the following conclusion

S9PP: why the watch vibrates when it recalibrates the compass in the background (Sapporo 2.50.28)

While digging through the watch firmware to optimize my SuuntoPlus apps, I also took a look at this long-standing problem, and here is what I found.

What happens

Some of us get a vibration while the watch is just sitting on the wrist, with no workout and the screen off, especially near metal. I traced it through the firmware, and it comes from two things working together.

The vibration. A global system module called Effect listens to /Device/Measurement/MagneticField/Calibration. Every time that value becomes true, it plays the Success indication, the same one you get after a manual compass calibration. It doesn’t check who started the calibration, whether a compass screen is open, or whether you’re in a workout. With the settings TonesMode=AllOff and VibrationMode=ButtonOff, you get vibration without sound.
Why it fires at rest. Auto-calibration only happens while the magnetometer is running, and the magnetometer only runs when something is subscribed to compass heading. The compass mini widget (the one in the widget list under the watch face) subscribes with plain subscribe rather than subscribe-when-shown. Its container in c-widgm.xml has no autoUnload, so the firmware never unloads it after it’s hidden. The result is a heading subscriber that stays alive after you leave the screen. CompassProvider keeps MagneticField active, and the magnetometer keeps sampling all day. Near metal it keeps losing and regaining calibration, and each regain triggers a Success vibration.

Suunto has already changed this on a newer watch, but not for the S9PP

I compared this with Xiamen 2.56.18 (Suunto Vertical 2). The widget files are byte-for-byte identical, but the native Effect module no longer subscribes to the calibration resource at all. It listens to 9 resources instead of 10, and the calibration branch is gone. It still plays Success after a successful sensor pairing. In my scan I found no other native subscriber to the calibration resource that plays an indication, but I can’t rule out that the handling was moved somewhere I didn’t look, so I don’t know whether calibration still gives feedback there. Either way, this would explain why only S9PP owners report the vibration: on the 2.56 line the cause I found doesn’t exist. Since Suunto has ended development of the S9PP, we won’t get that firmware, so the problem stays in 2.50.28 for good.

Why this isn’t trivial to fix from the outside

Effect is native firmware code, not a UI file. It’s a shared module, and Success also confirms successful sensor pairing. You can’t just mute it.
The calibration notification carries no information about who started the calibration, and the module doesn’t check it. So the module can’t tell a manual calibration from an automatic one.

Why unloading the mini widget is the best workaround we have

To be clear, this is a trade-off, not a fix. The vibration comes from Effect reacting to every Calibration=true, and that part is native firmware we can’t touch. What we can do is stop the thing that triggers it. At rest, the only thing keeping the magnetometer running is the hidden compass widget. Unload the widget and the magnetometer stops, so the watch can no longer recalibrate on its own, and Effect has nothing to react to.

So the vibration goes away because the background auto-calibration goes away, not because the vibration was fixed. What you lose is the compass quietly keeping itself calibrated in the background. It still calibrates when you actually open the compass or the widget, as it does when you start a workout or navigation.

The easiest way to do it is to disable the compass widget in the widget list. It also saves some battery.

A file swap gives the same result

Instead of disabling the widget, you could replace ui/templ/c-widgm.xml with a version that adds <autoUnload>true</autoUnload> to the compass container. The firmware parser does support that tag. The widget would then unload about 5 seconds after being hidden, the heading subscription would go away, and the magnetometer would stop. It has exactly the same consequence as disabling the widget:

No background auto-calibration while the widget isn’t on screen.
Effect still plays Success on any calibration. If something else legitimately keeps the magnetometer running (navigation, a workout, the full compass screen), a background recalibration can still make the watch vibrate.

I wouldn’t recommend the swap over simply disabling the widget. It gives the same effect with more risk: it means writing to a system folder, and a broken template could break the main watch UI. I haven’t confirmed that the watch even allows that write. Its one advantage is that, with no more firmware updates coming, it wouldn’t get overwritten.