Suunto vertical ascent/ descent totally incorrect

maszop

@Brad_Olwin This applies to 2 Suunto watches, 9PP and Vertical. A lot of time has passed since the release of Suunto 9 Peak Pro and this problem repeats very often in both watches, regardless of resets or cleaning (these were brand new watches).

Altitude graph
Suunto Vertical shows 1553m total climbs. Totally absurd in very strong winds.

Laps

Link to this activity (I had to stop further hiking due to the gusty wind):
https://maps.suunto.com/move/maszopmz/65b4e463aecad96a9da9c27f

cosme.costa

@maszop I do not have a SV yet but I have a S9B and have seen a very few times this issues and all of them match with the potential issues. If you have this issue with two watches could be some factor that affects equally both watches. I mean, I can complain of some things of Suunto but ascent and altitude is 99.9% of the times spot on. Moreover Suunto is recognized to nail it with this.

If I were you I would try to understand what could affect to this. As you said doesn’t happen always, so if it is a software bug and your activities are very similar this should happen always, shouldn’t it? I also understand that when you are at home the baro trend is logical, not fluctuating randomly?
Do you know the altitude in the summit? It is correct in the watch when you are in the summit? Are you leaving the watch do its magic with Fusedalti (full autoimatic)? How is the GPS track, do you have always GPS signal? Could be, that for some reason, when you hike you cover the baro sensor? Rain? Snow? At the end there is no much more secret from user side with this technology.

maszop

@cosme-costa I used Suunto 9 Baro and the problem only occurred a few times in the same weather conditions. Strong, gusty wind, some rain, generally nasty weather.
In the case of 9PP and Vertical, this problem basically always occurs under such conditions.

During the same hike, my friend went a little further with his 9 Baro and his watch showed about 900m of ascent. Probably a bit too much too, but not as absurd as Vertical with 1553m.

Apart from those cases with bad weather (where the altimeter shows basically correct values on the peaks anyway), there are no other problems or errors - in good weather, on a daily basis, etc.

maszop

And again.
Suunto Vertical shows 4456m ascent instead of about 1400. Wind about 60km/h.
Altitude graph

Brad_Olwin

@maszop I just did a very windy run and had overestimates as well in elevation gain. Not as bad as yours but it happened on the Vertical. It does not happen often to me and I might consider putting the watch under a sleeve as this would likely help. I was changing directions often so the wind hitting the sensor was not all the time. My graph has the issues yours does with lots of little spikes. It can happen, not sure much can be done about this as I have seen the same issue with an Apple Watch Ultra. The sensors have to be sensitive to detect small changes in pressure; enough wind in the right place will affect it. Maybe Suunto can make this better, I am not sure if that is possible.
BTW I have had worse issues like this on the 9baro and less issues with the Vertical, the sensor is in a much worse position on the 9baro.
I can dig up the data if you like.

maszop

@Brad_Olwin Unfortunately, covering the watch with sleeve does not help. I’ve tried various methods, keeping it in my pocket, under my sweatshirt, under my jacket, completely outside and there are always strange things happening in strong winds.
This is a link to the activity, I manually changed the ascent and descent to the correct ones, recorded once in calmer weather.
https://maps.suunto.com/move/maszopmz/65e36100073ba655aff7e2b7

Here is the result from the watch:
ascent

I wonder if a simple (optional) filter would be enough to normalise (flatten these results) - e.g. to be turned on when we observe such drastic anomalies.

Mff73

@maszop
with a little tone of humour (but not totally silly idea ), what do you think about testing with covering baro hole with something like the furry windshields, used to protect micros from noises od wind “pressure” ?
you may become the first user of SuuntoVertical Furry edition

maszop

@Mff73 If it works with microphones, maybe it will also be suitable for watches

Tieutieu

Strange about wind effect : I have used my vertical several times in very windy conditions and never observed such elevation errors.

(I didn’t know where to put this so I put it here : I wanted to notice that SV works awesomely well under clothes/gloves, even in very cold weather with big gloves + 3 layers => that’s a point I wanted to notice. My A3P and my S9b were very poor in this case with elevations errors and GPS accuracy loss).

maszop

@Tieutieu Vertical and the previously used 9PP measure point height very accurately. No issues with that.
The problem is with these spikes visible on the chart - sudden, small, but very frequent changes in elevation.

Tieutieu

@maszop I had perfectly understood that issue => never had such behaviour even in very windy conditions

Mff73

@maszop
and the last solution would be also to consider your watch as faulty.
it is not nice, but sometimes it may happen.
years ago i had issues with my spartan ultra, searching for all possible solutions about baro issues and ascent/descent.
RMA one day, and baro sensor was faulty : new watch never had any issues.
(not related to wind though).

maszop

@Mff73 Two watches are faulty?
9PP and Vertical, maybe, but very hard to believe.
Maybe I can test another Vertical very soon.

surfboomerang

Back in the days when I still owned a S9B, altitude was still recorded for windsurfing activities. The altiude graph went all over the place and I ended up with hundereds of meters of ascend and descend values. The graph above looks very clean. Nothing like the graphs I saw when it was influenced by the wind.
Maybe the algorithm changed over the years, but I don’t know if wind is the issue this time.

maszop

@surfboomerang Something has changed because my problems started with 9 Peak Pro. Previously, in the case of Traverse and 9 Baro, despite much lower accuracy, there was no such disaster.

r00bbo

Hi!
I have encountered the same issue. On an extremely windy day, my 9 Peak Pro reported an elevation of 2400m when the hike (validated with my partner’s Garmin) was around 1100m.
This is the first time I have experienced such a disparity, hiking or cycling.

Brad_Olwin

@r00bbo said in Suunto vertical ascent/ descent totally incorrect:

Hi!
I have encountered the same issue. On an extremely windy day, my 9 Peak Pro reported an elevation of 2400m when the hike (validated with my partner’s Garmin) was around 1100m.
This is the first time I have experienced such a disparity, hiking or cycling.

https://forum.suunto.com/topic/9960/more-faq?_=1719606955631

Archi Mendel

Just had a hike with a 1000-meter ascend, and my Suunto Vertical logged 1950 meters of altitude gain. It was quite windy, so this might be the reason. What I don’t get is: wind is a problem + covered by clothing is a problem.

How does Suunto expect me to solve this problem if both requirements—to hide from the wind and not cover with clothing—are conflicting?

I’m disappointed, to say the least. I would rather use GPS-based altitude gain data than the one Suunto provides. This 2x altitude gain is simply not usable—it messes my records and the track that I publish.

There are quite a few posts with a similar problem in this forum. Is Suunto planning to introduce any firmware update that, maybe, will use GPS and barometer data to somehow detect anomaly data?

Brad_Olwin

@Archi-Mendel I have reported this to Suunto and provided extensive logs and files. Others have contributed as well. I am confident they are working on some sort of solution. Several sites will correct your data and you can manually change the elevation gain/loss in SA.

Dimitrios Kanellopoulos

I think it’s not a real problem the wind or the jacket if the sensor whole is stress free for the vertical specifically. Stress free = no sweat, water, or debris ie dirt etc inside the sensor.