Hiking with battery mode Ultra

[A Former User]

@surfboomerang Did you use walking stick ? How was the track ?
It’s to help to identify if your amrs move a lot, helping gyro captor. It’s just a supposition

[Mff73]

@surfboomerang
And no clues in the JSON file?

[surfboomerang]

@g287-sf No, I don’t use a walking stick. Track was flat and open.

[surfboomerang]

@mff73 I did some more tests after a soft reset.

Activity type “Hiking”, battery mode Ultra.
I have a very accurate track. It is following the roads and stays on track in corners and twists. Analyzing the samples.json, I see that GPS coordinates are recorded every second.

Activity type “Hiking”, battery mode Custom -> GPS mode OK.
Same result as above. Also GPS records every second.

Activity type “Other”, battery mode Ultra
Same results as hiking. Oh… and this activity type is still recorded as “Other6” in SA

Activity type “Runing”, battery mode Ultra
The watch starts asking to calibrate for fusedtrack. After calibration a very accurate track.
In the samples.json file GPS coordinates are recorded on irregular intervals. Sometime every second. Sometimes 4-6 seconds between them.

In the Summary.json file, I can see almost every setting I did for that activity except the battery/GPS mode. Is that setting saved in this file?

[Fenr1r]

@surfboomerang said in Hiking with battery mode Ultra:

Activity type “Hiking”, battery mode Custom -> GPS mode OK.
Same result as above. Also GPS records every second.

Should that happen?

[surfboomerang]

@fenr1r I would expect that I would see a GPS recording every 2 minutes in the logfile. That’s why I’m sceptic if the setting works correctly.
If it is really a 1 second interval recording it explains the same battery drain as when you select GPS “Best” mode

In the case of fusedtrack (so running and trailrunning activites), I can imagine that those values between the GPS recordings are calculated/extrapolated from values of compass and accelerometer

[Fenr1r]

@surfboomerang Solid reasoning.

[Mff73]

@surfboomerang
Maybe the JSON is not really raw data. I don’t know. Maybe the watch uses GPS every 2 minutes, but records estimated positions each second, based on différents sensors.

[surfboomerang]

@mff73 True, that is what I would suspect from fusedtrack. If GPS coordinates are also calculated for other sport modes wouldn’t they also have fusedtrack support? It also doesn’t add up with the battery drain.

[A Former User]

@surfboomerang i try “classic walk” with my dog in Ultra and the results are pretty good.

https://www.suunto.com/move/anthonydurand600/6016ec70a8592d54a4d2f4aa

[surfboomerang]

@g287-sf That is exactly my point.
How can a sport mode without fusedtrack capability and a 2 minute GPS recording interval be so accurate? Did you also watched your battery drain?

[A Former User]

@surfboomerang this afternoon i was at 100% (14h00) now at 21h14 i’m at 92% (i use the everyday FC tracking)

[surfboomerang]

@g287-sf During the activity I mean.
The watch predicts the time left in different battery modes before you start the activity. Roughly this comes down to 4%/hr for Performance mode and <1%/hr for Ultra mode.

I selected Ultra mode this morning and started my hike with 64% battery left. It dropped 1% every 20 min. So basically 3-4%/hr. The same as when I select Performance as battery mode

[A Former User]

@surfboomerang i don’t check it.
During your activities, did you let HR sensor on ? During mine it was turned off, i turn on Suunto Plus SAFE. Maybe it.was a bad idea…

[Brad_Olwin]

@surfboomerang The first 15 to 20 min the watch will be adjusting FusedAlti and I guess does some other things. Dimitrios has stated before that FusedTrack does not engage for 15 min or so. Because of this, on a short exercise you are unlikely to notice that much of a difference. You will need 3-4h minimum to see a major difference in battery use.

[surfboomerang]

@brad_olwin I would understand it if GPS is only on best the first 20 minutes for the FusedAlti mechanism, but a difference after 3-4hr I don’t get.

What if I start my activity with 12% battery left and I get a notification at 10% asking me if I want to switch profiles? I would expect it would go in effect immediately instead of taking a couple of hours. With a battery drain of 3-4%/hr that would mean that my watch is empty before the Ultra mode kicks in.

That also would mean that a lot of reviews/tests on the internet are wrong, because most of them test the fusedtrack technology on a 5 km run or so.

What about selecting GPS mode OK in a custom battery profile? Shouldn’t that go into effect immediately?

[zadow]

@surfboomerang One more question - do you have any ETA/ETE/remaining distatance fields on your display? If so, then watch automaticaly switch to best GPS as they are trying to calculate ETA/ETE. Just like when you switch to navigate display. so, as @Brad_Olwin suggested, check the accuracy after 20 minutes, and make sure that there no any fields referring to ETA/ETE or remaining distatnce to POI or to end. If you have any of those field on your current display, even when there is no route for navigation loaded, watch switch to GPS best.

[Dimitrios Kanellopoulos]

At the first x minutes until Fused Alti kicks in the watch is in Best GPS mode.

After that it will switch.

One should never test on battery consumption with 1-3hours of activity.

Hiking due to slow speed wont use fused track

[surfboomerang]

@dimitrios-kanellopoulos Check!
I never expected fusedtrack to be active. I just wondered how bad/good the track would be with a 2 min interval.

[surfboomerang]

@zadow Never thought of that. I do have ETA and ETE fields on one of the displays.